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

Music buzz | Reviews (Jul/Aug 2024)ª

D-Day Monty Alexander 

(Peewee!)

An artist of the calibre of legendary Jamaican jazz pianist Monty Alexander — more than 70 albums over a 6-decade career — when making new music, it can be argued, is “making events, not just records.” A grander vision than a collection of songs, a thematic story woven into a sequence makes this project, D-Day all the more revealing of the grandeur of Commander Alexander. June 6, 2024, marked the 80th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, D-Day, and Alexander’s 80th birthday. Coincidence allows for a musical celebration that takes the listener on a sonic journey of moods, from pre-war France ambience to “Aggression”, to a contemplation in the midst of war (“Oh Why”), and the subsequent “Restoration” of a nation with victory down the line and the joy of peace. Bob Marley’s classic reggae transcription of Haile Selassie’s 1963 U.N. speech, “War”, spoken by Alexander as a call for peace, bookends this epic tribute to the idea of war and peace.

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Creole Orchestra Etienne Charles

(Culture Shock Music)

The history of creole big bands in the Caribbean harkens back to a golden age in the French Antilles before WWII, and a counter evolution in the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking islands post war. Early islands migrants made a name in orchestras in pre-war UK. Etienne Charles from Trinidad brings a new recognition of a creole aesthetic to jazz music and calypso in his arrangements for big band. The blend of trumpet, trombone and saxes is angular, yet the rhythm never escapes into examples of academic dissonance. The music on this album, a blend of jazz song, swing and calypso, enhanced in a few cases by the sublime voice of Grammy nominee René Marie, swings with a tempo that never accelerates beyond the danceable human heartbeat. The U.S. footprint in the Caribbean, enhanced by the presence of Naval Bases during the War had an impact that resonates in music heard here. Charles nobly captures that ethos returning the gaze magnificently.

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1. These reviews appear in the July/August 2024 issue of Caribbean Beat Magazine.

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

Music Buzz | Reviews (Mar/Apr 2024)ª

Gentle Touch  Reginald Cyntje

(Self released)

On this his seventh album, Reginald Cyntje — pronounced SIN-chee — continues his musical exploration of emotional themes and the intangible through instrumental jazz. With his trombone as lead, this US Virgin Islander explores in a quiet contemplative way the vulnerability of being in love. “Vulnerability is key to authenticity,” he says. “Being vulnerable takes strength, courage, and emotional intelligence. A gentle touch.” That gentle touch is revealed in five tunes on this short EP. They sashay smoothly, and exist within a fine balance of subdued tempo and an earnest reach for moods that showcase languid tropical vibes through bossa nova, reggae, neo-soul, and jazz. Celebration, hope, empathy, the memory of the first time, and growth are the themes highlighted here. Excellent musicianship by his quartet takes centre stage; Allyn Johnson on piano shines. An island perspective on love is always welcomed. Inspiration and reflection are encouraged.

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1. This review appears in the March/April 2024 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

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

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 19 – Garvin Blake

Garvin Blake, pan jazz musician based in New York has re-discovered his intention to preserve and promote the idea of steelpan and jazz as global music. After a pair of significant albums in 1999, Belle Eau Road Blues, and 2015, Parallel Overtones, Blake is now in a place in his life to continue to record and let the music of the steelpan be the 'new voice' in the conversation that is jazz. Island Jazz Chat catches up with Blake on this annual Carnival return to Trinidad to speak about his career, his work with South African Tony Cedras, Vincentian Frankie McIntosh, and a number of important American musicians on the creation of new music for jazz ensembles with a starring role for the steelpan.
Sat, 17 Feb 2024

• Programme Date: 17 February 2024
• Programme Length: 01:15:47

© 2024 Jett Samm Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

Etienne Charles: The Road March in Concert – a review²

An edited version of this article appeared in the T&T Newsday as, “Etienne Charles celebrates road march history in concert"

Etienne Charles’s engagement with the Carnival and its music is ongoing — his albums Kaiso (2011) and Carnival: The Sound of a People, Vol. 1 (2017) and the subsequent live performances here, the evolution of Carnival music on the road with his music/masquerade band Riddim, Brass & Mas, his recording kaiso/soca collaborations with Kes, Terri Lyons, David Rudder — and on Thursday, February 1 at Queen’s Hall in Port of Spain, he delved deeper into the magic of this music that moves a society and defines celebration. The Road March in Concert was a review of those songs that are the most popular song on the road, at Carnival competition spaces, in fetes.

