Kyle Gann launches a radio station. Hear what his blog talks about.
n/p Julius Eastman "Evil Nigger": solo piano playing a tremulous, dramatic, fairly long motif repeated again and again, changing from time to time (modulation, new material) and a faint "1 2 3 4" count-off giving a rock'n'roll touch. Pretty cool.
Mons seems to be a lively place. Driving in, I passed by a couple of 16-18-year-old (let's say 17) girls, one with hair dyed a lively pink, passed out in front of a public establishment, their friends around them, assisting. It was 8 PM. When I left the city, at 2 AM, things were only just getting started (that is, for those who hadn't already passed out). Police and a TV camera surrounded my car, never a good sign (especially when you consider the duct taped state of my rear bumper). It turns out they were breathalyzing people. Unfortunately (because I've never done it and would have passed), I didn't get tested.
Last year, the festival took place mostly in the nearby Hall, but now it's being held entirely in the K.fee, a great club I've already mentioned, presumably because of last year's disappointing turnout. Also, this year's line-up is 100% Belgian. The place was packed. Festival's in a club don't seem to be much of a tradition here, but it does generate a nice atmosphere straddling festival formality and logistics and club intimacy.
The Bart Quartier Quintet kicked off proceedings in surprising fashion, playing Dave Holland's "Looking Up." It was the first time I'd heard anybody cover a recent Holland composition, but it makes sense, as they're often great. The line-up was pretty similar to Holland's Quintet as well: Quartier on vibes, leader of Belgian mainstream sax Bart Defoort on tenor and curved soprano, Nico Schepers on trumpet, the inimitable Jean-Louis Rassinfosse (see below) on his signature 5-string double bass and the ubiquitous Jan de Haas on drums.
They gave a rather tepid set. When you've heard the Dave Holland Quintet several times, it's difficult for others to compare, especially when sticking to a similar arrangement. Defoort sounded thin and Rassinfosse weirdly agressive. A couple of bland Quartier compositions followed, before "8 AM" started kicking the set into gear: during the head, drums rolled, vibes and bass looped very cool independant chord cycles (the vibe chords dissonantly echoing the 9 PM church bells that had just rung outside). Unfortunately, they abandoned thorniness in favour of straight-forward funk for the solos. On the following ballad, Schepers made a powerful, heart-felt theme statement and the strong, not-too-complex harmony offered the soloists nice melodic paths, which they exploited effectively. A Mike Mainieri tune was the first real uptempo burner, and Schepers wowed, letting loose a Hubbard/Morgan salvo. The group was obviously gelling, Defoort's sound was getting thicker, but while they were winning the battle against lack of group identity, they were losing the one against festival set time constraints. They closed with another Quartier tune, "Doodle," a sort-of blues that found everyone far funkier than before.
Philip Catherine's trio took the stage next (don't worry, he was only briefly on all fours), with regular drummer Joost Van Schaik and irregular bassist Sal LaRocca filling in for Philippe Aerts. I'm not much of a fan of this trio, they just seem overly cushy with each other. This was made clear earlier in the year during the Brussels Jazz Marathon, when Rosario Giuliani sat in on "Mr. P.C." and blew them apart in the space of a few minutes, forcing Catherine to get up from his chair and respond in kind. A similar thing happened here, but in a quieter vein, when guitarist Pierre Van Dormael stepped onstage for Catherine's "L'éternel désir" and the standard "Autumn Leaves" (which was amusing to me, as only a few days ago I discussed learning "Autumn Leaves" with Van Dormael). The second guitarist made the leader space out his phrases and consider the weight of each one more carefully.
Before all that, though, the trio wound its way through a couple of Catherine tunes, which allowed him to display his usual melancholy iridescent pedal-controlled chords. "Letter From My Mother" was especially strong, with a great melody hiding gushing emotion under the British restraint of a little waltz. They blew on "All The Things You Are" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" (which contained a great, "how's he going to resolve this" harmonic digression from Catherine) and closed with "More Bells," the two-beat of which allowed Van Schaik to loudly and joyfully play around with the off-beat during the song's climax.
