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V.S. Naipaul implied that we are a country of mimic men, but our geographic location in the world, our social history makes the pull of myriad sonic and rhythmic influences inevitable. Adan Hagley on his debut album project,
Insomnia, has made those connections from his wide listening palette. He cites Michel Camillo and Snarky Puppy, but one hears Ray Holman’s melodic template, Élan Parlē’s early harmonic experiments and the late Raf Robertson’s bold fusion ideas as sonic references that have all contributed to an impressive recording career launch in this music space. The local is not eschewed for the foreign as a model for jazz fusion access and success, and this is a good thing in our context as a region adding to the burgeoning jazz canon.
Adan Hagley returned to Trinidad in 2013 with an undergraduate degree from the important Berklee College of Music, and it shows in his use of an elevated music language and vocabulary that is necessary for serious jazz conversations among soloists and the harmonic ideas that generate that musical interplay.
