Karl Doyle: The Brand New Heavy

Tuesday, April, 6, was the date of a fascinating event in the calendar of jazz performances here in Port of Spain. Karl Doyle, along with his partner Jean-Marc Aimey hosted the second jam session of their weekly Jazz & Fusion Tuesdays @ La Casa de Ibiza that featured young lion musicians, saxman and flautist Tony Paul, panmen Derron Ellies and Kern Sumerville, bassist Peter Noel, guitarist Dean Williams and Karl himself on drums. Even Modupe Folasade Onilu fell in on drums for a couple of numbers. A couple singers even ventured into the realm of kings.

This jam inspired this writer to give a running commentary on Facebook via Twitter to one of the fans who is abroad. As I tweeted that night,

"Karl Doyle & krew just turned a bunch of limers into jazz fans. Awesome!"

Young lions of TT Jazz

For the first three weekdays in August, young lions in the sphere of jazz music in Trinidad preened and pointed the way for musicians of other genres and generations to duplicate. On Monday, Aug 3, Etienne Charles launched his new CD Folklore at a listening party at the jazz-themed restaurant, Satchmo's in Woodbrook. In anticipation of a short live set, the crowd grew larger than the dining room that hosted it as the night moved on. Etienne, and fellow young lion, saxophonist, Tony Woodroffe, Jr., recently back from studies at Leeds University, played their instruments with a maturity belying their ages.

Etienne's music represents the genesis of a transformational moment that comes in generations. Back in 1956, Sparrow and his Jean and Dinah marked that kind of generational shift that propelled calypso forward through the shortened zenith of the Belafonte's Calypso age a year hence. Trinidad and the diaspora are richer for Charles' and Woodroffe's sojourn into the musical spaces that exist for local musicians who are brave enough to go into them without fear of the rhetoric of failure. Folklore is an impressive achievement, and solidifies in my mind that Etienne is at a place musically where most local musicians have not even seen much less entered. Things can only get better with more interaction with this artist of both profound intellect and subtle style who uses the canon of local rhythm and melodies to create the new.