World Music  Karibik
Stanley and the Ten Sleepless Knights Quelbe! Music of the U.S. Virgin Islands SFW40568 CD
4 Copies immediately available. Shipping till Tuesday, April 2, 2024 Price: 16.98 EURO

Detailed information hide

FormatAudio CD
Ordering NumberSFW40568
Barcode093074056820
labelSmithsonian Folkways
Release date2/19/2016
salesrank9118

Press infoshide

More releases of this artisthide

    You may be interested in these titles toohide

      Description hide

      Stanley Jacobs, bandleader of Stanley and the Ten Sleepless Knights, embraced quelbe music at a young age in the 1940s. “That’s all we knew, ” says the St. Croix musician about the historically overlooked but more recently revered musical style of his homeland. For him, quelbe was music, and music was quelbe.

      ‘Quelbe! Music of the U.S. Virgin Islands’ (out 2/5) is the Smithsonian Folkways debut for this legendary group that recently celebrated its 40th anniversary of continuing this old-yet-new dance music. The album’s release is part of the Smithsonian Institution’s celebration of Black History Month.

      The primary ingredients for quelbe music are call-and-response singing and drumming, accompanied by African-influenced dance. Listeners will hear the squash (gourd rasp), steel (triangle), flute, and banjo ukulele, in the contemporary trappings of electric keyboard, drum set, conga, and electric bass. The all-new recordings are accompanied by a 32-page booklet with photos and extensive notes by GRAMMY winning producer Daniel Sheehy.

      Among the standout tracks, “Cigar Win The Race” is a rollicking song that fully embodies the spirit of quelbe. “Sly Mongoose” has a relaxed backbeat, and “When You Had Me” has a melody as cheeky as its lyrics, which tell the tale of a fickle former flame.

      As the ninth volume in the Smithsonian Folkways’ African American Legacy Series — a multi-year collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture — this album expands the project’s scope to beyond the 50 states in a spirited fashion.

      Band History:

      When Stanley and his Ten Sleepless Knights formed in the early 1970s, quelbe was largely overshadowed by more commercially glamorous styles of music from the United States and other Caribbean islands. Class-based notions of propriety and superiority inflicted themselves on views of lifestyles associated with local, rural people of humble means. Quelbe music was thought by some to be scandalous. The lyrics of quelbe songs often contained sexual innuendo and double entendre, telling stories of clandestine sexual trysts and other lewd behavior. Few people would have guessed how much the genre would climb the social ladder in the Virgin Islands over the next four decades as the Virgin Islands focused on instilling the cultural heritage.

      In 2003, the Virgin Islands legislature passed a bill officially making quelbe “the vocal and instrumental style of Virgin Islands.” Then in 2010, the band, whose members include a psychiatrist, a firefighter, an international basketball referee, and a racehorse owner, became recognized as its chief protagonists. It was a victory for a genre of traditional music that had once been snubbed, but is now celebrated.

      Tracklist hide




      CD 1
      • 1.Cigar Win the Race05:40
      • 2.Lagoon Mouth03:16
      • 3.Sly Mongoose03:27
      • 4.Beautiful Girl (calypso) 05:42
      • 5.Lancers Number 4 02:09
      • 6.When You Had Me (jig) 03:03
      • 7.Ho Bin Sen Yo (marengue) 05:06
      • 8.Bronco Jig (jig)03:34
      • 9.Don't Walk Deh05:05
      • 10.Garty Ballantine 05:50
      • 11.Hilly (jig) 05:03
      • 12.Waltz02:42
      • 13.Matty Gru 03:43
      • 14.LaBega Carousel03:56
      • 15.Marie Bull04:09
      • 16.Queen Mary02:52
      • 17.Musician Want Something to Drink02:07
      • Total:01:07:24