Consumer Guide Album

Hurricane Zouk [Earthworks/Virgin, 1988]
Slickly high-tech like no other African or Caribbean style, Antillean zouk is Afro-Caribbean plus vive-la-France. On these prize cuts the singers--most strikingly Francky Vincent, a/k/a Dr. Porn--are jokey, sly, lascivious. There's something comic and triumphant about the eclecticism of old Kassav hand G. H. Guamaguy, who favors horn and fiddle frills, and new champion Servais Liso, who goes for glitzier electronic effects. Name me another 20th-century pop that's thrived so exuberantly under the depredations of Gallic wit. Original grade: A. A-