he most interesting aspect of this disc—a musical travelogue through the Lesser Antilles island chain—is just how mixed-up it is. The Lesser Antilles represent a very diverse ethnic and cultural mixture of European colonial descendents, Africans originally imported as slaves, native islanders, and even Asians from former British colonies in Indonesia and China. This melting pot has resulted in an equally intermingled and diverse musical tradition, with sounds from all over the world combining and coexisting in unique ways within the islands.

As would be expected from such a diverse background, the music on this album runs a wide stylistic gamut, from the didgeridoo-like warble of the cocoa-lute (featured on a brief, odd duet called “Mr. Walker”) to Christian church hymns recorded on Trinidad (“Spiritual Baptists”) to a Hindu epic imported from India, with wailing vocals accompanied by tiny cymbals and hand drums (“The Story of Marrdevirain”). With such a great variety, this collection continually surprises, never settling into any kind of groove—as soon as one style has popped up, it’s been replaced by another.

What’s interesting is how styles often clash within individual songs. “Aguinaldo” incorporates aspects of both traditional Spanish guitar music and the more relaxed, informal island styles. The song is an improvised interaction between two singers, with lyrics about the birth of Christ, that has a loose, lyrical bounce to it that belies its serious subject. The disc also chronicles some of the non-Christian religions of the island; a Shango religious festival features African-inspired hand-drumming and wild, free group chants.

Perhaps even more enjoyable than the religious music, though, are the leisure songs intended as games or to get people dancing. The disc opens with a low-key, syncopated meringue dance, played by a Dominican band with a whining accordion, rattling percussion, and a thumping bass rhythm produced on a boom boom, a bamboo cane that is played like a tuba. The following song, “Masouc”, is an example of a much older form of Lesser Antilles dance music, with a fiddle playing the lead melody over a bed of rustling percussive shaking. Coupled with the next song—“The Lizard”, a rollicking instrumental with a bamboo flute soaring into the upper registers like a canary—this is lighthearted music meant to be heard on a beach at sunset, music for dancing around a bonfire with your sweetheart. And, bringing the dance music focus full circle, the CD closes with a strange “Reel,” an Africanized version of a Scottish dance song; the drums are clearly African in origin, but the scraping, atonal violins retain some hint of their Scotch antecedents (though they could just as easily have originated in a modern avant-garde improvisation).

It’s a tribute to the high quality of all this music that, even ripped out of context and placed next to such disparate and clashing other styles, so much of this album really works. In many ways, the diversity of the album is almost schizophrenic, with the wide variety of cultures represented in the Lesser Antilles resulting in an even more varied document than even the most scattered other albums in the Explorer Series. Perhaps a little more coherency might be desired, but with so much good music to sample, it’s a small complaint at most.