Showing posts with label Jonathan Scales. Show all posts

Wednesday, 1 November 2023

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.

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

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.

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

Thursday, 1 November 2018

Playlist (November/December 2018) | Music reviewsª

Pillar Jonathan Scales Fourchestra

(Ropeadope Records)

The steelpan and its sound have become almost the cliché of Caribbean fantasy and escape, but in the hands of musicians with a determination to move away from that old trope, the music can challenge listeners to re-imagine the unique timbre of this creole invention and its canon. North Carolina native Jonathan Scales revels in odd metres and radical time signature changes to produce music for the instrument that can be complex, intriguing and ultimately funky enough for listeners to bop their heads. On this new album, the bass guitar serves as a fulcrum for a rhythmic chase as the steelpan matches it on some tracks like, “This Is The Last Hurrah”, or plays counterpoint standing in awe of the superb musicianship of the likes of Oteil Burbridge, Victor Wooten and MonoNeon on “Fake Buddha's Inner Child” and “The Trap”. Scales's musical hero, banjoist Béla Fleck guests, showcasing the adaptability of the steelpan in musical settings born outside the archipelago.

These reviews appear in the November/December 2018 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

Sunday, 18 March 2012

Pan Jazz Picnic

I was recently re-animated about the possibilities of programming 24 hours of steelpan jazz and its variants for online radio, when I had to do a little research into the output of this sub-genre of our Caribbean jazz fusion experiment. Some hard realities; we had a proliferation of CDs during the 1990s, both in Trinidad and Tobago and abroad, mainly North America. A smattering of offerings out of the UK and Europe did not hold much sway as we entered the 21st century. As a programming niche, there is a thin line between repetition and redundancy.

There is a sort of renaissance in music recording now from the US, by non-Trinidadians as well as diasporic citizens, but the quality varies with level of music academic qualifications. Two names stick out, Phil Hawkins and Gary Gibson, both offering two and four CDs respectively in the 2000s, leaning to what Andy Narell, among others, has termed "progressive steelpan jazz": jazz-based, harmonically intricate music. To quote a review for one of Gibson's CDs: "Speaking a language of harmonic depth not previously explored within the steelpan community in recorded music, Gibson's compositions provide an excellent springboard for improvisations." Both these West-coast musicians attempt to be innovators of music for steelpan. On the east coast of the US, ex-pats Liam Teague and Leon Foster Thomas are creating variety, Victor Provost recently premiered with bebop stylings, while JAOTG alumnus Jonathan Scales released his third CD of musically complex and outside the box compositions. One critic noted, "the music on Jonathan Scales' [three CDs] defies the conventional parameters of jazz or even "pan-jazz" and pushes composition to unprecedented levels of complexity and sophistication."

Local steelpan recordings seem to revolve around ensemble performance by a whole band, with few offerings by our greats: Boogsie, Professor, Ray. Robbie Greenidge, with his collaborations with Michael Utley of Jimmy Buffett's Coral Reefers Band, has about over a half-dozen CDs, now and then veering towards his boss' carefree tropical blend devoid of the native rhythms that inform Caribbean jazz. I look and listen with keen interest at young Kyle Noel's upcoming offerings. This Trinidad southerner, far from the madding crowd has interesting musical and sonic ideas, and it would be an excellent fillip for the inventors of the PHI to get that instrument into his hands.

Hoping and believing that quantity and quality are what drive a music industry, I look, and wait with bated breath for the day when we get our act together here in the Caribbean, to make that statement that we made years ago when Caribbean people challenged the idea that there was music other than rock 'n' roll that was chart-worthy in the US. Belafonte was a catalyst then, but not a sustainer. It is said that Andy Narell is the equivalent catalyst for the steelpan. Only excellent output will sustain.