COOK RECORDS

In the 1950s, steel pan and calypso, imported from Trinidad and Tobago, were hot in Bermuda. Lloyd Simmons and Hubert Smith, Jr.. sing calypso with the acclaimed Esso Steel Band in this early...

One of the most recorded organists in history, Reginald Foort performs sentimental favorites from the 1950s on the legendary Wurlitzer at the Mosque Theatre in Richmond, Virginia. "Mood Indigo,"...

This recording juxtaposes two contrasting classical musical styles: Bruce Prince-Joseph performs Vivaldi, Bach and Mozart on a two-manual pedal harpsichord and the Hufstader Singers perform largely...

The visionary, designer, architect, poet, author and inventor who brought the term "synergy" into the realm of popular speech, Buckminster Fuller shares many of his original ideas in this series of...

Written by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt in 1838 and revised in 1851, these ?tudes are piano transcriptions of six of Niccolo Paganini's caprices for violin. Paganini was an Italian violinist known...

The Grand Curucaye String Orchestra performs lively old-time Spanish dance music, now a nearly forgotten genre. What is notable about this music is that string instruments are plucked rather than...

This field recording begins to document the tradition of spoken and sung storytelling in Grenada, a small island in the Caribbean. Full of humor, stories are told in English or English patois by a...

Rhythmically driven and French-Caribbean flavored, this diverse set of recordings from the island of Martinique features large carnival bands and call-and-response choirs accompanied by drumming and...

Why "Hellish"? the liner notes explain that it's in part because of the very apparent "pear-shaped atrocities" a listener hears in out-of-tune melodies and unintelligible lyrics. But this is a "basic...

In San Juan, Puerto Rico, the excitable rhythms of calypso, cha cha cha and merengue played by The Invaders Steel Band of St. Croix fill the air. This recording was made in the streets of San Juan,...

Did you know that the ionosphere makes noise? Or that that noise is actually possible to record? This recording shows that the ionosphere, part of the upper atmosphere that is ionized by solar...

This Conga is all alcohol, percussion and one Chinese Trumpet. So says Ariel Fiallo Arias, a citizen of Santiago, in describing a music almost singularly identified with his homeland. With melodic...