The concert began as a historical showcase of the chants, lavways and leggos of Emancipated folk, and almost sequentially moved towards a veneration of popular calypsos and soca tunes, highlighting the personalities who made these Carnival music hits. It was a timeline; what began as a contemplation of music history, ended in celebration and the cheeky marketing of Charles’s 2024 Carnival band, Magnificent. And that was a good thing as it targeted the two aspects of an audience in search of Carnival entertainment outside the sweaty jam of modern fetes. That juxtaposition of contemplation and celebration is at the heart of Carnival and was the ultimate ethos of the event. 

Music Buzz | Reviews (Jan/Feb 2024)ª

Of Love & Life  Ava Hutchinson

(Self released)

Ava Hutchinson is a treasure in her native Trinidad and Tobago, carving out a niche as one of the few female jazz pianists leading a band. On this, her debut album, another side of Hutchinson is revealed: she is a talented composer, brave enough to bare her inner self in lyrics that transcribe her life and loves, good and bad. The melodies are noteworthy with a keen sense of style, and are enhanced by a production from innovative producer Roger Israel and a crack cohort of local musicians. That support becomes necessary to move the music towards a point of distinction, allowing the 18 songs here to provide a clearer picture of Hutchinson’s life. We are no longer left to wonder. Musical autobiographies can either be rigid relaying of facts as rhyming couplets, or figurative lines that allow listeners to fill in some blanks. This album captures a life with lyrics that sing, with words that neatly identify remembered relationships and emotional ups and downs. Revealing.

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1. This review appears in the January/February 2024 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

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

Music buzz | Reviews (Nov/Dec 2023)ª

Re-Potted Jonathan Scales Fourchestra 

(Le'Rue)

The angular harmonies and rhythms of modern jazz fusion present a rare context for the steelpan to interact, to play to its potential, to exist. Jonathan Scales is an American musician and composer recently transplanted to Brooklyn, New York. And in his hands, the instrument — in the company of his trio’s sublime bass and poly-rhythmic drums — heralds another way to engage with one’s soul outside a Carnivalesque celebration. On this, his eighth album of steelpan jazz, he explores “what it means to ‘uproot and replant’ into a more expansive yet more challenging environment”. How that translates on the instrument is a heady mix of musical modes, melodic adventures, and varying soundscapes — rap, wordless vocals, found-object percussion, strings and horns — where challenging rhythmic changes make for a focus on how this juxtaposition of instruments brings resolution to a journey. Steelpan, “the audacity of Creole imagination”, has evolved beyond the islands.

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Live in San Francisco, vol. 1 Etienne Charles

(Culture Shock Music)

Prolific recording artist and composer Etienne Charles is taking his Caribbean jazz trumpet to important venues to play to audiences everywhere the music gleaned from the wanderings of his Creole soul. The Black Cat, “in the historic jazz district of Tenderloin in beautiful San Francisco”, is the setting for the recording of a live album that excerpts his Carnival opus; charts the arc of Caribbean composers Lord Kitchener, Bob Marley, Winifred Atwell, and Juan Tizol; and incorporates his new composition, “Greenwood”, which elucidates a monumental episode in American history. “Greenwood” musically translates the violence, chaos, angst, and pathos of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre against African-Americans in “Black Wall Street”. The wilful attempt by others to erase this history is countered here by transcendent musicianship and sound recording clarity that enlivens excavated histories and recalled stories from survivors. One can’t wait for Vol 2.

