Caribbean Beat Caribbean Playlist - May/June 2016ª

Pathways Zane Rodulfo

Drummer Zane Rodulfo on his debut EP Pathways shows a maturity beyond his twenty-six years as composer of and rhythmic support for a short set of original jazz instrumentals. Dissecting the music, one is awed by the seemingly cultivated approach of the musical themes on this production. As a graduate of both Oberlin College and New York University, Rodulfo has an unsurprisingly studied approach, but the artist’s youth throws a wrench in the theory that this level of quiet contemplation must come with age and experience. Rodulfo’s Trinidad roots are reflected purely in the sound, not necessarily the rhythms. He composed four of the five tunes on this collection himself, and the superlative interplay between jazz guitar or saxophone and the effectively anchored rhythm section suggests that as a producer he is not selfish, and his gifts lie in creating environments for musicians to run free without bombast. This EP is a great launching pad for a stellar international career.

---

1. More Caribbean Playlist reviews appear in theMay/June 2016 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

© 2016, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

The Electric ascendance of Etienne Charles: Creole Soul – a CD Review¹

Listen here:



Or Read here:

With his simple declaration to this writer, “sound is my art...I just try to create,” Trinidadian jazz trumpeter Etienne Charles puts into context his role of creator and producer in relation to his latest recording Creole Soul, out now on Culture Shock Music and distributed in North America by RED/Sony Music Entertainment,. This new album, previewed earlier this year in Tobago at Jazz on the Beach at Mt Irvine reveals to this writer an evolution of his art that parallels our most distinguished author and the jazz idiom’s most eclectic trumpeter and influence.

The fourth studio album from this US-based musician and teacher bristles with a kind of energy that comes from the realization that one has gone beyond; beyond the usual expectations of a Caribbean existence, beyond the boundary of the usual sonic influences that have paved the way for this jazz lion. The familiar tropes of calypso rhythm inflected jazz that have been a hallmark of our jazz here for decades—from Duke Ellington's A Drum is a Woman (1956) to Rupert Clemendore's Le Jazz Trinidad (1961) and Dizzy Gillespie's Jambo Caribe (1964)—are abandoned for a modern post-bop and jazz fusion take on the material and all its thematic and stylistic influences in the New World.

The evolution of Ruth Osman: Letting Go - a CD Review¹

Ruth Osman launched her debut CD, “Letting Go” on the first weekend in July in a pair of spectacularly produced concerts at the Little Carib Theatre. Those concerts set a new benchmark for these kinds of events here, and one wishes that all CD launches operate at this level of professionalism where production value is honoured and audience expectation are not dashed.

The production team of Jason Dasent and his team at Studio Jay Recording Ltd created a new milieu for Ruth in the concert and on the record. On this 10-track CD, this Guyanese song bird has evolved from the easy elegance of her tropical neo-folk acoustic trio, Jacoustik—featuring Marva Newton and James Fenton on guitar and congas respectively—to the lush layering of synthesizers and background vocal harmonies of this recording.

In an instant, the listener realises that this record is making a commercial statement beyond the confines of the neo-folk genre. The worldliness of the production signals a departure from the status quo for this singer who has been performing in T&T for over five years. A couple tracks work well in this new milieu of layered sounds namely “New Blues” with the organ that mimics the Doors/Ray Manzarek sound over a jazz waltz tempo. The bluesy wail is not missed as Ruth channels the lyrics intent; a series of repeated couplets professing love and asking for a continued presence, “Don’t ever leave, boy. / You’ve got what I need.”

The Saints go marching in! The new recordings of Reginald Cyntje and Victor Provost, in context.

Trombonist Reginald Cyntje (pronounced sin-chee) and pannist Victor Provost represent, to me, an opportunity to understand the connection between Caribbean jazz and the USVI as a locus of the New World African music from a social and critical perspective. Both these musicians were raised in the US Virgin Islands, before migrating to the mainland US for music training and careers in jazz. That early influence, without the distance of "independence" that other Caribbean jazzists have, marks a point of reference to understand the recent output of these two Washington, DC based musicians.

Music scholar Warren R. Pinckney Jr. investigated the interrelationship between the mainland and the Virgin Islands jazz scenes in his 1992 essay "Jazz in The U.S. Virgin Islands", and he observed that:

After purchasing the islands in 1917, the United States set out to "Americanize the people of the Virgin Islands," primarily by introducing American-style public education. An indirect outcome of this Americanization, coupled with influences from various Caribbean islands such as Cuba, Trinidad, and Puerto Rico, was the discouragement of native Virgin Islands culture...The Virgin Islands and mainland United States jazz scenes have a fundamental mutual relationship: the American jazz scene provides the models upon which local players base their performance styles,and the Virgin Islands jazz scene provides new performance venues for American players.
—Pinkney Jr., Warren R. "Jazz in the U.S. Virgin Islands." American Music, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1992), pp. 441-467. Web. 9 Sep. 2010