Academy of the Underrated #5: From Lionel Belasco's 'All Music
Guide' Biography: It has been claimed that Lionel Belasco was
the first musician to popularize West Indian music to a
significant audience outside the English-speaking Caribbean. The
child of a Sephardic Jew and a Trinidadian Creole, pianist and
vocalist Belasco made his first recording in Trinidad in 1914.
Between 1914 and 1945 he made at least 278 recordings under his
own name, more than any other West Indian bandleader did. He was
one of the artists responsible for the hybrid of styles taken
from disparate sources including European classical music,
waltzes, jazz, pop, and African and Caribbean folk music that
became known as calypso. Belasco was a well-traveled man in the
West Indies, South America, and New York City for his time,
experience which probably contributed to the potpourri of
influences that can be detected in his music. Soon after his
recording debut, Belasco moved to New York after a rumored
affair with the daughter (who was his