Showing posts with label andy narell. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 September 2022

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 13 - Andy Narell

Andy Narell, globe-trotting and pioneering steelpan jazz musician, composer and arranger chats about his beginnings in the world of steelpan in the 1960s, and the evolution of the sound that he is leading in the 2020s with a new sample library of steelpan instruments created by the legendary master tuner Ellie Mannette. And everything in between. From the West Coast of America to Trinidad to South Africa, to the French Antilles and Japan, the Narell sound and music is a standard for many on how the business of steelpan jazz performance and recording operates. Caribbean and Latin American rhythms, African pulses, post bop references all colour his music, and with a prolific output of recordings, steelpan jazz is part of the global jazz conversation Wed, 21 Sep 2022

Programme Date: 21 September 2022
Programme Length: 01:31:10

Tuesday, 1 November 2016

Caribbean Beat Caribbean Playlist – November/December 2016ª

Dis 1. 4. Raf Andy Narell

(Listen 2 Records)

As if driving home the point that the pendulum of commercial influence for steelpan appears to be moving away from Trinidad was not enough, now comes the new release by American steelpan musician Andy Narell that boasts not one, but two CDs of refined exploitation of the sound and ambience of the steelpan in the context of a jazz quartet and as musical partner with piano. Dis 1. 4. Raf, a tribute to the late Caribbean jazz pioneer Raf Robertson, is another rung in the ladder of success of Narell. With his cohort of players from Cuba and Guadeloupe, Narell on this album weaves a new path for the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago to tread that encompasses influences beyond the archipelago. On the second CD, a duet, he juxtaposes the enhanced idea of modern percussive and rhythmic sounds from the New World—the steelpan—and the Old World—the piano—to subdued and subtle brilliance.

More Caribbean Playlist reviews appear in the November/December 2016 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

Thursday, 1 January 2015

Caribbean Beat Reviews – January/February 2015ª

Oui ma Chérie! Andy Narell

Trinidadians are notoriously protective of their national instrument, the steelpan, so much so that when iconoclastic American pannist Andy Narell releases a new CD, the chauvinistic hubris echoing among local voices can and does sting. Narell’s riposte in this instance is an album of five long musical interludes, a balance of originals and Trinidad song /calypso that defines broader genre options for the steelpan. Jazz dissonance and tropical rhythms that suggest the wider Caribbean outside of Trinidad move the body of music for the instrument several steps ahead. Narell single-handedly plays all the parts of a small steel orchestra to capture with near sonic perfection the timbre of the modern steelband, and blends it with solo guitar and trumpet to imagine newer possibilities. After 18 previous albums, it is clear that the sound born of “the audacity of the creole imagination” in Trinidad is now global, and this album is apt proof of Narell’s significance.

More Caribbean Playlist reviews appear in the January/February 2015 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

Wednesday, 24 April 2013

An American in Paradise: The sense of Belonging of Andy Narell

Andy Narell

American pannist and composer Andy Narell is an iconoclast who fearlessly challenges the narrow definitions of acceptable pan music. He is global, and his usefulness as an ambassador for our national instrument is tainted by suspicion long held by panmen and the pan fraternity in general here. It may be a an attitude of his own making. Long held beliefs are hard to dispel with logic. Pan pioneer Rudolf "Fish Eye" Ollivierre welcomed itinerant writer Patrick Leigh Fermor back in 1950 to Hell Yard, as described in his travel book The Traveller's Tree—"The ease of his manner was admirable"—implying a sense of awe and acceptance we have nurtured over the years in this region for "tourists." Narell has long ago stopped being a tourist. He is one of us and thus, prone to the same criticisms and praise as the rest of us. He is critical of our music, our Panorama and we react without obsequiousness. And rightly so, for that is the Caribbean posture, effectively practised by the panman forever; never back down from a challenge.

Andy Narell belongs to a pantheon of expatriate creative types who “belong” here and at the same time are aware of their difficulty of so belonging. Important regional authors were temporary immigrants to these shores in the mid-20th century—Edgar Mittelholzer in 1941-48, George Lamming in 1946-50, Derek Walcott in 1959-76—and their presence and experiences added to the canon of West Indian literature. Port of Spain, and by extension, the island is a place frequented by those wanderers in search of inspiration and succour. It still is a moving place designed to shape memory and ways of feeling. (Narell is temporarily resident in St Lucia now, acting as the festival patron for the 17th annual Jazz in the South in Laborie beginning on May 1, 2013.)

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

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.