Music buzz | Reviews (Nov/Dec 2025) ª

Dezòd Jean Caze 

(Self-released)

On his third album, Miami-based Haitian Jean Caze is a horn specialist — trumpet, trombone, flugelhorn, conch shell — who continues his successful blend of Haitian heritage with modern American jazz influences. The interplay between trumpet and saxophone showcases engaged improvisation while the rhythmic bed (djembe and other percussion) allows for feet to chip and hips to move. Thirteen tracks — including a sublime solo version of the Haitian national anthem, “La Dessalinienne” — define new pathways for Caribbean jazz in the world.

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Scratch Band Ron Blake

(7tēn33 Productions)

The minimalist instrumentation of his native quelbe music bands of St Croix, USVI was a starting point for saxophonist and SNL band regular, Ron Blake, to retrace and reform legacy island music production towards new compositions and improvisations. With just double bass and drums in tow, calypsonian Shadow’s “Bassman” is recast as melody and rhythm alone — harmony implied — to great effect. Begun during COVID lockdowns, this LP allows listeners to hear sparse yet soulful one-on-one jazz conversations.

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1. These reviews appear in the November/December 2025 issue of Caribbean Beat Magazine.

© 2025, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved. 

Music Buzz | Reviews (Sep/Oct 2025)ª

Introspection Richard Payne

(SojoMusic)

More than 20 years after his Bluemangó debut, St Lucian jazz musician and composer Richard Payne returns with a dizzyingly spectacular album of Creole jazz, featuring hints of broader inspiration than these Antilles. In the opening track, "The Call", we hear wordless vocalisations, reminiscent of the Pat Metheny Group's Grammy-winning, mid-to-late 1980s oeuvre. The album positions original compositions and traditional Creole and "classical" folk songs within a contemporary milieu, showcasing both island innovation and Creole sophistication. Recorded in France with some of the world's finest Creole jazz musicians — many living there — the album showcases Payne's keyboards, anchoring sublime improvisational conversations between trumpet, saxophone, electric guitar, and Kwéyòl voice with elan and elegance. Introspection is a welcome addition to the Caribbean jazz canon.

 

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1. This review appears in the September/October 2025 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

© 2025, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Music Buzz | Reviews (Jul/Aug 2025)ª

Island to Island Victor Provost and Alex Brown

(Dark Fire Records)

Victor Provost continues to provide listeners with an ever-expanding range of jazz music possibilities for the national instrument of Trinidad & Tobago, the steelpan. On this, his third official album — this time with pianist and frequent collaborator Alex Brown — Provost explores more Caribbean and Latin American rhythms including the Venezuelan joropo, the Brazilian baião, and the Creole mazurka of Martinique, and applies the language of jazz (expanded harmonies and improvised melodies) to a satisfying result. Brown counters with three compositions that speak to this tropical jazz vibe with elegant touches of virtuoso playing, allowing for the interplay of steelpan and piano that does not seem overly cerebral but assuredly sensual. The Brown composition “Victor’s Tune” is their 10-minute swan song on the album that encapsulates the idea that calypso and Latin rhythms, together with moving tempos, work well to smartly celebrate pan jazz.

 

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1. This review appears in the July/August 2025 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

© 2025, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Music Buzz | Reviews (Mar/Apr 2025)ª

Penta Ronald Snijders

(Night Dreamer)

Flautist Ronald Snijders is a hero of Surinamese jazz, rarely heard outside that diaspora (the Netherlands and its former colonies). His music on this new album continues his notable efforts over nearly five decades of layering modern jazz fusion music over the native kaseko rhythms, along with regional influences for global uptake. Marketing terms like “ethno-jazz” don’t do this album justice; its grander vision is placing the Caribbean heartbeat front and centre. And it does!

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1. This review appears in the March/April 2025 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

© 2025, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Music Buzz | Reviews (Nov/Dec 2024)ª

Psalms and Proverbs Godwin Louis

(Blue Room Music)

For centuries, music has been an adjunct to prayer and liturgical texts. When European colonists came to the “New World”, hymns and psalms were ritualised, with a mission to convert the populations they encountered (and subjugated) to Christianity. In the contemporary Caribbean, the music inspired by these ancient words of faith and control have taken on new dimensions. Haitian-American saxophonist Godwin Louis is a global traveller who has used his Caribbean perspective to reinterpret and remake this body of sacred texts, music, and traditional hymns. Haitian, Cuban, and Trinidadian musicians are all in the mix, transforming the music for your soul into relevant idioms. Hard bop madness blends with Afro-Caribbean rhythms to fine effect. Jazz “with a West Indian accent” imbues this album with a new aura of responsibility for positioning Caribbean creativity and ideas beyond old totems. A Kreyòl djaz celebration for any soul.

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1. This review appears in the November/December 2024 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

© 2024, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 21 – Anthony Pierre

Anthony Pierre represents a pioneering effort of a Caribbean musician to establish a sustained island jazz presence in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. That multi-decade journey has resulted, by the 1990s, in the formation of the Caribbean jazz sextet Kalabash, which focused on "using the steel drum as a lead voice in a jazz ensemble, while experimenting with the layering of rich jazz harmonies over the folk and popular rhythms of the Caribbean, from reggae, son and salsa in the north, to calypso, soca, rapso and zouk from the Eastern Caribbean." With two albums under the band's belt, the self-titled debut in 2001, and the follow-up, Keep Them Close in 2013, Pierre relates the historical journey to establish a popular contemporary jazz fusion outfit with an island vibe within the metropolitan and increasingly multicultural space that is Canada's largest city. Tue, 26 Mar, 2024.

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 20 – Vaughnette Bigford

Vaughnette Bigford is the Creole Chanteuse, the island songbird who "has made the local [Trinidad and Tobago, and the Caribbean] songbook the new jazz standard in the Caribbean...the premier jazz song stylist in these islands whose palette knows no boundaries. Tone, beauty, presence: the definition of the New World African." An apt description from the pages of Jazz in the Islands magazine that also signals an artist ready to make the leap outwards and internationally. We chat with Vaughnette about her recording and live performance career, and her growing reputation regionally. Her move towards concert design and promotion for her art is a winner that links Caribbean fashion and music in a way that suggests a tropical Met Gala aesthetic. An international career beckons. Sat, 20 Jul 2024