In the early 1970s, Port of Spain thronged with Black Power marches, trade union demonstrations, and Carnival protest bands. When the meetings ended, the revolution moved to cramped secret dance halls, steelband yards, and Carnival fetes. The musicians who soundtracked all of it — Clive Zanda, Andre Tanker, Lancelot Layne, Abdul Malik de Coteau — blended Afro-American jazz with West Indian traditions and studio innovations borrowed from disco and psych-rock. The result was a music with a sharp edge: spiritual and political and danceable all at once. Soundway’s Kaiso Power collects ten of the finest recordings from this moment, compiled by the Wajang Diskotheque collective from Trinidad.
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