The previously-seen Van Dormael followed with a quartet that's played several times now (a notable feat, as most of the guitarist's groups have, by his own admission, played only once). Van Dormael has a totally unique harmonic sense that allows him to sculpt intricate melodies out of seemingly inhospitable intervals. Mix this in with his blues leanings, African sensibility (notably in his approach to space) and desire to unite the intellectual and the emotional, and you have a musician who never ceases to amaze me. The first time I saw this quartet, I was amazed and transported for about 25 minutes. This time, I was a bit disappointed. Van Dormael was consistently fascinating and bassist Otti van der Werf (on his battered 4-string electric) has a pared-down, deeply groovy style, but throughout the 1.5 hour-long set, the tempo and general feeling hardly budged. Anne Wolf, excellent on piano in her own trio, continued to annoy on keyboards, using mostly cheesy pan pipe patches (the same as she always uses, aren't there any other settings on those things?) and occasional strings, with a balafon/marimba sound at one point that was, I must admit, rather nice. Still, though, I have yet to hear her play anything on keyboards that sounded really good, as she mainly restricts herself to weak, often out-of-the-groove blues scale + modulation wheel noodling. But I'll repeat how good her own trio is: very (which makes her performances with Van Dormael all the more puzzling).
The set ended with Dylan's "My Back Pages," whose melody provided a more focused and forward-moving context and Van Dormael's "Hip Hop Etude no. 11" which had a great, funky bass line inevitably de-intensified by the above-mentioned keyboards. Things started getting crazy when Van Dormael took the mic down the first row, making people shout "Woo!" into it. Then Rassinfosse got a hold of it and started scatting. When that ran out of steam, he turned to free-associated and free-morphing words rather winningly (anyone who's seen him on stage knows he's a great entertainer). Then Van Dormael played a famous disco-funk bassline I can remember but can't place and sang a bit of "I Shot the Sheriff," all for no apparent reason, but it was fun.
Second and final day of the festival tonight.
I mentioned him in the second day of my Euritmix round-up, accordeonist Tuur Florizoone has now popped up in the comments box to the same post, providing links:
Tricycle, the band I saw, releasing their debut in december;
Quentin Dujardin, guitarist whose last album is very good, representing the North African trip whose influence is felt in atmospheric, wide open spaces and a fabulous Arabic violinist (he is to the muezzin what the bluesman is to the preacher);
aNoo4tet, which I know nothing about.
My future-ex-next-next door neighbour provides me with occasional brushes with live classical music. Last night he gave a small public performance that was essentially a rehearsal for his rapidly upcoming final exam.
I missed the first piece entirely and part of the second due to someone's car blocking my driveway (an all-too-frequent occurrence, maddeningly). What I did hear, though, was most of Shostakovich's "1st Violin Concerto" (at least, I think it was the 1st). I didn't know it at all (unsurprisingly...).
When I arrived, during what I suppose was the first movement, the music was very emotional, but in a very harsh, grey and sharp-edged (not quite dissonant, but almost, a great knife-edge to balance upon) way and the mood never let up. Afterwards, one person commented on that, that the violin seemed to meander endlessly, and I guess one could feel that way, but I enjoyed that feeling of never coming up for air, just the relentlessness of it.
That all sounds rather grave, and maybe S. thought so too, as the next movement (BTW, I hate the "no clapping between movements" thing, it's so unnatural. That release is needed, much more so than unhappy and unfulfilling coughing and in-seat-shifting) was deliriously demented: sinister fairground music, piano accompaniment that suddenly became lighter and more consonant, sounding like Mozart or something. The delirium was palpable: the movement started with dance-related piano phrases countered by irregular staccato violin chord blasts sounding like a funk rhythm guitarist who'd lost track of the One.
The following movement was a necessary release (especially given the no clapping rules & regulations): grand, straight-forward (almost poppish, really) piano harmonies let us weep at the (presumably) futile outpourings that preceded it. It put the first movement in a different light: both emotional, but one driven, implosive and tense, the other relaxed, open and simple.
The feeling that there's a fourth movement that I'm totally forgetting is nagging at me. Maybe the experts can fill me in (and blow holes into my description).
Description of the Tremplin Jazz 2004 (in french). The author is rather lukewarm on most of the six participants (including the winners, the Pascal Schumacher Quartet), but is is taken by Listen, a Norwegian sax/piano/tuba trio and even moreso by TTPKC & le Marin, a three saxes (+effects) and drums band.
