YO. RAINSTICK here, transmitting from Bed-Stuy.   I first noticed kuduro bubbling up in island sounds in summer 2010 ~ was cruising pirate radio stations and bugged when a Haitian DJ dropped an Angolan classic ~Helder’s “Salé”~ in the midst of the usual kanaval and konpa. I rang the station and a bemused selector told me it was big on all the islands, but that perhaps Costuleta’s “Tchiriri” was even bigger.

Kuduro is not that far off from percussion driven road socas,  in both syncopation and energy, and surfing, you’ll find tons of Angolan jams uploaded to YouTube by Caribbeans, with comments like “I’m a Trini and I dont understand wat the hell they saying but this song is hot!” and “Dis song rocks Bahamas!”  Digging, you might notice that teenaged producers are starting to make kuduro riddims…

The above riddim is described as “NEW AGE KUDURO MADE IN ST LUCIA” – and that’s wassup. Kuduro seems especially popular wherever kreyols are spoken, and I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the outbreak started in St Lucia.  As Wikipedia tells us, “The dancing in Saint Lucia comes from the Caribbean and is quite active.”  Ha!  No one can test that as I would say, but by bugging a young St Lucian producer named Lashley Winter (a.k.a. Fox Productions), I got a few more deets.

Lashley moved to Crown Heights, Brooklyn from SLU a few years ago, and is currently killing it in high school, but also finds time to make riddims and manage a very popular YouTube channel devoted to underground Lucian sounds and Angolan tunes.  ”I started doing beats about a year ago with Mixcraft then switch to Fruity Loops,”  he says. “I would proudly say that kuduro has influenced music in St Lucia due to the young generation.”   His HARD WAIST X3 riddim really caught my ear…

…but another riddim of his has become a hit back on the island, versioned dozens of times. That and more in Pt. 2….