🎹🥁🪘🇬🇵👨👦 « After several years of perseverance and sacrifice, young people present their work. We don’t know them. We’ve never seen or heard of them in the media. They’re not stars, but they exist. They’re from Baie-Mahault, the town where Gwo-Ka Modèn was founded in 1969. They are Gwo-Ka musicians. It’s the music they know how to play, it’s the music they’ve learned, it’s the music of their country, Guadeloupe. » With these words in 2007, Gérard Lockel begins the first notes of an album he’s particularly proud to see come to life, that of his son Franck‘s trio, a new manifesto of Gwo-Ka Modèn. Franck, on piano, is accompanied by Jean-Marie Lockel on drums, and on ka drum, by one of his long-time loyalists, Jérôme Gatibelza. The latter had been a member of Gérard Lockel’s GKM, and had developed a large part of his playing on the Gwadlouka, halfway between the drum and the drum kit (similar to Kafé’s batrika). On the album, Gwo-Ka rhythms follow one another, giving the trio the opportunity to put their father’s theory into practice, in a free fusion of jazz and Afro-Caribbean roots.
Gwo-Ka Modèn – Franck Lockel Trio, 2007