Pierre Godard's parting shot is an odd one: Out of the six ensembles supposed to represent modern jazz, none truly improvised, a sign of the rather curious evolution of a genre which used to represent the paroxysm of musical freedom? I can't speak for the five other groups, but it's difficult to understand how the PSQ is "not improvising."
Ellery Eskelin has released a homemade DVD of a 2003 European tour. Read about it here (scroll down a bit), read Ellery's rejoinder there (again, some scrolling is necessary), and read another review and discussion yonder.
I haven't seen the DVD myself (I wonder if it would work on my zone 2 player?), but I can only recommend Ellery's trio CDs (Eskelin/Parker/Black) on Hat Hut (with Kulak 29+30 or Arcanum Moderne, the latest, as the places to start) or as a sideman on Dennis Gonzalez's equally fantastic NY Midnight Suite on Clean Feed.
The mind boggles at Stephen Holden's descriptions of of a Diana Krall concert:
recently Ms. Krall, the Canadian singer and pianist, made the kind of break with the past that few performers of her stature would dare... "The Girl in the Other Room"... [w]ith its tough, stripped-down pop- jazz arrangements and unfamiliar material, the album invited her loyal audience to rough it in the wilderness
If TGITOR is roughing it in the wilderness, then most music is like being dropped on Mars by a faulty probe without a space suit.
it has infuriated longtime supporters, and many have registered their displeasure in consumer reviews on Amazon.com.
At Radio City Music Hall, where she concluded a 34-city tour, Ms. Krall was not backing down. Although there were a fair number of walkouts, the capacity audience generally expressed a cautious approval
Apparently, Ms. Krall's fans are scared of the wilderness of a lawn that has gone unmown for two weeks.
Ms. Krall is obviously reaching for something very high. If it is still not quite within her grasp, you can only applaud the courage it takes to make such a dangerous and unnecessary leap into unknown territory.
It is hard to believe that Mr. Holden believes this. Over-compensation? Self-delusion? Never walked barefoot on grass? Surely even Krall fanatics can see through this crap?
I guess I just have really consensual tastes, since two of my very favourite "young, discovered in 2003" bands have just won important awards.
On August 5th, the Pascal Schumacher Quartet did swept up both the Jury and Audience prizes at the prestigious Tremplin Jazz du Festival d'Avignon.
The latter prize netted them the opening slot for the following day's concert, the former is rewarded with two days at the top-notch La Buissonne studios and the opening slot for the headlining concert at next year's festival.
It's all the more remarkable for two reasons. First, they were playing with a substitute bassist. The regular bassist, Christophe Devisscher just *had* to go and fall in love at first sight on the group's highly successful recent Australian tour, and he just *had* to rush back there to get married. She's a singer, apparently, and will be singing with the PSQ later this year. Keep thoughts of Yoko Ono out of your minds. Second, it was drummer Teun Verbruggen's second win at the competition, since in 2001 he won with Alexi Tuomarila's quartet. Belgian bands led by non-Belgians seem to be doing well.
Sebastian Rocheford, leader of the great British (I was going to type "English," but Seb is Scottish...) band Polar Bear, has won the BBC Jazz Awards Rising Star and PB came in second for Best Band.
Change of the Moon and Dim Lit are both great records, but make sure to see these bands live if you get the chance. Expect features on both bands to pop up somewhere or other in coming weeks.
The city centre has become a life-size radio. If you don't like what you're hearing, turn the dial (ie. walk) and hear something else. It's sunny, if not exactly blazing hot.
The Euritmix posters keep on advertising "80 concerts" and "20 venues" but only 9 venues and much-less-than-80 concerts are listed in the programme brochure. Who knows, I might be missing all the good stuff... ?
Four On Six @ Sint Goriksplein
Live neo-soul/downtempo/"electro"-jazz. Pleasant, but amazingly loud for the small corner of the square the stage is stuck in.
Whispered Notes @ Vismarkt; Hermosa @ Sint Katelijneplein (cf. photo)
The former played lite fusion, the latter a nice Latin tune, then a cloying poppish one. Both victims of dial scrolling.
