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

Freedom Jazz Jam, a review²

An edited version of this review first appeared in the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday as “Vaughnette Bigford jazzes up the Bowl” on 30 July 2023.

As the unending post-Carnival 2023 jazz season overlaps with the 2024 Carnival band launch season, the Naparima Bowl became an all-encompassing sold-out space for live music magic and fashion statement making. Vaughnette Bigford, the Creole Chanteuse, on Saturday, July 22 continued her evolution from “jazz singer” to producer of live music experiences that go beyond the stage to touch and encourage audiences to show their true colours. Freedom Jazz Jam was described by her as a “celebration of us,” and on the weekend before the Emancipation Day festivities the Jam manifested in a real creative industry mix of music and fashion, pride and pulchritude. 

An hour before the showtime was a pre-concert reception in the Bowl’s courtyard that showcased more than fan appreciation for this southern songbird, but a manifestation of local fashion design and couture celebration, and a display of individual attachment to heritage in all the colours under an African sun. Local designer names were spoken: Prindela Fashions, Kimo, Diane Carlton Caribbean, Rack.PDH plus, Nadroj, and others that put into perspective that real commercial synergy of sectors in the creative industries at this event. 

A Coda before Christmas – A Celebration of Us

Someone chook meh for my impressions of Vaughnette Bigford's latest musical project, “RWB: A Celebration Of Us, last night at the Central Bank Auditorium: “Oh God, yuh know you and dem words nah.” I won’t be long.

Last night was necessary. It was a coda alright, but also the re-opening of our live engagement with quality, our communal face-to-face and tangible expressions of joy before the seasons of celebration where brio and bacchanal reign.

Class is class, we know that. When you have the best musicians on the island arranging and playing, and intelligence brimming from the mind of the Creole Chanteuse, you know it’s not just a succession of local songs that sometimes linger in our memories, but an investigation and revelation of the possibilities of that catalogue of Trinidad and Tobago songs that sometimes thrives here and there, or sometimes remains desolate at the bottom of the barrel of commercial appeal in these islands. It’s hard here for a songwriter; a seasonal approval, or a permanent neglect for the next new fad from Trinidad, the new tourist leggo from Tobago. The local ebb and flow of appreciation and demand is constant.

Vaughnette brought back some nuggets from an era when local musicians were battling for appreciation from foreign taste-makers, media programmers and record labels, to make it, and sometimes winning. Some migrated, many stayed and worked a system that either rewards or discards. Vaughnette brought those songs back to life. Ming (Michael Low Chew Tung), Theron Shaw and Rodney Alexander worked their magic to make them brand new for older fans, and intriguing for new acolytes to the majesty of the local songbook.

The production was near flawless. One can niggle over misspellings of artiste credits or perceived emotional disconnect during a song, but as a package, Vaughnette has set the standard for singer showcase concerts. We know that, but there was more. “Born to Shine” met “Born to Shine”: Carol Addison, the original singer, was present for Vaughnette Bigford in her space. That is huge. Roger Bonair-Agard's griot vibrations made New World African citizens, and everybody else who have ears to hear, say yes: Pan is ours, pan is Black. “We declare by the Orishas that the oil drum is Ogun’s…We declare pan, Sacred and Black!” Ray Holman strummed a guitar to recover precious local memories from two generations ago, a living lyrical portrait of us. The bhangra/soca mashup with urban Qawwali song styling of Neval Chatelal is us. The rock and roll, the reggae, the kaisojazz, the calypso, soca and elevated island pop music is us. It’s all of us. "RWB: A Celebration of Us" delivered a reminder, that we are not circumscribed by narrow ideas of who we are or can be.

As we move into 2023, let’s hope that we can continue to commercially validate what she presents, much like we did this year, and in 2021, during those windows of COVID-19 relief for gatherings. This tribe, this fandom looks to brighter things as we reclaim what we own, what we sing and play, what and who we are. The celebration continues.

I’ll leave it there for now. More in my mind, but not in my pen.

© 2022, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

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?) 

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.

21 Songs – “Vaughnette Bigford Live in Concert,” a review

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For those who are counting, Vaughnette Bigford sang 21 songs at her sold-out Live in Concert event at the Central Bank auditorium in Port of Spain on Saturday 9 November 2019, and in those 21 songs, the world outside of Trinidad and Tobago opened up to us. 

That world of music that has become a staple of Vaughnette's concerts is alive and accessible. We, as audience members and patrons who are open to the possibilities of future engagements with The Creole Chanteuse, have an opportunity, and dare I say, an obligation to engage with the higher sensibilities of our nature as we recognize excellence. 

 

21 songs took us on a journey that we have made before. The jazz, local and World Music songbooks of decades were again laid open for us to enter with an assurance that we would come out on the other side enlightened. That journey in 2019 held the surprise of discovering the new beyond the vapid leitmotif of the familiar “pop songs done jazzily.” 21 songs of enhanced harmonic promise were laid bare. Ennui was eschewed, elation ensued. 

Vaughnette Bigford...the New Standard

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On Saturday night, Vaughnette Bigford gave a performance at the sacred space, The Little Carib Theatre in Port of Spain that had an impact beyond mere words. The superlatives have been expounded on Facebook and elsewhere about her performance, the song set, the production, the guests. What has not been expanded upon so much is the seismic shift that has occurred in how we as an audience now expect local shows to be gauged.

