Track Listing

1. Lisanga - Lokua, Toto Bona
2. Sarasa - Susheela Raman
3. Sabia - Marcantonio
4. Rasanbl� - Beethova Obas
5. Aqu� No Ser� - Ozomatli
6. Paleto - Think of One
7. Kakou - Dobet Gnahore
8. Yay Balma - Taffetas
9. Tilhore Mai Te Rangi - Teresa Bright
10. Baba - Andy Palacio, Adrian Martinez
11. Valent�n - Susana Baca
12. Chocolate Sabroso - Chocolate Armenteros

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43881 in Music
• Released on: 2004-11-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .24 pounds

Album Description
Music from the Chocolate Lands offers a rich selection of songs from the world’s chocolate producing countries. Chocolate has been enjoyed for thousands of years. Used for medicinal and religious purposes, as well as for pleasure, traces of this "food of the gods" have been found in early Mayan pots dating back to 600 B.C.E. Europeans added sugar to the exotic concoction, and the chocolate craze gradually spread throughout the world. Now the cacao plant, which provides the raw cocoa beans for chocolate, is farmed in tropical locations around the globe, often far away from its Central and South American origins.

Music from the Chocolate Lands features a selection of songs as distinctive as chocolate’s history. This release includes music from the tropical countries that grow cocoa beans as well as collaborations with musicians from the European regions where chocolate-makers produce some of the world’s most appetizing chocolate products. Africa, the world’s leading producer of cocoa beans, is represented by Dobet Gnahoré from the Ivory Coast and Toto Bona Lokua, a trio featuring artists from Congo, Cameroon and the French Caribbean island of Martinique. Also from the Caribbean are Haiti’s Beethova Obas, with "Rasanblé," and the masterful Cuban trumpet player Chocolate Armenteros, whose song "Chocolate Sabroso" (Tasty Chocolate) is a perfect fit. Adrian Martínez and Andy Palacio, from the Central American country of Belize, provide a previously unreleased track. The collection also features songs by Ozomatli (USA/Mexico), Susana Baca (Peru), Marcantonio (Brazil), Susheela Raman (India) and Teresa Bright (Hawaii). The Belgian group Think of One teams up with Brazilian musicians to create a track that unites two important chocolate producing countries. Taffetas provides another truly unique collaboration, bringing together musicians from the West African country of Guinea Bissau and Switzerland, the land where milk chocolate was invented.

Amazon.com
Whether savored as a drink or devoured in solid form, chocolate is an abiding passion with many people, lifting their moods even as it expands their waistlines. The chances are that this album was born of a can't-miss marketing conceit but the musical choices make for a very tasty if surprisingly low-key listen. The tunes are uniformly acoustic and mellow, with just enough of a percussive swing to keep things from getting too static. Teresa Bright's harmonies sometimes recall a Hawaiian-style Andrews Sisters impression and Marcantonio's North-Eastern-flavored Brazilian track is fluid and lovely. But when Beethova Obas warns his embattled Haitian countrymen about the dangers of selfishness, it's obvious that he isn't talking about anything so trivial as sharing a candy bar. In fact, given the nationalities involved, the material is generally less topical than might be expected. However, the music often reflects the replete euphoria of cocoa-fuelled sugar shock. --Christina Roden

Customer Reviews

Light and breezy
Music from chocolate-producing countries like the Congo, India, Brazil, Haiti, Mexico, Ivory Coast, Hawaii, Belize, Peru and Cuba. This album as a whole is light, happy, soft and warm, with lilting rhythms and attractive vocals from artists completely unknown to me, nope not a single one. But hey, they're great so don't let not knowing the bands put you off! Each track is a beautifully-produced gem in its own right. The album opens with a bouncy number from Toto Bona Lokua, three guys from the Congo, Cameroon and Martinique with a catchy French Caribbean sound, great voices and their very own made-up language! Then a languid ballad from Indian Susheela Raman, a breezy folksy song from Brazilian Marcantonio, a jazzy hip-swayer from Haitian Beetova Obas, a club dance number aptly titled "Chocolate Sabroso" from Cuba's Chocolate Armenteros, and so the fun continues.

Great if you like and appreciate different world music
This album, along with music CDs from the same company such as the coffee lands (Vols. I and II), and tea lands, are great to play outdoors on those lazy summer evenings when you are have a barbecue (particularly some BBQ dish from an exotic country) having cold drinks with a group of friends, and being under the soft backyard party lights.. . It is excellent background music.
I played it last summer while doing a BBQ from a South Pacific cookbook, and everyone was asking about both the dish and the music. Everyone loved them.

Can't "just say no"
Putumayo is almost a menace, creating compilations that are easy for Americans to indulge in because the selections are always as light an airy as a cream puff. But my interest is in sounds that are different from what I know, and with Putumayo's cds, I never feel like I'm truly learning what music from a particular region has to offer. Still, I find it hard to pass up their compilations, because, all in all, they are pretty nice. There's usually at least one song that makes the watered-downness of the whole venture worthwhile, and this one is no exception. PopMatters put it this way: "For the last 10 years, Putumayo has been marketing world music as easy listening. Bright, flat, cartoony album covers and cutesy compilation concepts ... provide a hint at the sheer softness of a typical Putumayo world music CD. There's percussion in Putumayo's world, of course, but true rhythmic intensity is rare and dissonance completely extinct. Imagine an Africa that never heard of the electric guitar and you're probably not far off the mark. Music From the Chocolate Lands, then, is a typical Putumayo world music CD. World music as easy listening: it's just a terrible idea in the first place, right? Well, right -- but beauty counts for a lot in easy listening, and Chocolate Lands is gorgeous." And to the reviewer's point below--yes, what happened to Ecuador?