It’s Still the Universal Language : Caribbean Roots of Kassav’

Kassav’ may pose the most formidable challenge yet to the idea that pop music must be sung in English to have a shot at reaching success with the U.S. pop audience.

The 16-piece ensemble, which makes its local debut at the Hollywood Palladium on Sunday night, is based in Paris but composed of musicians transplanted from the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

Enormously popular in France, the West Indies and Africa, Kassav’ has blossomed into an international pop force, thanks to its influential zouk sound, a flashy, vibrant mesh of West Indian dance music and high-tech studio techniques.

Zouk has been the hot style among world beat fans recently but Kassav’s sophistication makes its music less foreign-sounding to mainstream, dance-oriented fans here than Nigeria’s King Sunny Ade--even if it is sung in Creole patois.

“The music is the most important thing; the French don’t understand a word in Creole and they got into the music,” said vocalist Jocelyne Beroard during a phone interview this week from New York City.

Jacob F. Desvarieux, Kassav’s guitarist and arranger, put it another way in the group’s record company biography: “The music is a stronger language than the language itself.”

Zouk (which rhymes with juke and loosely means party in Creole) combines elements of salsa, calypso and rhythms indigenous to Guadeloupe and Martinique with snatches of assorted African pop styles, a healthy dose of American funk and disco and the polished studio sheen of sophisticated European pop.

Kassav’ was formed in the late ‘70s by Pierre-Edouard Decimus, now the group’s manager but then a member of the popular Les Vikings des Gaudeloupe group.

Eager to make a record using the latest recording-studio technology and free from the strong influence Haitian styles exerted on Guadeloupian music, he enlisted his brother Georges (bassist for Les Vikings), Desvarieux and keyboard player Jean-Claude Naimro for that initial project.

Released in 1979, “Love and Ka-Dance” incorporated a native Guadeloupian rhythm called the gwo ka and the St. Jean carnival rhythm. The results impressed Beroard, who had moved to Paris to study pharmacology and moved into music by singing in piano bars and working as a backing vocalist. “I could recognize myself in that music because I could feel all the different influences that we always had because we were listening to music from Europe, the States, jazz-funk, music of the Caribbean and from Africa,” she said.

Beroard joined Kassav’ in 1983 with the rest of the group’s nucleus--drummer Claude Vamur, percussionist Cesar Dursin, vocalists Patrick Saint-Eloi and Jean-Philippe Marthely. The current line-up includes a five-piece horn section and two dancers.

Kassav’ has released more than 20 albums, both group efforts and solo albums by band members, on the Paris-based GD label. “Vini Pou,” recently released by Columbia, is Kassav’s first album for a major label in the United States.

“Those (musicians) who stayed with Kassav’ are those who had to stay,” Beroard declared. “Being with Kassav’ and (working with) a lot of different people were usual to us until it (the lineup) stayed the same and we realized that the heart of Kassav’ never changed. I don’t want to sound too pretentious . . . by saying the strongest have stayed, but the beginning was not that easy.”