Search - Oswin Chin Behilia :: Liber

During a songwriting career that began in the early 1960s Oswin Chin Behilia has been a chronicler of his times besides writing about love and nature. Many of his songs engage the social aspects of life on Curacao in a genre he calls his 'social lyrics'. On this third release several of his songs deal quite specifically and with a greater sense of urgency with recent major historical developments in the political relationship between his native Curacao and the Netherlands. In the time honored fashion of a protest folk singer, through radio play, concert appearances, and even recently on local high school curricula, his lyrics reach both his home audience and Antillean immigrants in the Netherlands, often to the chagrin of the powers that be on both sides of the Atlantic. Much like the calypso that chronicled the goings on of the erstwhile British West Indies, Behilia has penned quite a few Dutch Caribbean classic tracks, often choosing the native Curacaoan tumba and sehú forms or Cuban son montuno as vehicles to tell his tales.