Best Local World Music

Babaloo

Hey Loo-see! Is the world ready for the first-ever self-described "punk mambo-hardcore juju band"? Phoenix readers certainly are. This year's local World Music winners, whose name summons simultaneous images of a vengeful voodoo god and episodes of I Love Lucy, got their start three years ago in a Jamaica Plain basement where guitars and trumpets cohabited freely with congas and kazoos. Incredibly, these were only a few of the instrumental ingredients that this seven-piece outfit would eventually mix into its sumptuous musical gumbo. Babaloo first took shape in 1995, when Bruno Molto (a/k/a Oopsy Wallace) began adding voice and kazoo parts to the guitar lines roommate Mary Beth Cahill (a/k/a Smith Crankshaft) kept coming up with. Molto had listened to a lot of salsa and mambo, Cahill to gospel and Arabic music. Before you could say "What's in the banana?", Babaloo was born. Its membership now includes Slim Goodbody, Pongo Jankowitz, El Gallo, La Zik, and Ozain. Six of the Babaloos sing (Slim's the lone holdout) -- in half a dozen languages. What comes out is a sound not unlike a neighborhood block party in a lively part of town at the start of a three-day weekend. The group's debut CD, last year's Punk Mambo! (Butcher's Ghost), lives up to its title, with a mélange of horn-fueled, percussion-stoked ska, samba, and calypso. And the punk part? Well, the punk part is that they've managed to pull it off in grand fashion.

-- Jonathan Perry