The Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band: Music For Everyone
The Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band do not want to be known. At least, not in the way that we have traditionally “known” musicians. There’s no singer, they all perform in Devo-esque red jumpsuits, and their music trades on a familiarity that is always pointing sonically to both other styles of music as well as specific songs — most often, hip-hop classics.
They’re high concept for sure, but they’re also music-first at every turn. I’ve never encountered a single human being who didn’t like their music once they heard it. And I think that’s for a very specific reason: In their global mish-mash of instruments, styles and references, they’ve hit on something that, recipe be damned, pulls from so many places that it lands on the universal. If you like music, you’re gonna love Bacao.
Their sound pulls from the West African and Caribbean origins of steel drum music, hops a flight to the South Bronx to take in a sensibility about hip-hop’s origins of break records and its subsequent golden era, and then plops down into a German biergarten at the height of Oktoberfest. It’s a block party in which the block is the world.
The signature of that sound, though, is very obviously their steel drum, hammered out from a 55-gallon oil drum. It’s their singer, their lead guitar, their hypeman, their everything. BRSB is their 4th album, borne out of an ongoing flow of 7-inch releases that started all the way back in 2007 and has only increased as time has gone on.
Across these two sides, you’ll come for the “Hotline Bling” — perhaps the only piece of Drake music that has not suffered from context here in the Spring of 2024 — but you’ll stay for “Grilled.” Like a lot of the best reggae artists — this is not reggae music but it always feels adjacent in the best ways — Bacao knows how to get you in the door with a friendly cover, only to clobber you with their best shit when you think you’re doing them a favor by checking out their originals.
We’re excited to present to you this fine record, and hope that you’ll share it the way we’ve been sharing it: Not just here in the 48 Record Bar, but at house parties, on bike rides, and at barbecues for years to come. Enjoy Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band in health! Enjoy them with others, or by yourself! This is music for everyone.
— Joey Sweeney
Note: These words originally appeared as the liner notes for the 48 Record Bar Record Of The Month for May 2024. To learn more about our ROTM program, click here.