John Arnold is the pioneering musician, recording artist and jazz festival coordinator on the island of Tobago. As a recording artist, he has helmed half a dozen albums that play with the idea of Caribbean jazz as original music, including his latest, Jazz Standards in the Tambrin Sauce, which incorporates the Tobago-native tambrin drum family. This family of frame drums adds a unique colour and sonic identification to the music that begins a new vision to flavour improvised jazz with the sounds and rhythms of the Caribbean. As a jazz festival coordinator, he is responsible for the Tobago Jazz Experience that celebrated a decade of performances just before the pandemic began with some of the biggest stars in the jazz festival pantheon, and positions Tobago as a leader on the sustained Caribbean jazz festival circuit.
The tambrin drum — a kind of frame drum similar to the Irish bodhrán and the Brazilian pandeiro — is indigenous to Tobago, and acts as that island’s sonic identification, as does the steelpan for Trinidad. On this new album, Tobago-born musician and keeper of the cultural flame, John Arnold, seeks a rhythmic basis and bedrock for the tambrin drum family — the cutter, (high pitch); the roller, (rhythm); and the boom, (bass) — outside of the island’s traditional festival and ceremonial dances. Six popular jazz standards are performed here, to find a new interpretation of how songs can swing when imbued with rhythms born in the islands. The indigenous reel and jig beat is used to give “Fly Me to the Moon” the “feel of the folk style.” This kind of attempted amalgamation of genres and sounds has a presence in jazz, and this experiment in fusion has merit. The conversation between cultures — jazz and tambrin — expands the possibilities of world music.
Intra-I Theon Cross
(New Soil/Marathon)
Caribbean heritage remains strong in a newer generation of British-born musicians at the forward edge of recent jazz in the UK. Theon Cross — Jamaican dad and St Lucian mum — is a boundary-pushing tuba player who is evolving the role of that instrument, and critically, reinforcing the cultural legacy of the islands as a lynchpin for a modern jazz that moves away from the blues as the music’s foundation. With that knowledge and ancestry, he improvises and fuses jazz with dub, dancehall, soca, UK hip hop, grime, and “other sounds connected to the Afro-Caribbean diaspora.” Sound system culture exudes from the sonic profiles of the ten songs on this album. The extended Caribbean, beyond Windrush, brings island ideas to global audiences. While the tuba is not generally the first instrument one thinks of as a lead, Cross has found a way to move the sound and musicality beyond comedic artifice towards ethereal reinvention.
Love Has Found Its Way Tigana Thomas
(self-released)
In 1982, the Crown Prince of Reggae, the late Dennis Brown, released the lovers rock/R&B smooth groove, “Love Has Found Its Way”, to moderate success in the US and UK. The song has a staying power however, that proves you can’t keep a good song quiet. Guitarist Tigana Thomas from Trinidad explores the song’s potential to remain a danceable tune, whether falsetto vocals or full-bodied jazzy guitar strums take the lead. In this case, singer Jolene Romain sings the verse while Mya Scott sings the chorus refrain. The interplay between voice and guitar adds a layer of alternating sonic elements that are interesting enough to make this new cover of a classic song listenable beyond a few bars. The Caribbean “romantic getaway” aesthetic evoked by this recording reinforces a popular notion of what is sought after in these isles by tourists. If this song is part of the soundtrack of visitor engagement, that’s not a bad thing at all.
Bajan songstress Kellie Cadogan oozes charm on this album, with songs that flirt with the sonic qualities of soul-jazz and gospel. This long-in-gestation project includes half of the ten-song album composed by Cadogan, who, with these tunes, displays an ear for contemporary popular songcraft. You can make a range of comparisons: from the sound of a reborn Anita Baker to an intimate acoustic Ella Fitzgerald duet. Songwriting and performance aside, Believe acts as a calling card for a performer who can thrill with a voice that signifies more than just a tropical hotel lounge entertainer, but a singer in touch with a wider palette of sounds. The title tune hangs on a set of lyrics that reflect a positivity and faith that act as a kind of spiritual testimony. The juxtaposition of these original songs — uplifting odes all — and twentieth-century jazz standards makes this album an interesting listen, and a pleasant reminder that Caribbean singers stride many worlds effortlessly.
CooBago Jazz John Arnold
(self released)
Tobagonian pianist John Arnold has a knack for writing music that finds its resonance in the heartbeat of Caribbean life. Songcraft more than execution is highlighted here on this nine-song album, with tunes running the gamut from modern piano jazz to contemporary jazz-influenced hip-hop. A longtime pinnacle of Tobago’s music scene and its jazz experience, Arnold continues with his approach of self-sufficiency in creating music that is an extension of the idea of the real Caribbean. Tobago sells itself as a laid-back paradise, the yin to Trinidad’s yang. That counterpoint to the energy of Trinidad’s music is reflected in the soft ostinato grooves of Arnold’s tunes — a repetition that isn’t boring, but that forces the ear to hear what is played on top of the groove. Funky piano and saxophone riffs help the listener discover the intended goal of the album: to define a cool Tobago sound in a sea of smooth jazz.
Got A Light? Jeremy Ledbetter Trio
(Alma Records)
Canadian keyboardist Jeremy Ledbetter is no stranger to island ears and aesthetics, having helmed the successful Caribbean Latin jazz ensemble CaneFire since 2005. With his new trio, featuring Larnell Lewis on drums and Rich Brown on bass — of Kittitian and Jamaican heritage, respectively — the West Indian cred is solid. Any fleeting ideas that Canada is a wasteland devoid of multiculturalism’s ethos of integration is abandoned on a first listen to this new album, featuring Ledbetter’s supple performance sharing space with that solid rhythm section. Lewis’s drums play inside and outside time signatures and showcase rhythm unhinged from the metronome-like quality of drum machines. It has to be so, as the nine tunes here echo the beat and harmonic sense of a rediscovered Caribbean transformed by virtuosity. The sound is hushed yet potent, the mood is languid yet dynamic. “Her New Wings”, sung by Eliana Cuevas, is perfection. This album is a revelation of possibilities.