Album available exclusively from the Etienne Charles website

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Mango Hugh Masekela & Siparia Deltones (Single)

(Monk Music/Gallo Record Company)

Sitting under a fruit tree has been inspirational — for centuries. The story of Isaac Newton under an apple tree coming up with the theory of gravity is apocryphal. For Trinidadian jazz musician Carlton “Zanda” Alexander, a mango tree was the key to a composition that celebrates tropical idyll. Sitting under de mango tree / Watching baby mangoes fall / Making room for more to come, with tiny stems and all / Suddenly, I heard a song / Dancing through the leaves / A lonely mango fall. That song has taken a long journey to release. A decade in the making, a musical project (From Siparia to Soweto) among Zanda, the iconic South African flugelhornist “Bra” Hugh Masekela (1939–2018), pannist Akinola Sennon and his steelband Siparia Deltones in Trinidad was a major collaborative cultural event on the island. With its soothing, twee, island vibe, this lilting Caribbean ballad sung by Masekela is a hopeful entré into the long-awaited album’s release.

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1. These reviews appear in the November/December 2023 issue of Caribbean Beat Magazine.

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

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 18 – Etienne Charles

Etienne Charles is a creole soul. A Caribbean intellectual and sublime musician who positions the "native gaze" to reflect a new perspective to the wider Americas beyond a boundary. From Trinidad, with a trumpet in his hand and a rhythm in his veins, he has, over an 18-year recording career, observed and composed music that "re-charts the ruins," excavates supressed histories, and elevates island ideas over metropolitan ideals. Post-pandemic, he was busy with his "San Juan Hill: New York Story" commission from the NY Philharmonic, and the release of 2 limited edition albums: unique quartet music, Traces, and a live recording of his Creole Soul band in San Francisco where a new piece recalling the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre had its debut. With more recordings to come, the creole soul never sleeps. Thu, 28 Sep 2023

• Programme Date: 28 September 2023
• Programme Length: 00:58:56

Music buzz | Reviews (Sep/Oct 2023)ª

The Lone Pilgrim Woods 

(Jamwax)

Trinidadian Wilfred Trevor Woodley — “Woods” to his friends and associates — was a prolific composer, and innovative jazz musician, whose oeuvre was disappointingly never professionally recorded before his death in 2010. His life was one of pioneering creativity, and unfortunate personal tragedy. Beginning with his calypso jazz innovations in the early 1960s UK, he was shunned by media there. And for his audacity to marry a white socialite, he was possibly framed for an uncommitted crime. Aptly titled The Lone Pilgrim, this new three-song EP begins the worthy task of bringing his unique compositions, possibly in the hundreds, to the world. These songs retain the magic of surprise that is a hallmark of jazz, and centres the impetus around an Afro-Caribbean base of rhythm and instrumentation; Jason Baptiste plays steelpan here. This is a heritage keepsake and the start to a promised tribute collection by this international band of devoted musicians.

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Live Mario Canonge Trio

(Aztec Music)

This live album by Martiniquan master pianist Mario Canonge and his fellow high-accolade Antillean musicians — Michel Alibo on bass and Arnaud Dolmen on drums — is a record of possibilities to make the Creole universal. Canonge is a singular icon in jazz circles here in the Caribbean and in France (where he is now based), who has the ability to incorporate the French Antillean rhythms and melodies into a jazz setting that is admirably effective in bringing the region’s music onto a global stage. This new album, his 17th, brings these talented, individual musicians into a collaboration that emphasises their ability to subtly make zouk, gwo ka, bélé, and other French-Caribbean grooves and genres a base for improvisation. Tackling some of his previous compositions alongside new ones in this trio format demands individual talent to shine, yet makes space for sublime musical conversation. One hour’s worth of Caribbean elegance.

