Sugar Belly Walker and his Bamboo Saxophone

Listen to Shake Up Adina

One of the leading lights of the Jamaican music scene in the 1950s was Wilfred Fitzgerald Walker, better known as Sugar Belly. Sugar Belly had built his own saxophone-like instrument of bamboo, cardboard and tin and, with no formal music education, had taught himself to play it with facility, style, passion and joy. The popular music of the day was a style called mento, closer in mood to the easy good-times feel of the old Trinidadian calypso than to the Jamaican ska and reggae that were to come later, and even when he later played reggae, Sugar Belly always had that fluid, swaying feel of the older music.

Sugar Belly’s irresistible Shake Up Adina is one of the tunes included in CD collection Gravikords, Whirlies & Pyrophones, while more information on the man, his life and his music appear in the accompanying book. You can hear an excerpt from that track by clicking the link at left. Better yet: order the book and CD from our catalog now.

An article on Sugar Belly and other bamboo saxophone makers appeared in the Experimental Musical Instruments quarterly journal, Volume 9 #2 (Dec 1993). All of the Experimental Musical Instruments back issues remain available.  You can follow the link at left for more information or to purchase back issues.