Album review: Various artists, Mirror to the Soul (Soul jazz)

This double CD plus DVD and book combo offers a fascinating glimpse into pan-Caribbean music and culture from the 1920s to the 1970s, with the archive collection of original Pathé newsreels on the DVD particularly resonant, but there’s a seeming randomness to the project that irks.

The first CD includes some killer calypsos (including Lord Flea’s “Calypso Bebop”), while a second disk of mainly Francophone drummers is more “interesting” than listenable.