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Kula Wroko Kibri Fra Fra Sound

(Pramisi Records)

Fra Fra Sound is an instrumental jazz big band — born in Suriname more than 40 years ago and now resident in the Netherlands — which utilises the native genre kaseko (a complex fusion of styles derived from Africa, Europe, and the Americas) to make its music a tangible tribute to the ethos of Caribbean celebration. The marketing blurb tells us that the album’s title “stands for the process of navigating, creating, documenting and continuation.” Effectively, this new album touches on the musical range of the band over its history, and signifies that the music is still evolving, and still moving people here and there to dance. Songs sung in Surinamese Creole (Sranan Tongo) invite new listeners to discover the richness of Caribbean culture and language. At a deeper level, this album’s music, we are told, is a contemplation of 150 years since the abolition of slavery in Suriname and the Netherland Antilles and, inspiringly, a reflection of another Caribbean.

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1. These reviews appear in the September/October 2023 issue of Caribbean Beat Magazine.

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

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. 

Music buzz | Reviews (Jul/Aug 2023)ª

47 On Strand  Élan Parlē

(Parlemusik)

The album title references an address in Cape Town, South Africa, and a point of reflection and unique perspective for a Trinidadian wanderer there. In this instance, that explorer is the architect of 21st century kaisojazz (calypso jazz): Michael Low Chew Tung, élan parlē, himself. From his vantage point, literally in a hotel across the street, he mined the influences gained from seeing, hearing, and being there. The energy of the street, the vista of Table Mountain in the distance, the percussion and sounds of a distant Africa move his compositions towards a new centre for musical innovation. Continuing the exercise of expanding the vocabulary of kaisojazz — begun in his 2013 album, I Am Élan Parlē — the music here occupies a contemporary jazz profile. Tunes like “Load Shedding” and the title track don’t burden the listener with complex solos, but marry the sonic aesthetic of island elegance with a modern African presence for expanded possibilities.

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1. This review appears in the July/August 2023 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

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

Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival 2023 – a review series²

Once again, the Saint Lucia Tourism Authority invited me and facilitated my coverage of its signature festival tourism event, the Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival, for the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday. Old friendships rekindled and new adventures encountered as this mammoth event has grown, and approaches its optimal dimensions. As far as Caribbean music festivals go, Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival is defining what is possible regionally, and settling in among the top global music festivals, jazz and otherwise. Here are the articles:

Playlist (May/June 2023) | Music Buzzª

Traces  Etienne Charles

(Culture Shock Music)

One result of migration, forced and voluntary, is a blossoming of new music cultures. On his new album Traces — a limited edition in both vinyl and CD — Trinidadian jazz musician Etienne Charles continues his exposition of “New World” stories through music genres born where disparate peoples meet. Charles finds catalysts for composition in his colleagues’ origins. Performed here by a stellar quartet — each member with a different birthplace — playing cello, cuatro, double bass and trumpet, this album’s music reflects their individual cultures and traditions. Antillean waltzes and biguine from the Caribbean, festejo, merengue, joropo and choro from South America all provide sonic connections to tales, tributes and the legacies that define an expansive Creole soul. Charles the musician is the fortunate traveller who gloriously and majestically adds to his oeuvre by mining his African sojourns, his Latin American expeditions, and his Caribbean recollections and discoveries.

• Vinyl copies of this album are available exclusively here.
• CD copies of this album are avalable exclusively here.

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1. This review appears in the May/June 2023 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

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

After COVID, a return to island jazz

This article appears in the March/April 2023 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine as “A return to Island jazz.”

The COVID-19 pandemic over the last three years wreaked havoc on island tourism and decimated the live music industry worldwide. A nexus for live music and tourism in the islands is the enduring island jazz festival, set for a reintroduction, a rebound and a reset in 2023. 

In the Spring 1993 issue of Caribbean Beat, writer BC Pires noted that there are “more than 30 jazz festivalse very year in the Caribbean and most Caribbean people have never been to one … And there is a good reason for this: most people in the Caribbean don’t really need jazz — they’ve got perfectly good music of their own, thank you.”

However, 30 years beyond Pires’ declaration, perpetual in-the-red economics, ageing demographics, and changing tastes have diminished the faddish-ness of the island jazz fest as a dreamed-of getaway — whittling down the “more than 30 jazz festivals” to fewer than a dozen.