Noah Howard's Migration Orchestra @ Sint Goriksplein
The main reason I came. I read an interview many months ago, seemed interesting: started out in free jazz, born in New Orleans but has been living in Belgium for a while.
Bizarrely, the band started without him, playing two straight 12-bar blues (an Elmore James tune and "Hoochie Coochie Man"). The singer took faux-growling way over the top. The two guitarists contrasted nicely, the older one playing in a dissonant rural Delta blues kind of way, the younger one spinning out more rockish distorted single note. The Fender Rhodes added an unexpected touch to this hidebound context.
Howard came out with his black alto (I don't generally like them, but his was kind of cool) and the band shifted gears into a sort of airer version of Bitches Brew-era fusion. Things were looking up.
Alas, they then downshifted back down into bluesy funk, with the same guitar and harmonica solos being wheeled out again and again. Howard also sang. I left after a few songs of this. I'll go see him next time his quartet with Bobby Few is in town.
Tricycle @ Vismarkt
By this point I was feeling a bit down and almost ready to go back home and had never heard of Tricycle before. So I was maybe a bit tired and a bit open and a bit ready to be convinced. Accordion, double bass and sax will do that to you.
Drawing from a range of popular musics (East European, gypsy, Brasilian, Irish, Carribbean (a closing biguine that resonated strongly with the part of my mind still lingering in Martinique)), the trio led by the accordion guy with a name that just begs to be metioned: Tuur Florizone. Rhythmic, dynamic, happy, unserious, I felt like I was watching street musicians seeking to entertain passer-bys, in a good way. Troubadours, perhaps. Not everything was hugely succesful (the Irish song, notably and the soprano player's turn on flute), but you can't begrudge them the constant unspooling of danceable melodies and melodic improvisations. And thank bassist Vincent Noiret for holding it together in great style.
M. Dorcea @ Sint Katelijneplein
A Haitian band with two percussionists, one of whom was Mexican and also played some very good violon and, although I missed it, flute. Impressive.
Also impressive was the female singer's honey-coated voice, and the light, dancing groove created by acoustic guitar and acoustic bass guitar, along with the above-mentioned percussionists. On the way back home, I heard a live performance by The Kills. It has its own rewards, I guess, but in my ears they're doing a lot less with a lot more noise. And while I'm at it: face it Franz, you can't sing "Matinee" without Pro Tools. It's still a cool song, but why kill it live like that?
Then I switched the radio off.
Louis Sclavis - Napoli's Walls
Good CD, I tried to have a little fun with the review. Also, I believe it's the first transparent pre-recorded music CD I've come across (hence the solar eclipse-like photo).
Freedom Art Quartet - Spirits Awake
Steve Hass - Traveler
It doesn't feel like you're making the proper effort when you can just walk from square to square, nonchalantly check out the band, hang out and chat at the back and walk away whenever. Because it's free. "What happened to Day 1?" you ask. I missed Day 1. I gave Christina Branco a miss too. Saw her a few years ago, doesn't do much for me.
Moonpie @ Place de la Monnaie
Downtempo slightly mopey electro-tinged rock, fronted by incomprehensible but suitably ethereal girl singer. Predominantly almost half-time beats, lots of ride cymbal naturally, a keyboardist for atmosphere, as if the drizzle didn't provide enough.
So there I am, in my suit (because I've come straight from work) and v-collar (because it's friday), a bag full of CDs (I stopped by the FNAC and the library) and an empty biscuit tin (might come in handy).
The first song was a bit Massive Attack-ish, then things got a bit more rockish and noisy as pre-recorded voices told us how order could come from chaos and, later, how they'd like to hear some good old rock'n'roll. There was a bit of "experimentation" when the bassist picked up a dijeridoo he had lying around, the pianist started hitting a low tom-tom, the girl twirled madly and the guitarist smacked a wood-block, reminiscent of Will Ferrell exploring the space with a cowbell (but thinner).
Still, I asked myself the same question I do when listening to, say, Explosions in the Sky: "What's the obsession with the continuous eighth-note? Why are you so static, rhythmically?" The volume drowned out my questions and I was far away, to protect my ears.
