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Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil Up
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Various Artists
Aldous Huxley�s grousing about colonial British Honduras being on the way to nowhere else expressed a common ignorance about Belize, the most fascinating cultural mosaic of Central America�s Caribbean coast. The musical history of this tiny nation (population 250,000) remains mostly unwritten, so it�s a particular pleasure to discover a delightful compilation of tracks recorded by the locally legendary but otherwise little-known bands that created the Belizean sound of the 1960s and 1970s. This collection represents the intersecting passions of an inveterate U.S. vinyl collector and R&B fan, and producer Compton Fairweather, owner of Belize City�s Contemporary Electronic Systems, which imports and sells commercial and residential security products in a town where, as the proprietor wryly observes, "Crime pays."
Like entrepreneurial counterparts across the Caribbean, Fairweather�s success enabled him to patronize the arts, music in particular, recording a variety of bands and underwriting tours to entertain expatriate Belizean communities in the urban United States. Founder of the CES label, named after his firm, Fairweather is almost single-handedly responsible for having documented the nation�s music development in the era preceding Belizean independence from Great Britain in 1981.
Sevier tells it this way: "I heard the Soul Creations 45 �Funky Jive� and decided to go to Belize to look for old records by them. We got into the airport and just started asking people where to find music. I even talked with the customs agent. Knowing that music had been recorded in the 1970s in Belize, I was going to look in used bookstores and antiques stores. I didn�t understand that people might not value old items like this."
"I had the name Contemporary Electronic Systems, and had a hunch it might be related to a store that sold appliances. I looked in the phone book and found the name. My girlfriend and I went straight there. We still had our luggage with us, and walked for 15 minutes, asking directions from people. When I saw the place, it looked like a new building, but the business had kept the same name throughout the years. We walked in and met the owner, Compton Fairweather. He was impressed that we�d gone straight there without even checking into a hotel. He took us around Belize City, and over to Bird�s Isle, the club where the musicians played. He also introduced us to Lord Rhaburn." (Still active today, Gerald "Lord" Rhaburn is Belize City�s best-known bandleader of the era.)
"We spent a couple of days with Compton, and the story was compelling enough, although I still hadn�t heard any music yet. They didn�t have any old records in Belize, with the recurring hurricane damage, flooding and all. But the timing was good, because Compton was about to liquidate his family house in Flatbush, where the records had been stored. Compton salvaged some LPs there, along with the masters at his second house, on Long Island."
A member of the Belize Creole elite, Fairweather had gone to school with current Prime Minister Said Musa, along with "Lord" Rhaburn, at St. Michael�s College in Belize City. Like many Belizeans, Fairweather had family in the United States, and moved easily back and forth. He joined the U.S. Air Force in 1954, learned electronics, and saw the world. Then he went to work for Bell Laboratories, where he honed his skills. He returned to Belize periodically, eventually founding Contemporary Electronic Systems, along with the CES record label.
Fairweather toured the best bands to perform for expat Belizeans in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. While there, Fairweather booked studio time, usually in New York, used funds from the dances and concerts he organized, had LPs pressed, and sold them to Belizeans in the U.S. and back home. The first title heard comes from 1967�s Rhaburn Combo in New York, recorded live at the Manhattan Center. Other vintage Belizean groups documented herein include the Harmonettes, Jesus Acosta & the Professionals, the Soul Creations, the Web, and Nadia Cattouse. Collectively, these 16 tracks document the heavily R&B, rock, Latin and ska sounds that influenced Belizean popular music tastes in the 1960s and 1970s, a product of U.S., Mexican, Cuban and Jamaican recordings and radio broadcasts easily received across Caribbean waters.
The notes include color reproductions of album art from 12 of the sampled LPs, most strikingly, Lord Rhaburn�s Dogs of War. The original featured an aerial shot of British Harrier jets streaking over Belize City, the stand-in for a fictional West African country in the throes of a military coup, named after the 1981 Christopher Walken film made in Belize. There also are some wonderful documentary photos: a blazer-and-tie Rhaburn smiling at the drum set; a cheeky, bearded Rhaburn in full camo fatigues, brandishing an M-16 as an extra in Dogs of War; and rare shots of Acosta�s renowned Professionals and other bygone combos.
Fairweather has given some of his materials to the Belize Archives in Belmopan, the capital, and plans to donate more. Additionally, Stonetree Records founder Ivan Duran reports that his Belize-based label will work with Fairweather to reissue several legacy CES recordings, helping to document the history of Belizean popular music, a worthy project whose time has come. - Michael Stone
CD available from cdRoots
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