Danses des Antilles – Barel Coppet et ses Antillais, 1956

🇲🇶 🎷 🎺 🎶 💃 In 1956, the young conductor and clarinetist Barel Coppet, along with his brother Honoré, embraced merengue, a genre brought from Saint Domingue to Paris the previous year by Gérard La Viny. At just thirty-six, the Martinican musician was already renowned, performing regularly at venues such as La Canne à Sucre, La Rose Rouge, and La Cigale, and serving as the resident conductor at Bal Blomet. That year, he produced his first (and nearly only) album, a 10-inch record titled Danses des Antilles, which opens with one of his major hits, Moin Ni On Loto Nef (here, the 1961 reissue). Except for two biguines, the album is entirely composed of merengue, the popular genre of the moment. Coppet is accompanied by his Antillais, who remain anonymous here, though it is known that his brother Honoré and the trombonist and conductor Pierre Rassin were among them. That same year, Coppet also recorded a more jazz-oriented repertoire with Rassin, featuring several pieces by Sydney Bechet.