Island Jazz Chat: Episode 20 – Vaughnette Bigford

Vaughnette Bigford is the Creole Chanteuse, the island songbird who "has made the local [Trinidad and Tobago, and the Caribbean] songbook the new jazz standard in the Caribbean...the premier jazz song stylist in these islands whose palette knows no boundaries. Tone, beauty, presence: the definition of the New World African." An apt description from the pages of Jazz in the Islands magazine that also signals an artist ready to make the leap outwards and internationally. We chat with Vaughnette about her recording and live performance career, and her growing reputation regionally. Her move towards concert design and promotion for her art is a winner that links Caribbean fashion and music in a way that suggests a tropical Met Gala aesthetic. An international career beckons. Sat, 20 Jul 2024

Music buzz | Reviews (Jul/Aug 2024)ª

D-Day Monty Alexander 

(Peewee!)

An artist of the calibre of legendary Jamaican jazz pianist Monty Alexander — more than 70 albums over a 6-decade career — when making new music, it can be argued, is “making events, not just records.” A grander vision than a collection of songs, a thematic story woven into a sequence makes this project, D-Day all the more revealing of the grandeur of Commander Alexander. June 6, 2024, marked the 80th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, D-Day, and Alexander’s 80th birthday. Coincidence allows for a musical celebration that takes the listener on a sonic journey of moods, from pre-war France ambience to “Aggression”, to a contemplation in the midst of war (“Oh Why”), and the subsequent “Restoration” of a nation with victory down the line and the joy of peace. Bob Marley’s classic reggae transcription of Haile Selassie’s 1963 U.N. speech, “War”, spoken by Alexander as a call for peace, bookends this epic tribute to the idea of war and peace.

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Creole Orchestra Etienne Charles

(Culture Shock Music)

The history of creole big bands in the Caribbean harkens back to a golden age in the French Antilles before WWII, and a counter evolution in the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking islands post war. Early islands migrants made a name in orchestras in pre-war UK. Etienne Charles from Trinidad brings a new recognition of a creole aesthetic to jazz music and calypso in his arrangements for big band. The blend of trumpet, trombone and saxes is angular, yet the rhythm never escapes into examples of academic dissonance. The music on this album, a blend of jazz song, swing and calypso, enhanced in a few cases by the sublime voice of Grammy nominee René Marie, swings with a tempo that never accelerates beyond the danceable human heartbeat. The U.S. footprint in the Caribbean, enhanced by the presence of Naval Bases during the War had an impact that resonates in music heard here. Charles nobly captures that ethos returning the gaze magnificently.

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1. These reviews appear in the July/August 2024 issue of Caribbean Beat Magazine.

© 2024, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 19 – Garvin Blake

Garvin Blake, pan jazz musician based in New York has re-discovered his intention to preserve and promote the idea of steelpan and jazz as global music. After a pair of significant albums in 1999, Belle Eau Road Blues, and 2015, Parallel Overtones, Blake is now in a place in his life to continue to record and let the music of the steelpan be the 'new voice' in the conversation that is jazz. Island Jazz Chat catches up with Blake on this annual Carnival return to Trinidad to speak about his career, his work with South African Tony Cedras, Vincentian Frankie McIntosh, and a number of important American musicians on the creation of new music for jazz ensembles with a starring role for the steelpan.
Sat, 17 Feb 2024

• Programme Date: 17 February 2024
• Programme Length: 01:15:47

© 2024 Jett Samm Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

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.

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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

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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.

