KiT, Tambutronic

Curacao, the Caribbean island off the Venezuelan coast, is home for the group KiT (Kuenta i Tambu), a group that does a remarkable kind of dance music called jiga. They give us a very, a very intensely concentrated set of such sounds on their US debut Tambutronic (Jiga Musica).

Now this is not the sort of music I would ordinarily cover. It has some relation to hard-core house and hip-hop, but then there's a very Afro-Carib flavor to it that puts it way over the top for me. The female lead singer half-sings and half-raps much of the time, but in a way much more Carib-Afro than hip-hop.

The tracks feature very hip electronic beats with a mix of sampled and live instruments. It grooves irresistibly to the extent that it totally won me over. This is music that overwhelms. Either you surrender wholly to it or you really have to leave the room. That's how it hits you.

There are aspects of it that remind me of zouk, but much harder-edged, and much more Afro-based. For you guitar fans, sorry to say there aren't any here. It's music you should check out though. It is music of a very sensual sort--the lyrics suggest things once you understand them and some of those things are naughty. Lyrics are secondary though. It's the sound of the vocals and the rhythmic r-bomb of the whole thing that utterly kills.

Whew!