The Listening Room: The story of Disques Debs with Poly Ritmo

The latest episode of The Listening Room is out now.

"Gwo Ka has been a symbol of resistance for the people of Guadeloupe and continues to this day a way to express freedom, defiance, and community."

In the latest episode of The Listening Room, DJ and selector Poly Ritmo guides listeners through 40 years of Disque Debs — the longest-running and most prolific record label from Guadeloupe, and one of the most important in Caribbean music history.

Recorded inside Devon Turnbull's Listening Room at 180 Studios, the session maps how a label founded in the back of a clothes shop in Pointe-à-Pitre became the primary vehicle through which the music of Guadeloupe and Martinique reached France and the wider world.

Moving from the roots of Biguine and Gwo Ka through to the Latin-inflected rhythms of Cadence-Lypso and the international breakthrough of Zouk, Poly traces the ecosystem that label founder Henri Debs built across more than five decades — producing, recording, mixing, photographing, and often singing on the records he released.

Through albums by Les Vikings de la Guadeloupe, Experience Seven, Evasion 85, Kassav', Mauricia Piquard and more, she unpacks how drum rhythms carried across the Atlantic by enslaved West and Central African people evolved into a body of music that remains largely unknown outside the Caribbean and its diaspora.

The Listening Room is a podcast from The Vinyl Factory and 180 Studios about how records tell stories. Throughout Season One, DJs, musicians, writers, and record collectors gather around Turnbull's system to play the records that have shaped them, tracing how sound moves through time, place, and community.

Listen to the remarkable story of Disques Debs with Poly Ritmo on all podcast platforms now.