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

© 2023, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 17 - Jacques Schwarz-Bart

Jacques Schwarz-Bart, from Guadeloupe, can be considered a Caribbean jazz explorer who is mining musical histories and creating new experiences based on tradition, heritage, spirituality, and a full understanding of the Caribbean legacy of being at the centre of many cultural moments in the Americas. His dual Afro-Caribbean and Jewish heritage has allowed him to make bold musical statements, both live and on record, that re-chart the ruins, and to place in the wider public consciousness the music of Haitian Vodou, Guadeloupean gwo ka rhythms, Hebrew liturgical chants, and other creole spiritual conversations all resonating with a jazz vocabulary. From neo-soul and jazz to introspective takes on the spectrum of African diasporic music and retentions, Schwarz-Bart continues to expand the Caribbean Jazz footprint globally with tours, recordings and teaching. Tue, 10 Jan 2023

• Programme Date: 10 January 2023
• Programme Length: 01:31:32

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 16 - Leon 'Foster' Thomas

Leon 'Foster' Thomas, contemporary steelpan jazz musician and composer from Trinidad, and at present, Caribbean Jazz researcher now based in the UK, chats on his career and the continuing journey to move the steelpan to the front of the jazz bandstand with his recordings and performances. His compositions, what he calls his "book of stories", position the instrument as a transcriber of emotions that allows for a dynamic range of sensitive touch and dexterity. His new album, Calasanitus due in March 2023, explores a range of topics that get to the heart of what Thomas sees as lives lived and the fates of people moving among the Americas. Mon, 9 Jan 2023

• Programme Date: 09 January 2023
• Programme Length: 01:35:39

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 15 - Richard Bailey

Richard Bailey, born in Guyana (then British Guiana), raised in Trinidad, and long resident in England, is the go-to drummer for major recording and touring artists in the UK since the 1970s. Jamming and recording with the likes of Jeff Beck and Bob Marley as a teenager, Bailey was a pivotal member of the new generation of musicians who forged a funky and jazzy new direction for British music from the 1970s onwards that reflected the rhythmic influences from the former colonies in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. His bands Batti Mamzelle and The Breakfast Band, as well as his contributions to the groups Gonzalez, Incognito, and Citrus Sun lead to solo recording work that cements the Caribbean contribution to UK acid jazz and evolves kaisojazz and Caribbean jazz towards a universal recognition at the turn of the century. Thu, 1 Dec 2022

• Programme Date: 1 December 2022
• Programme Length: 01:23:50

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 14 - Chantal Esdelle

Trinidadian composer and educator Chantal Esdelle, a Berklee College of Music graduate, holds an important place among jazz musicians in the islands, as she is one of, if not the only female band leader who is a renowned pianist there. A multifaceted individual — performer, producer, promoter — who has, since 2000, released two albums as leader with her band Moyenne, and produced another pair of live compilation albums, all on her Ethnic Jazz Club label, Esdelle has put into the wider public domain, music guided by her understanding of the African experience in the Americas that challenges Caribbean people's notion of identity, and clarifies what it means to be a New World African. Her extensive pan-Caribbean music connections serve to define "ethnic jazz" as a new standard for engagement and exchange in jazz. She chats about being and doing. Fri, 23 Sep 2022

• Programme Date: 23 September 2022
• Programme Length: 01:30:13

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 10 - Cameron Pierre

Guitarist Cameron Pierre has come full circle returning to his native Dominica after a multi-decade recording and performing career in the UK. After establishing an important Caribbean jazz presence there, with six albums produced, he reflects on the journey to this point. Beginning in the reggae scene here in the islands and into the UK, his evolution towards jazz through the 1980s and beyond traces a parallel development of how the Caribbean musical DNA has influenced the society there. Photo by Jonathan Trotman.

• Programme Date: 5 August 2022
• Programme Length: 01:26:58

An Evening with VB: Exclusive ♥ Intimate ♥ Safe – a review

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Vaughnette Bigford, VB. Very Beautiful, Vigorously Bold, Vivacious and Black. Melanin don’t lie. This was a Victory over the Blight of COVID-19. This was not necessarily an evening of firsts, this was a return to the stage she commanded back in November of 2011 with her first Shades of Vaughnette concert. This, however, felt like a gathering of the faithful. Or more accurately, a “re-gathering,” as faces became familiar to one who has gone to just about every concert the Creole Chanteuse has put on. (Beyond her “putting on” her concerts, this reviewer has built productions starring VB. The business of VB concerts is Valuable and Benefits the local creative economy.) We know her well. We bought all the tickets. We held them until it was time. Now is the time. Who is bucking the trend by having sold out shows when other people only want to give audiences a “Taste of..?” (Who Voted for that Bullshit?) 