D. Pierard/B. Clément @ Place du marché aux poissons
Acoustic guitar duo, much quieter, obviously, but much more fun rhythmically, obviously. Gypsy jazz-inspired, but breaking out of that mold for some really nice remodellings of "Georgia" (bizarrely described as "an old jazz tune") and "Solar." The two took turns accompanying and soloing, another departure from the norm. They did dip into the QHCF bag from time to time, though.
Still, I asked myself the same question I do when listening to this stuff: "This is all well and good and community-based, but when is someone going to break out of it? Mix it up a bit with something else? Get excommunicated?"
Aldo Granato @ Place Sainte-Catherine
Accordion player with bassist, drummer and female singer (whose trousers, shall we say, put her behind in a somewhat unflattering light), sounded a bit like the Gotan Project: tango-type melodies supported by modern and d'n'b dance beats.
Admiral Freebee @ Grand-Place
Old-school 60s-70s rock. Very loud. Massive stage for only four people. The Admiral goes through the grand-standing postures, playing with his teeth, singing about everybody in Antwerp City either licking ass tonight or getting their ass licked. I'm not really into loud music. By this point, not only am I in suit, v-collar, bag, etc., but also with my girlfriend's parents' dog. People are kinder to animals than to strangers, so we became quite popular, me and the two blondes (the other being my girlfriend).
Nathalie Loriers/ Yadh Elyes @ Place Sainte-Catherine
After a nice 7 euro pit-stop at a Greek place, I decide to give Loriers another chance to win me over (after barely imprinting my memory with her last album, a concert with that same group, a duo with a singer and a mercifully short duo with bassist Philippe Aerts that bored me to tears). That, and I've never seen an oud being played live. I do like the Rabih Abou-Khalil albums I have very much, though. It's a cool instrument with a sandy attack, it's about imprecision and an eastern twang.
The oud player's songs are great: clear melodies, fairly strong rhythms, they're catchy or moving, depending on what's necessary. I react to Loriers the same way I always do: a fine player, but a feeling of sameness or, perhaps more precisely, a lack of necessity or of anything sticking when it's all over. In a bizarre conversation many months (years?) ago, a man whose name I don't know described her playing as lacking ass. Maybe that's it.
Speaking of Skinner and Dizzee:
British m.c.s generally sounded like variants of their American counterparts. Having an adorable accent didn’t disguise the fact that you’d borrowed your style from Rakim, or Run-DMC, or Nas. The debt is finally being erased.
I don't know the English hip-hop scene much at all, but what about Roots Manuva? I don't find his accent, flow, narratives and beats any more derivative of US hip-hop than those of Dizzee and Skinner. Or does the general consensus say otherwise?
Summer festival posters: a quick and efficient barometer of who's hot, who's getting paid, who people want to see, who people want to book. They also provide interesting information: Arrested Development are still in existence! and get third billing! Who knew?
And I checked: the enthusiastically large-breasted woman is not part of the poster.
These 9 albums and boxsets contain 17 CDs. Thanks to our friends at Brilliant Classics and 80% off summer sales, the lot cost me the whopping sum of 4 euros. A lot of this stuff is like "Oh, so that's Beethoven's 5th symphony." Winterreise (or Winterreis as it's known here) is unfortunately a Dutch translation. Still, it's kinda pop, in a nice way. Now I just need to find volumes 1 and 4 of their Scarlatti sonatas series...
...is just about the only thing I understood of Björk's song last night at the Olympic Games opening ceremony, but it's a great one. At first it sounds like a retro-translation of a disastruous overseas version of an ad campaign's slogan. Then, I thought that it might be about licking the sweat off an Olympian's bulging post-effort muscles, while offering carnal delights of one's own. In any case, wild speculation is needed to counteract the bloodless wonderfulness of everything else about the ceremony.
My excuse for sitting through the thing (along with 4 billion other chumps. And why didn't she sing at the end of the "artistic" part of the ceremony? Surely, that would have made more sense) is that I wanted to see what the Icelander would do (even though I'm not a fan at all). I was wondering if they would have made her do something like Nelly Furtado's song for Euro 2004, but no, they let her be herself. Now I think it would have been cooler if they had thrust an unfailingly cheesy "international competition anthem" into her unwilling hands. And made Furtado sing "Oceania."
