Creole Choir of Cuba

It isn’t often that I am stuck for words to describe an album but this album leaves me utterly speechless – and with a huge feeling of satisfaction.

Creole Choir of Cuba are just what the name suggests. They sing in Creole – a mixture of African, Haitian, Spanish and French – and hail originally from Haiti. The real name of the choir is ‘Desandann’ which is Creole for descendants and they sing original tribal songs of the ir African heritage and all the myriad changes that the music has been passed through on its long journey – all of which sounds incredibly serious but is, in fact, haunting and beautiful.

The choir consists of five men and five women and the voices range from a sweet contralto to a rich baritone and basso profundo none of which can prepare the listener for music that reaches deep into the soul and risks leaving the hardest hearted brute in floods of tears.
When the music lifts itself towards joy the congas propel the singers to a complex contradiction of the male and female parts and I found myself gobsmacked by how beautiful both sets of voices are.

They can do sweet, rich and worshipful, often simultaneously, and the variety in the voices is as much as any orchestra could present; this is a choir of the finest quality.