It is interesting to note that the pop calypso (as opposed to real calypso) boom of the mid 1950s was engineered largely by a charismatic singer born in Harlem and a Julliard-trained composer from Brooklyn. Both Harry Belafonte, whose mother was from Jamaica, and Irving Burgie, who spent his childhood in a West Indies neighborhood in New York, had musical roots in the Caribbean, certainly, but their version of the islands was largely an imagined one, although imagined so well that their collaborations have actually filtered back into the folk music of the region. Intelligent, confident, and with a firm grasp of artful arrangement, Belafonte almost single-handedly brought world music into the commercial pop arena with the Burgie-composed “Day-O” song, and in Burgie he had found the perfect songwriter, a man whose compositions had the lilt and flow of ocean sunlight. Several of Burgie’s songs (and Belafonte’s versions of them) have become stone cold classics, including “Banana Boat (Day-O),” the lovely “Jamaica Farewell” (both of which were centerpieces of 1956’s million-selling Calypso album that made Belafonte an international star), and the joyful “Kingston Market.” Calypso from Jamaica contains all the tracks from that ground-breaking release plus related tracks from Belafonte’s subsequent RCA albums to make a wonderful sequence of artful, faux Caribbean folk that isn’t particularly Jamaican, although it definitely is shot through with a West Indies sensibility. The only actual folk song from the Caribbean included on the album is the gorgeous 19th Century ballad “All My Trials,” which by the 1950s had migrated to the American south and by the 1960s had become a staple of the Folk Revival. Whatever the origins, the songs collected on Calypso from Jamaica have a wonderfully summery vibe, and if most of them didn’t actually come from the Caribbean, they certainly ended up there, and many of these tunes have become mento standards. Calypso from Jamaica is the most generous single disc currently available of this phase of Belafonte’s career.

Six Degrees Records, San Francisco’s independent modern world music label, has made a name for themselves over the past 10 years. Their rep is for issuing innovative recordings by musicians and producers from all over the globe, many of whom have unique takes on melding world music traditions with the digital age. Their impressive catalogue includes recordings by Ceu, Cheb i Sabbah, Karsh Kale, Bebel Gilberto, Banco de Gaia, the Real Tuesday Weld, the Bombay Dub Orchestra, Willie Porter, King Britt, DO (Omar Sosa and Greg Landau), DJ Spooky, Steve Tibbetts and Chöying Drolma, and DJ-composer-producer Tom Middleton, one half of Global Communication; Middleton’s autobiographical Lifetracks album is being reviewed — and enjoyed — globally. Here’s a sample from the cut “Serendipity.” The label also released the 2007 Latin Grammy winner for best Flamenco recording, Techarí by Ojos de Brujo. Here’s a sample. They’ve done a number of soundtracks too, including the award-winning Genghis Blues. Six Degrees is a music freak’s label if there ever was one.

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Like a dervish, a mountebank, or a prophet, depending, perhaps, on the moment in which you see him, Eugene Hütz took the stage Friday night, his multi-colored, multinational band in tow. The audience, packed into the space behind the press pit — and many of whom had been there hours before the 9 o’clock start time in order to get such prime standing room position — roared their approval, the first chords of “Ultimate” started up, and Gogol Bordello’s show was off.

Their reputation, it seemed, had proceeded them. The security guards in front of the stage and surrounding the pit were in constant conference, trying to figure out how to best keep people out (and the people resisted, trying to push themselves in), how to keep the crowd-surfers from getting hurt, from mosh pits from starting up. These were, to be fair, valid apprehensions. The band is famous, or infamous, depending on your point of view, for their rousing live performances, enough to have banned them from the punk palace CBGBs and to cause any club owner at least a moment’s hesitation before signing them up.

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Aggressive and belligerent, Kultur Shock — comprised of two electric guitars, a heavy bass, drums, a violin that could only be called frenzied, and a lead from Sarajevo who looks like he got style advice from Korn’s Jonathan Davis or Anthrax’s Scott Ian — played Eastern-European influenced metal to an interested, but not always engaged, crowd Monday afternoon. Gogol Bordello they are not: while the NYC-based band draws most of its power from lead singer Eugene Hütz’s punk and gypsy roots, Seattle’s Kultur Shock rock chords in the same vein as the Deftones or System of a Down, and though they certainly do not put on a tranquil performance, the rampant energy and flamboyant fashion sense that Gogol Bordello is notorious for is decidedly less. Dressed in jeans and fatigues and black t-shirts, the band keeps a sturdy presence, and despite the fact many of singer Gino Yevdjevich’s lyrics are not in English (he prefers the Slavic languages), Kultur Shock’s sound is much nearer to American rock than their more eclectic East-Coast counterparts. Still, although their intensity and their uncompromising political stance (Fucc the I.N.S. is the name of their 2001 album) may not have the universal appeal that Gogol Bordello is steadily accruing, there’s something exciting and tangible about them, in their honesty and energy, their lack of pretense; something which, as Yevdjevich himself acknowledged, has kept Seattle “putting up with” them for the past ten years.

More than in vocal tone itself, a great singer is someone who can communicate the human condition in a way to which everyone can relate. Eugene Hütz, frontman of Gogol Bordello, is one such singer, able to transmit his own understanding of life and his experiences as an immigrant (his family left Kiev after the Chernobyl disaster, eventually ending up in Vermont) and musician trying to make sense of the world around him through his own brand of riotous “gypsy punk.” It’s clearly effective — the band recently released their fourth full-length, Super Taranta!, on SideOne Dummy to nearly universally positive reviews and has a following that stretches across the continents. Even Madonna recently declared herself a fan, inviting Hütz to appear with her onstage at this year’s Live Aid and casting him in her latest film, Filth and Wisdom. AMG’s Marisa Brown caught up with the charismatic lead singer recently as Gogol Bordello was finishing up their fourth summer of European touring. On the bus for the Reading Festival, he shared his thoughts on the band and the direction they’re heading in.

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