Caribbean Beat Caribbean Playlist - January/ February 2016ª

Guilty Pleasure Alexis Baro

(G-Three Records)

Toronto-based Cuban trumpeter Alexis Baro has released a ten-track album of jazz music that has the chill vibe in effect, but also focuses on the idea that you can take an islander to the city, but his island-ness is a hard thing to shake off. Laid-back sensuality is an apt phrase to describe the mood of the album, but Afro-Cuban sentiments and rhythms creep in seductively, giving the impression that one is listening to a duality of ambition. On “Eres”, fellow Toronto-based Cuban rapper Telmary (Díaz) provides a spoken-word juxtaposition to Baro’s muted horn; hot hiphop à la Habana. On “African Prince”, Baro blows frenetically and on point over conga drums as a segue to a languid piano solo that serves as a lesson in Latin jazz. Canadian spoken word artist Dwayne Morgan smoothly defines what his guilty pleasures are on the title track. Consuming this album could be yours.

  

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1. More Caribbean Playlist reviews appear in the January/ February 2016 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

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

Not so cool in the Great White North: Toronto and the Caribbean Jazz experience¹

Over the Carnival season recently ended, a couple Trini expat jazz musicians resident in the Great White North of Canada, Toronto to be exact, returned home for sustenance, vacation, and creative idyll. Anthony Pierre founder of Caribbean jazz outfit Kalabash and Brownman [Ali], multiple award winning and exalted trumpeter informally pressed the flesh with local musicians and fans, both outlining their plans for 2013. Their common experience in Toronto is one that can set a template for our musicians who seek favour in the big world abroad beyond the Caribbean diaspora cities.

Kalabash featuring Anthony Pierre has just finished recording a new CD—its second in 12 years—and is shopping it around to the summer jazz festival promoters as it seeks to get back into the active jazz performance scene after a quiet 2012. Brownman is the epitome of a busy musician performing close to 200 dates per year when not also teaching and doing workshops. He recently returned to TT after Carnival to perform 2 small gigs with top jazz drummer Sean Thomas and bassist BJ Saunders as a trio exploring modern electric jazz originally defined by Miles Davis after his Bitches Brew period. (Full Disclosure: This writer is a producer of the annual Jazz Artists on the Greens, and both Kalabash and Brownman have been featured artists there.)

Their return led to questions of the sustainability of a music career outside of this space, especially a jazz music career. Toronto, for all it’s worth, seems to be a haven for the Caribbean migrant seeking fortune in the creative industries. Caribbean born authors have found commercial and literary success there. Canada has been described in recent times as post-ethnic and trans-cultural, so the idea that Caribbean-born musicians playing jazz influenced by their homelands to an eager market there is not unreal. It is a more open market than the introverted and prescribed US, which is genre-defined and has restricts music with jargon terms such as world fusion jazz, ethnic jazz or non-Western jazz.