To be honest, my main motivation in buying this box set was I had a few unsightly gaps in my CD shelves which needed filling and I needed something cheap and chunky. As ever, I turned to the ever-reliable JSP records, who’s cheerful policy is to pile ‘em high and sell ‘em low. Usually, they manage this with old records that are out of copyright. In the case of San Seriffe, no-one has ever gone to the trouble of copyrighting their recordings, so this compilation covers everything from the primitive recordings of the 1920s to the latest B&B sounds of 2010.
But I do wonder if there really is much of a market for a 5 CD box set of music from an islands group that few have heard about or, let’s be honest, are actually confident about its location. Despite the jaunty title, this is actually a ‘comprehensive collection of everything ever recorded in these sea-locked islands’. And that includes some pretty miserable stuff, I can tell you. I wouldn’t have minded if it had been edited down to a single CD or, frankly, three or four tracks. Or possibly not issued at all.
The overwhelming mood throughout these five CDs is of a people who are ceaseless in their quest to find something to complain about. The great flood of 1862, the drought of 1957, the heavy drizzle in the winter of 1994, the plague of flies, the lack of flies and the subsequent threat of starvation – it’s all there in all its whinging glory. It’s not that the Seriffians don’t have serious things to complain about. Global warming and the threat to their dry things is an obvious case in point. Less obvious is the bizarre pattern of erosion which steadily shifts the sands from their eastern to western coasts and results in the islands’ slow but steady progress across the Indian Ocean (a grating version of Charles Brown’s ‘Drifting Blues’ takes on a new poignancy in this context). But do they have to keep going on about it over 5 discs?
In fairness, amongst the mono-misery music, there is some variety on offer here, with distinct differences in the language and traditions of the two main islands. There’s a funkiness and groove in the raucous and reticent music of Lower Caisse, sung in their shrill Verdana, that is noticeably missing from the more traditional plinky plonky stuff from Upper Caisse. There’s also a few hip-hop efforts from the 90s, sung in ‘Sanglish’ (a creole mix of English, Verdana and Fortran). There’s even a hint of San Seriffe’s colonial past, with the widespread use of baby tubas, popular in 16th Century Luxembourg and now an integral part of island heritage.
Far more interesting, though, is the discernable influences of San Seriffe’s steady drift across the Indian Ocean. Over the 86 years covered by these recordings, the islands can only have covered 100 miles or so, with little noticeable impact. But, where the modern songs bear a marked influence from styles such as Salegy and Tsapika from Madagascar, the older traditional pieces clearly contain the DNA of the Indian sub-continent, with marked traces of Qawwali and even Bollywood. Unfortunately, JSP in their infinite wisdom, have arranged the tracks in alphabetical, rather than chronological, order so it isn’t easy to follow this potentially mildly interesting cultural journey.
There are pleasures to be found in this collection, particularly at the end of each CD. But I can’t say that there’s anything that’s truly essential here (unless you have dinner guests that can’t take a hint). Perhaps the most slightly appealing offering here is a track by Sammy Seriffe (you couldn’t make it up!). As the would-be source for the Elvis song, and the subject of a hopeful legal action, his ‘Stuck on Glue’, from 1961, has its moments. But you’d be better getting that on the Nascente compilation Now That’s What I Call ‘Where?’ which I think is still readily available on eBay.
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