Clive ‘Zanda’ Alexander (1939 – 2022) — a Tribute²

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An edited version of this article appeared in the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday on 11 January 2022 as "Zanda’s legacy for the ages"

Six days into 2022, and we as a nation have lost two calypsonians of different generations who added to the canon at opposite ends of the season, one founding man-of-words who gave the rapso movement flight and permanence, and now this. Clive ‘Zanda’ Alexander passed early this morning, and with his passing, our music universe here in T&T got significantly smaller. Not necessarily because his recorded output would salvage the otherwise discarded memories of our islands’ music heritage, but because his passing signals a deflation of the idea that our creative industries will save us from the hell that is a post-COVID recovery. Zanda represented legacy, which in these isles is abandoned like a costume on Carnival Tuesday or a soca tune from a year before.

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

Playlist (January/February 2021) | Music reviews

Bridges Jesse Ryan

(Fwé Culture)

As world fusion in jazz continually moves one away from the primary centre defined by the blues and swing, global musicians take up the challenge of improvisation over a sonic bed of native and ethnic rhythms and melodies. Jesse Ryan, a Trinidad-born saxophonist now based in Canada, joins a group of Caribbean musicians seeking ways to successfully commercialise the “West Indian accent in jazz.” On half of Bridges, his debut album, he explores the rhythmic pulse of Tobago’s native tambrin band music. Modern jazz interpolation with the sound of the tambourine drum creates a soundscape for another interpretation of New World African music. With a subdued sound mix, sublime conversations between guitar, piano, sax, and percussion become epic in intention, effective in interpretation. This brilliant album, three years in the making, is an opening statement of a new jazz artist in the diaspora reconnecting with his roots to seal the idea of Caribbean music beyond a dance accompaniment.

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Viento y Tiempo: Live at Blue Note Tokyo Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Aymée Nuviola

(Top Stop Music)

Cuba is an enigma for many travellers in the Americas. Its music salvages its imposed reputation as an outlier. Performance and its recording in global cities fortify a notion, widely recognised in the Caribbean, of the supremacy of the canon and artistry of Cuban musicians. Afro-Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba and singer Aymée Nuviola, “La Sonera del Mundo” — both Grammy winners — performing before an audience in Japan, offer “a tribute to the music that flows through the streets of Havana which we grew up with.” Rumba and jazz, classic son montunos and danzonetes, boleros and ballads, and other tropical rhythms are mixed with call and response singing, jazz improvisation, percussive breaks, and dynamic piano playing to recorded elation from a Tokyo crowd. The collaboration of these childhood friends, and others, suggests Cuba’s musical history is manifestly rich.

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1. These reviews appear in the January/February 2021 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

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

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 5 - Reginald Cyntje

Jazz trombonist, Reginald Cyntje is the ultimate Caribbean jazz musician. Born in Dominica, raised in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, of Curaçaoan heritage, he is the epitome of a Caribbean musician making it in the United States. With the release of his sixth album, Healing, Reginald chats with us on this album and his previous albums' development, and his growth as an artist and a jazz teacher.

• Programme Date: 16 November 2020
• Programme Length: 01:17:24

Three Island Songbirds: The Trinidad Edition

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Courtesy Caribbean Beat magazine. An MEP publication

Islands in the Caribbean have been fertile spaces for the evolution of global talent. Caribbean music has played a major role in the development of popular music worldwide, and the building blocks of those island music industries must be the singers and musicians who make all this music. Female singers of pedigree have been spotted in these islands and have used their skill to carve out careers in the world, with varying success. Tony Award winner Heather Headley from Trinidad, and Barbados-bred superstar Rihanna easily come to mind as artists who were incubated in the islands to grow and succeed in the rest of the world.

Peculiar to Trinidad and Tobago is the yearning to be something different. The idea of being a globally popular soca singer has a grip on many female singers there, but there is an equally persistent belief that singing genres outside of the circumscribed diaspora Carnival circuit would pay greater dividends in the long run. As an aside, Calypso Rose’s six-decade career in calypso with accolades still accruing, however, is noticeably not seen as a signpost for modern success for some, but there are others who see her career as inspiration.

