This column can be viewed as an extemporaneous meditation (after all it’s T&T and me) on travel, arriving as it does on the heels of Advent.

It’s not just the seasonal style that’s suggesting journey; there’s the loca musica Afro-Colombiana I’ve been soaking up since its unexpected arrival at my breakfast table only days ago and then the impending trip to St Lucia and Martinique .

First let’s hit the Caribbean coastline of Colombia, places like Cartagena, Baranquilla and then the virtually unknown inland town of San Basilio de Palanque, the heart of AfroColombia.

Cartagena has been hovering in my travel genes for years since stumbling on this perfectly balanced name in a school-days history book.

Baranquilla is of a more recent vintage; idly reading round Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llhossa and the Young Turks of realismo fabuloso, I found the germs of a roman a clef in the literary circle of South American writers whose destinies took them at the same period to what sounds like a decidedly ugly industrial port, in whose bars they established the kind of salon the Paris Left Bank was famous for in the mid-20th century.

I recall trying to pitch a story to a Florida editor about the literary capitals of the Caribbean: Havana, Fort-de-France, Port-of-Spain, Wilemstad and, of course, let’s not forget Baranquilla. Should I bother to mention my pitch sank off Key West along with the jumbies of failed Haitian and Cuban boat people?

Carnival, birthday and Christmas

San Basilio de Palenque I only heard rumours of in the Big Fug a couple of years ago. I’d got my hands on an album by “Batata” Paulino Salgado, an Afro-Colombian master drummer and Champeta monarch. Just the liner notes I’d read on a German label’s Web site were enough to get my kneecaps twitching and had me reaching for the shark oil to prepare a waist stiffened by long, dark London days.

Champeta, it seemed, was a fusion of some of my favourites: Congolese soukous, Colombian cumbia, Haitian konpas, Nigerian Afro-Pop (a la Fela Kuti) and Juju (think King Sinny Ade), Ghanaian High Life, South American salsa, with soca, zouk and meringue thrown into the bouyon (not really the word I was searching for—the Hispanic version of callaloo).

When Batata hit the conservatory in leafy Forest Hill, it was like carnival, birthday and Christmas all roll into one. The Levi Rhythm Section went into overdrive: we mashed up all the pots, several bottles and left severe dents in my claves. But it was an explosion of pure sun energy that had we dancing so and getting on.

Ever since those dismal days, brightened by Batata’s cask-cured voice, cardio rhythms and the compulsive, endless melodies of soukous guitar weaving over accordion and brass, I’ve been searching for more Champeta. It arrived less than 100 hours ago in the form of Voodoo Love Inna Champeta Lan, courtesy the combined efforts of Colombiafrica Orchestra and the Mystic Sound System.

The cover is enough to get you reaching for your shac shac and purple strides: Viviano Torres, one of the three featured San Basilio de Palenque vocalists, all dread lox (sic) topped off with gold Baroque bouffant crown, would put the Black Eyed Peas into the frumps shed. Nuff said.

Since Voodoo Love reach, I’ve bee luxuriating in the warm waters of fluid guitars played by some of the Congolese maestros like Diblo Dibala, Rigo Star, Dally Kimoko and Guinea Sekou Diabate. There are gut- and heart-wrenching vocals, Dominican Republic bachata style, blazing soca brass and enough moves to take me through to next year.

But the music is really only one part of this story: the other concerns resistance and history, a couple of favourite topics. The history behind Champeta, is one we’re familiar with: the Maroons of Jamaica, the Bush Negroes of Suriname, the Garifuna of St Vincent and Belize. San Basilio de Palenque, like Accompong or the Maroon villages in the Amazon of Suriname, was a settlement established by runaway slaves, who successfully kept Spanish forces at bay, winning a measure of sovereignty, which one can hear in the music their descendants—the Palenqueros—made to this day. Viva la confedercaion Criolista!

I know that my travels will take me to San Basilio, both in my dreams and the kingdom of this world. But right now I’m ironing my jockeys and sox (sic) in preparation for my hop north to Sent Lis and then on to Martnik. But then you can read about all this next week. Ah hope allyuh behave while Ah gorn.