EVERY GENRE PROJECT - January 20 - Shatta
Genre of the Day - Shatta
Album of the Day - Débwida by Vlg Rocki (2021)
Sadness can be a great musical tool. There are also so many music genres without a trace of sadness. When you spend all day crying, usually it’s a little cathartic to find music that leans into that sadness, that allows it to steep and flow. Not to self-pity or anything, but I was quite upset all day today and it is quite unusually gloomy and rainy where I am. It’s honestly hard to bring myself out of a funk for a blog going on three weeks with literally zero readership and attempt to eke out an article, but hobbies are hobbies and I can’t let this stop.
On that note, today’s genre carries absolutely no trace of sadness, which I can’t tell was beneficial in the sense that it contrasted with all the emo shit I was listening to today or detrimental in the sense that I think it may have blunted my ability to absorb the music, the context was interesting enough, though, so I guess that’s a boon. Today's genre is called Shatta, our second genre hailing from arguably one of the world’s most musically rich regions thanks to its history of mixed diverse populations, the Caribbean. More specifically, shatta is essentially a dancehall adaptation with its own flairs from the tiny French Caribbean island of around 400,000, Martinique. The genre is generally characterized by crisper percussion, more intense basslines, and lyrics about partying, sex, and the hedonism of being young and Martinican, although word’s out: shatta songs have been played at Mugler shows and dabbled in by superstars like Aya Nakamura in the past couple of years. Despite this growing reach, just like the tiny island it calls home, the genre for some reason only has two releases listed on RateYourMusic. To me, this makes sense: it’s club music, intended for listening to out and about rather than streamed, so I’m guessing a lot of this music goes under the radar in terms of being posted to DSPs.
On that note, I chose the top one out of two, even though they’re actually by the same artist, Vlg Rocky. My lack of French knowledge, despite over a decade in French classes, is actually perhaps the biggest shame of listening to this album for me. French is literally just hard as fuck, speaking form experience. I also think that the fact that I did it academically for so long kind of took the passion out of it, but this spurred me to think that I should go back to learning it just for fun, now that I’ve fulfilled any academic language obligations. I recognized some words, but it’s also in French Caribbean dialect, so obviously there’s slang I couldn’t hope to know. Therefore, I have to focus more on the music here. It’s pretty sonically homogenous, with hard hitting, simple but minor-key melodies combined with aggressive, almost robotic rapping from our emcee. A more traditionally trap-indebted song features at the end here (I ka nouri moun), but it sounds a bit out of place in this body of work. This music is a potent reminder that it’s not just how you feel when you listen to the music but what you’re actually doing while listening to it that augments its impact. Besides one long walk in the rain I spent most of my day wallowing in bed and made the mistake of doing so for most of this album, but the moment I stood up and started making dinner and listening to it I was able to appreciate it much more. I’d love to experience this type of music in action, but it also was great for taking me out of my mood for a moment and transporting me to the release of the dance halls thousands of miles away. Guess I’ll save these songs for a not-rainy day.