Freedom Jazz Jam, a review²

An edited version of this review first appeared in the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday as “Vaughnette Bigford jazzes up the Bowl” on 30 July 2023.

As the unending post-Carnival 2023 jazz season overlaps with the 2024 Carnival band launch season, the Naparima Bowl became an all-encompassing sold-out space for live music magic and fashion statement making. Vaughnette Bigford, the Creole Chanteuse, on Saturday, July 22 continued her evolution from “jazz singer” to producer of live music experiences that go beyond the stage to touch and encourage audiences to show their true colours. Freedom Jazz Jam was described by her as a “celebration of us,” and on the weekend before the Emancipation Day festivities the Jam manifested in a real creative industry mix of music and fashion, pride and pulchritude. 

An hour before the showtime was a pre-concert reception in the Bowl’s courtyard that showcased more than fan appreciation for this southern songbird, but a manifestation of local fashion design and couture celebration, and a display of individual attachment to heritage in all the colours under an African sun. Local designer names were spoken: Prindela Fashions, Kimo, Diane Carlton Caribbean, Rack.PDH plus, Nadroj, and others that put into perspective that real commercial synergy of sectors in the creative industries at this event. 

A Caribbean aesthetic that interpreted an echo of Africa, in drums and rhythms that welcomed patrons, in the regal draping of fabric over hips and hair of the many women present — women significantly dominate the audience demographic — in the décor and merchandising choices, singularly and collectively were hallmarks for a holistic experience defining freedom.

But this was primarily a music event, and that aspect of the experience was not short-changed. In the cool Auditorium that evening, stage production design superseded other technical aspects in this show, enhancing what would become ninety minutes of curated music excellence. Local designers again were named: Zadd & Eastman for Bigford’s outfits, Ecliff Elie for master of ceremonies Adrian Don Mora’s suit, and Prindela Fashions for kitting out the musicians and background vocalists on stage. A poem celebrating the African spirit in these islands by Roger Bonair-Agard followed by a sung Orisha chant to Ogun, made famous by Ella Andall and perfected by Bigford, prefaced the musical journey that went beyond her usual Trinidad and Tobago songbook sojourn towards a global mix of the African diasporic musical experience.

Songs from the African continent, the Caribbean, South America and the U.S. made for a recognition of the diversity of the African presence in the global world of popular song. Songs from Brazil (Milton Nascimento’s “Cravo e canela”), Jamaica (Dawn Penn’s “You Don’t Love Me [No, No, No]”) and Trinidad and Tobago (Shadow’s “Looking For Horn”, Nelson’s “One Family”, Merchant’s “Um-ba-yao”, and more) mingled with songs from Tanzania (Adam Salim’s “Malaika” made famous by Miriam Makeba) South Africa (Hugh Masekela’s “Soweto Blues” and Makeba’s “Pata Pata”) and Nigeria (Burna Boy’s “Anybody”). Swahili, Xhosa, the pidgin English of Afrobeats music, and Português brasileiro were all the languages wonderfully sung, adding to the idea that a Vaughnette Bigford concert requires an international mindset and freeing from the narrow strictures of “we own ting.”

The African-American retro girl-group pop of Sister Sledge’s “Frankie” segued perfectly with New Orleans funk of The Meters’ “Hey Pokey A-Way” allowing the audience to change the old creole Mardi Gras Indian battle cry, “Tu way pocky way,” and let ring the expletive chant heard at many a party and school bazaar from the 1970s. Decorum be damned! Is freedom time now.

The local songbook, for which Bigford is well known for reinterpreting with an ear to diverse world music influences was not discarded. Together with the aforementioned songs, “Reason”, a recent original from her former drummer Khalen Alexander of Tobago, gave Bigford a platform to give a voice to kaisojazz harmony. With arrangements by, among others, her accompanists, the highly regarded musicians and recording artists Michael ‘Ming’ Low Chew Tung and Theron Shaw, the music of the islands swung in a way that dancing was inevitable. Shoes were discarded early. House rules be damned.

A highlight of the evening was the walk-on by Bigford’s 9-year-old son, Isaiah, to sing Nelson’s “One Family” with her. A natural entertainer with no shyness or sense of awe. He owned that five minutes of fame. Part of that re-orienting of the native mindset was the mid-show live performance of new tunes by kaisojazz band élan parlē lead by Low Chew Tung, from their recently released album 47 on Strand Cape Town, an album inspired by a trip to South Africa that melds rhythms, vistas and encounters there to create a new way to converse with local music.

The after concert pan jazz lime on the Bowl compound featuring the Siparia Deltones with its leader, recording artist Akinola Sennon, celebrated the cumulative impact of the Freedom Jazz Jam. An all-inclusive event with cocktails, fried ice cream, bespoke teas, and meat and vegetarian options for finger food, all with lingering patrons dressed to the nines, put this event over the top for value for money. As noted before, the almost 85% female patronage — “it had a sprinkling of man,” according to Bigford — and the attendant fashion element that is a signature of Vaughnette Bigford’s many themed concerts, puts truth to the social media joke that “a VB concert is the local Met Gala.”

That mix should be a signal to personnel at FashionTT and MusicTT, the State-owned companies under the Ministry of Trade dealing with the fashion and music industries respectively, to be present in order to map this event as a bellwether and template for how live music concerts, and local jazz concerts specifically, can be and are economic multipliers within the creative industries locally. The local siloed, time-restricted music industry needs the example of Vaughnette Bigford to break the artificial barriers that sometimes curb our understanding of our music, and our potential to discover a new way of seeing ourselves.

© 2023, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.