Cosmik Sindika – Fabriano Fuzion, 1982 (2019)

🇬🇵 🎸 🥁 🌴 🔥 In Paris, where he grew up, Serge Fabriano moved in West Indian circles, particularly those of the Guadeloupean diaspora, his native island’s community. He learned the double bass and considered becoming a music teacher. He played whenever the chance arose, with anyone, and had his first musical adventures, as far afield as Tehran! In the early 1980s he could be heard with Patrick Jean-Marie’s group Atika, just before forming his own band, Fabriano Fuzion. The album Cosmik Sindika came out in 1982. It brings the French West Indies together in a fusion of jazz and gwoka, widened to take in Martinique. The line-up is shared between the islands: Mario Canonge on piano, Alain Jean-Marie on synthesisers. The same goes for the tambouyés (drummers), who come from Karukera (Roger Raspail, Hector Ficadière) as much as from Madinina (Sully Cally). Ti-bwa is thus added to the rhythms of gwoka. Add the saxophones of the Labor brothers, Claude Vamur on drums, and an appearance by Emmanuel Bex, and above all, shake well. Fabriano leads it all with flair, bass to the fore, on an album that has become one of the historic landmarks of this Caribbean fusion, rooted between jazz and tradition, and still furiously modern.