Playlist (November/December 2019) | Music reviewsª

Grafted Ijó

(Spielzart Entertainment)

Caribbean jazz, like its North American precursor, has been a collaborative effort: a musical conversation, despite singular stars in the pantheon. Ijó, out of Trinidad, seek to fulfil the role of eminent conversationalists within the context of the myriad musical influences that bathe their island nation. This new band on the Caribbean jazz scene is made up of top individual session musicians, a kind of supergroup that does not disappoint on their first effort. Orisha drumming is captured on “Black Rose”, alongside a hint of the transplanted Indian presence in “Nari” and world fusion gone mad on the track “Ijó” — just some of the soundscapes one may traverse on this album. Long in gestation, Grafted takes its time to grow on the listener. So powerful are the individual voices that the “accents” are sometimes hard to decipher within the elegance of the melodies and harmonies.

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1. This review appears in the November/December 2019 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

© 2019, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 4 - Elan Trotman

Elan Trotman, Boston-based contemporary jazz saxophonist from Barbados discusses the business of jazz with Jazz in the Islands. In 2019, he released his new album Dear Marvin, a saxophone tribute to the late great Marvin Gaye on the Woodward Avenue label. We get the Caribbean-American perspective from this Berklee College of Music alumnus about the significance and possible advantage of label distribution in enhancing the brand via radio and physical sales. This year also marks the sixth anniversary of his Barbados Jazz Excursion, a major destination festival in the islands where contemporary jazz meets the sun, sand and sea.

• Programme Date: 22 September 2019
• Programme Length: 00:39:14

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 3 - Clive Zanda

The father of modern kaisojazz, Trinidadian pianist Clive Zanda recounts a career spanning from his days in England in the 1960s innovating with the fusion of calypso in the language of jazz, to his return to Trinidad and his collaboration with Scofield Pilgrim, Bajan-born kaisojazz theorist and pedagogue and beyond. The explorations of this new fusion exercise was given "proof of concept" in 1976 with the landmark album, clive zanda is here! "With dat kinda ting": Calypsojazz Innovations. His continuing efforts to create a philosophy for our understanding of jazz and kaiso music in the Caribbean are told with his development of a new book on the music and how to apply music theory to make kaisojazz music more than a niche music but a legacy.

• Programme Date: 25 January 2019
• Programme Length: 01:08:36

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 2 - Ming of Élan Parlē

Composer, producer and recording artist, Michael 'Ming' Low Chew Tung is called by Jazz in the Islands, "the architect of the new calypso jazz in the 21st century in Trinidad and Tobago" for his band/brand Élan Parlē. In this in-depth and revealing chat, 'Ming' gives an oral autobiography that gives clues to how he became the major influence in modern jazz fusion in Trinidad and Tobago, and puts into perspective the trials and tribulations of the native artist in the music industry in the Caribbean. With eight CDs of original music and innovative covers under his belt and a handful of important albums by others on which he is the producer and label host, Ming's position and role in the jazz music sector is secure as a high benchmark for a new generation of musicians and singers to match, if not surpass. Calypso jazz and the jazz fusion in these islands is secure in the hands of Ming.

• Programme Date: 9 January 2019
• Programme Length: 01:12:09

Jazz possibilities...an aside!

Not too long ago, the word "jazz" would put people off for an event: "That is my parents music." Thankfully, those days are over, as more than a dozen events with multiple cast members have the word "jazz" in the titles or are featuring self-proclaimed jazz artists. And this does not even include the four Women In Jazz concerts at Fiesta Plaza, MovieTowne Trinidad. (Shout out to Rosezanna Winchester, LeAndra Head, Candice Caton and Genisa St Hilaire.) I glad. Now a new audience is waking up to the possibilities outside of soca fetes for live entertainment. A circuit for musicians, a wide variety of locations, a new normal for audiences. Read my previous post on Jazz as the Fad in Trinidad.