Playlist (November/December 2021) | Music reviewsª

Songbook, Vol. 1 Michael Boothman

(Poui Tree Records)

Nostalgia is making a comeback: the Rolling Stones and Genesis will tour stadiums next year, and Paul McCartney and ABBA have new albums in 2021. In the Caribbean, kysofusion pioneer Michael Boothman from Trinidad is back with a bang. Boothman is an elder statesman on the regional music scene, with international standing and a professional music career spanning six decades. The appearance of a new full-length album after a gap of some years is a happy revelation that signals his creative juices are still flowing. Songbook, Vol. 1 points to the idea that this is a first step on a new journey, a fresh awakening of the Boothman oeuvre with rearrangements of classics from the 1970s like “Saying It With Music” and “Mystic Sea”, and many new songs. This album is a showcase of fine songcraft, sophisticated musical ideas, and a kind of independent production value that understands that, as audiences mature, quality never dissipates.

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1. This review appears in the November/December 2021 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

© 2021, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Island Jazz Chat - Episode 6: Michael Boothman

Michael Boothman is the personification of excellence in the arts in Trinidad and Tobago. Pioneering, innovative and consistently successful as a performer, composer, arranger and recording artist, Boothman continues his 50-plus year career that showcases a number of firsts and milestones in the development of modern music in Trinidad and Tobago. He discusses his kysofusion innovation, and chats about his career from his teenage combo years through to his label deal with the Clarence Avant helmed Tabu Records for his Heaven album. His new move into label ownership and new production has resulted in an upcoming album in 2021.

• Programme Date: 22 June 2021
• Programme Length: 01:42:27

Michael Boothman: a rebirth beyond nostalgia

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Liner notes for Michael Boothman's 2018 EP, Break Away.

Seminal Caribbean jazz musician and recording artist Michael Boothman has, with the production of Break Away, his EP of new music, presaged the return of the musician to the focal point of creation and performance in the continuing exercise of the fusion of Caribbean rhythms and melodies with the tropes of jazz and popular Black music in the Americas — kysofusion is Boothman's name of that sound and music. His partner in this current exercise is Howard 'Howie' Lindeman, celebrated live and studio engineer with a who's who list of major credits, who worked on Boothman's pioneering album for Tabu/RCA Records in 1976.

The rekindling of this important relationship between these two stars in their respective fields has allowed for a rebirth of that kysofusion sound and music that convinced the US music industry that Boothman was worthy of signing. These four new tracks are a continuation of the aesthetic of excellence in music and the clear understanding of the role of the musician that both Boothman and Lindeman understand and personify

To "break away" is to liberate from the strictures of a kind of conformity. In the mind of Michael Boothman, it is also a celebration of that peerless Caribbean lifestyle and a return towards a freedom to be the best we can be.

© 2017, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.