About the parade of delegations: did Belgium really need to reinforce its reputation as a bland place? Could they find no other colours to wear apart from dark khaki and grey? More generally, on the politics of cheering for delegations: the small ones, of course; the ones with cool, brightly coloured clothes; the war-torn countries got crowd support if the US was involved (cf. Sudan); Barbados because we've painted the doors to our kitchen cupboards a shade of "Barbados skies"; various countries because I've lived there (apart from the US, because they don't need my cheers).
#4 Music
Martiniquan music follows the same general processes of other music of the African diaspora, with perhaps the main difference being the French influence. The basic rhythm is an interpretation of the 3 in a 3-2 clave (I don't know if there's a proper name for it) that's found in calypso and central African music, for example. It's also prominent on David Murray's second Creole Project album Yonn Dé (which is excellent, by the way. I haven't heard the first. I've heard a bit of the new one, Gwotet which sounds good, but is much more funk-oriented. Yonn dé captured the atmosphere of a film like La Rue Case Nègres extremely well, I thought (let's ignore the fact that the film was made in Martinique), with Guy Konket as griot. On Gwotet Konket is much less present, with the guitar taking a major role).
So the oldest sources of modern Martiniquan music are the rural bèlè (very African, drum- and call-and-response-based) in which, despite the percussive density, the basic 3-accent beat is audible and various forms of French "light music", such as biguines, quadrilles and mazurkas (a creole mazurka is pretty far removed from a Chopin mazurka!). Influences have continued to aggregate: jazz and dancehall (more so than rap). One particularly incredible amalgam of all (or most) of this is to be found in the group Malavoi. There, a rhythm section laid down the syncopated beat, the excellent Paolo Rosine brought in jazz and classical influences on piano and the mid-sized string section completed this with the French tradition evoked above. The Martiniquan violin sound is less histrionic (vibrato-laden and statospheric) than the classical violin, but also less wild than American or Irish fiddling traditions (I don't think there's much, if any, double string playing, for example). It's a nice middle point. Singers such as Ralph Thamar came in on some tunes. If you can get a double disc best of, I highly highly highly recommend it. The son of Malavoi's founder recently created his own group, Mahogany, which extends the defunct Malavoi's concept, by adding a horn section, broadening the influences to Cuban music and beefing up the arrangements. The self-titled debut is a bit uneven and perhaps less catchy than Malavoi, but still good.
Stepping outside of the Martiniquan realm, we went to see France's latest r'n'b sensation, Corneille (in brief: Rwandan, parents killed during genocide as he hid behind sofa, flees to Canada, sings about his life, becomes superstar). I think that it was the first time that my whole family (all four of us) had been to a concert together and probably the first "screaming girl fan" concert I'd ever been to. I'd seen Corneille on TV singing a Sam Cooke song extremely well, so even though I didn't know any of his songs, I was somewhat interested. He began with "Redemption Song" and ended with two Marvin Gaye songs. The rest of the time he played his own songs, providing an interesting quick overview of 30 years of evolution of soul singing, in a nutshell from warm and tuneful to colder and a bit tuneless. Still, he played a new song (or so he said) that turned out to be my favourite, with an afro-funk feel.
Returning to the Martiniquan realm, a highly recommended CD is that of Mario Canonge, Rhizome. The pianist invites a somewhat lacklustre Roy Hargrove on a great caribbo-boogaloo track, but otherwise mainly takes the lead, with heavy percussive backup. Great pianist.
OK, now this damn suite is done. Finally.
#3 Food
Is 25 too old to go on holiday with your family? While I'm asking questions, here's an unrelated one: is it just the trip to Mexico or is On The Road truly better appreciated away from home? I ask the first question as a tangent to the phrase I initially wanted to begin this post with.
One of the main reasons to look forward to going to Martinique is the food. I'm not a seafood fan, so there will be no discussion of crabs, lobsters, sea urchins or the like.
Let's start with the basics. Red beans, possibly with rice, preferably with manioc flour. Because the flour is in some senses tastier than the rice, but also because obtaining exactly the right beans-to-sauce-to-flour ratio adds a bit of artistry to the dish. This can be accompanied by yams and dachines. The two are almost always together, I think for aesthetic (the former are grey and generally cut into rough pentagons or hexagons, the latter yellow and more small potato-shaped) and textural (yams are crumbly, dachines a bit buttery) reasons. And why not throw some breadfruit in there too. Cod (but I prefer the French word morue) or meat completes the dish.
