Album: Various artists

London is the Place for Me: Trinidadian Calypso in London, 1950-1956, Honest Jon's

Before Jamaican reggae became the lingua franca of the Caribbean diaspora in the Sixties, Trinidadian calypso provided the main voice for the early waves of West Indian immigrants to the UK in the Fifties. Lord Kitchener and Lord Beginner, two of the genre's stars, actually came over on the SS Empire Windrush, and so were able to document first-hand the perplexities and privations of their new home – the nosey landladies, the nightmare of London's underground system, etc. Ranging from Young Tiger's "I Was There (At The Coronation)" to Lord Kitchener's subtle assessment of colour prejudice in "If You're Not White You're Black", the calypsos collected on this entertaining compilation comprise a fascinating social documentary, treating matters such as the Coronation and the granting of independence to Ghana with mild irony and no little verbal dexterity. Most extraordinary of all, though, is "Mix Up Matrimony", a celebration of miscegenation that notes how "mixed marriages seem to have a stronger tie than the pure ones", advising us in its refrain to "Mix up the races and amalgamate". One can't help wondering how far we've slipped since then.