Boudin. Blood, guts and the pepper. It's only when I arrived in Europe that I discovered that people considered black sausage a bit disgusting. Perhaps, but maybe their's isn't as good as ours? Squeeze out the boiled blood with a fork, scoop it onto a piece of bread or mix it with something else on your plate (rare, as it's mostly eaten as an entré), swallow. Another top entré: marinades, also known as accras, small balls of batter mixed with cod and fired to be slightly crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside.
There are lots of great dishes, quiches and other delicacies, but let's skip to dessert and pastries. Chocolat et pain au beurre. Chocolate and butter-bread. Might not sound like much, but those 5 words have almost magical powers. Both homemade, the chocolate reminds you that Nesquik is an ersatz. Thick and dark, with a thin skin of milk forming on top after a while. My mother's has a heavy dose of peanut butter, others' vary. The bread is traditionally braided into a large empty square, with intricate "flowers" at each corner. Most people simply dip the bread into the chocolate, I put mine in and push all the air out with a spoon, for maximum soakage.
Banana jam is the best jam in the world. It's a counter-intuitive red. Goyava jam isn't bad either, pink and drier. Both can be found in the corresponding pâtés. There are many others, coconut-based for example, but alongside chocolate, my favourite desert is flan coco. When my mother made this, there were always two: a smooth one in the deep round mold with a hole in the middle and a grainy one in the shallow, no-hole mold. When we moved to France and I first saw flan listed as desert at the shcool cafeteria, I got excited. I all-too-quickly discovered that the French had a different - and passably disgusting - conception of flan: flan au caramel. I couldn't eat more than a spoonful or two of the stuff. I've come to accept the idea, but there's still only one real flan.
#2 Nature
Martinique is a hilly island with 400,000 inhabitants. There's a highway featuring round-the-clock traffic jams, but you have abandoned cars being reclaimed by vegetation to look at to pass the time. There are no trains but there are old buses and unreliable boats mascarading as public transportation.
The hills are called mornes. The newer roads are straighter, imposing their will on the environment. The older roads snake up and down. When building a house, the disadvantage is that you're most likely to be on a slopey plot. The advantage is that a well-situated slopey plot gives you an awesome, kilometers-long view. Higher than the hills is the Montagne Pelée, a volcano that last erupted in 1902, razing the city of Saint-Pierre and famously leaving a prisoner under thick fortifications as lone survivor.
There's the Atlantic side and the Carribbean side. The former is wilder, with black sand beaches, colder water and dangerous currents. The latter is more swimmer- and lounger-friendly. The Carribbean side decisively shaped my opinion of what a sea was: small, curved beaches with white-ish sand, blue water and brown seaweed. Hence my enduring repulsion at the idea of bathing at Brighton Beach. Some beaches have little bits of mangrove. These used to be considered foul mosquito breeding grounds. Later, too much later, their ecological importance was recognised.
One of the first animals I met was a red and black crab, affectionately known as a loulou. He tried to run (or side-scramble) away through the grass, but when I got close to him he stopped and confronted me. He spread his claws wide and seemed to be saying You want some of this, ese?, just like a Latino gangster from Los Angeles. I don't know where a Martiniquan crab would have picked that up from. There are also fireflies, known more elegantly in french as lucioles and awesome red dragonflies, which are called an overly cutesy libellule.
As my father and I walked down Fort-de-France's sea front, schools of small fish suddenly appeared out of the water like a bad rash, looking and sounding like they'd been dropped on a hot skillet.
In the late afternoon, the symphony of frogs and crickets starts up. It's not something that starts or ends: at some point you realise that it has started, but can't know how long it has been going on; it stops during your sleep. The frogs provide a continuous, undulating and mellifluous texture, which the crickets overlay with their shrill high-pitched drones. If I knew anything about Minimalism, I'd probably draw a comparaison. Feel free to do so now, if you have such knowledge.
Among other things, there are plants whose leaves close when you touch them and at night when they go to sleep.