To say that Vaughnette’s show has gone back to its roots, back to square one, would be to minimise its impact on a sold out audience. The tropes of her successful southern shows were all there: the range of songs from the jazz, local and World music songbooks (see song list below), the multiple languages flawlessly rendered, the hauntingly beautiful bass guitar and voice duo song (Putting Up a Resistance), the regulars shouting picong from the rafters! I have been to her Southern shows, Shades of Vaughnette, and have reviewed them for the newspapers here and here, and elsewhere. (Take your time, and read the reviews to get a sense of Vaughnette’s art.) I was there when she made the determined transition to the creole chanteuse who was born to shine and “owned” the local songbook of calypsos and 1970s island pop. Shit, I was there when she headlined Jazz Artists On The Greens - JAOTG in 2017 and graced the cover of my magazine, Jazz in the Islands.

Caribbean Beat Caribbean Playlist – May/June 2017ª

Born to Shine Vaughnette Bigford 

(Self Released)

Creole chanteuse Vaughnette Bigford delivers a sublime mix of tunes from her native Trinidadian songbook on her debut album Born to Shine. With a restrained but fine voice that captures the timbre and phrasing of excellent jazz singing, Bigford transforms familiar calypsos and island pop songs from the 1970s and 80s into well-wrought modern jazz and R&B settings that highlight fine examples of local songcraft. “All these years of toil, burning the midnight oil / Creating something from nothing,” wrote soca pioneer Lord Shorty in 1978. Bigford literally and figuratively has done just that with these rehashed songs. The proverb “don’t judge a book by its cover,” may be applied here — defaults in packaging design aside — as we bask in the splendour of what’s inside the music. High production value, lucid enunciation of lyrics needing to be heard, and elevation of island song are the hallmarks of an audacious debut destined to shine brightly.

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1. More Caribbean Playlist reviews appear in the May/June 2017 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

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

That Happened last night: Vaughnette Bigford at Kaiso Blues

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It happened last night. I have known Vaughnette Bigford for a while now as a superb singer in the style of those smoky voiced songstresses from a bygone jazz era reborn in the 21st century. Abbey Lincoln “reborn” as Cassandra Wilson. Nina Simone, however, is the template I see when I see Vaughnette. Another is Miriam Makeba. Them two born she! VOH'net! Our Vaughnette is the modern creole chanteuse, the New World African queen. Not a diva, but the real thing imbuing a Trinidadian ethos missing from many young interlopers singing jazz here. Vaughnette has been a star for many years. A star who has her own in-demand splendid concerts in the south, Shades of Vaughnette. I have written about her three Shades concerts over the years. (I, II, III) I had hosted her at Jazz Artists on the Greens in 2009 before she made her live debut as a SONGBIRD in that series later that year at Aura Restaurant (now Town on Cipriani Blvd.). I recognise her worth. I know that when Vaughnette sings, an audience expectation of a fulfilling experience will be met and exceeded. I know that she will deliver at a level of professionalism that supersedes even stars in other genres. 

Shades of Vaughnette III: Milestones - a review¹

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Resplendent, as always, in the couture of southern design team, Zadd & Eastman, Vaughnette Bigford made a successful return to her annual concert series, Shades of Vaughnette, at the Sundar Popo Theatre at the NAPA South Campus in San Fernando after a two-year break for the recency of motherhood. With a mix of local and jazz/R&B covers, Bigford reclaimed her status of the premier jazz stylist in these islands whose palette knows no geographic boundaries. She is well known for handling the American jazz songbook, international hits in many languages, and especially for her take on the local song catalogue and suffusing these tunes with the dissonant harmonic tones of jazz. And that night, Saturday November 8, she did not disappoint.

This year’s show, the third in the series and subtitled Milestones to celebrate a decade as a professional performer follows a pattern of expanding the local audiences' understanding and appreciation of a global repertoire of songs, and reinforcing the idea that the local song—whether it is calypso, soca or island pop—can become a celebratory anthem beyond a narrow Carnival season cycle that predominates the industry. Opening the show with a nod to American jazz singer Carmen Lundy with a cover of her hit “Wild Child”, Bigford soon engaged the senses with a phonetically accurate reading of French chanteuse Annick Tangorra’s “Lolita Fleur Creole.” Language is not a barrier for the appreciation of great songcraft.

Caribbean Beat Reviews – July/August 2014ª

Jazz Racine Haïti Jacques Schwarz-Bart

Guadeloupean tenor saxophonist Jacques Schwarz-Bart, as a child heard Haitian vodou ritual songs played by his mother and celebrated author, Simone Schwarz-Bart, as a soundtrack to their life of literary idyll in the Caribbean. That memory of the music, and his own yearning to create jazz that is reflective of his French-Caribbean heritage propelled Schwarz-Bart to first perform and later, to record Jazz Racine Haïti as a document of the spiritual journey beyond Haiti all the way back to Africa. To re-arrange vodou music for this band featuring jazz musicians and two houngans (vodou priests) was an exercise to engage with the greatness of this music. “That dialogue with silence [music] creates a doorway to the unknown.” “Legba Nan Baye” fuses, in real time, ritual music and jazz, voice and tenor sax. African-Caribbean grooves that drive this music beyond spirituality achieve a synergy where modern jazz and vodou are one.

  

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TriniJazz Project Various Artists

Michael “Ming “ Low Chew Tung is the architect of 21st century jazz recording and performance in Trinidad and Tobago, following on from mentors like Clive Zanda and Mike Boothman, prolifically producing original music to add to the local canon. Now, he acts as mentor and producer for a new generation of young jazz musicians and singers with a new CD, TriniJazz Project. Polished arrangements and smooth jazz elements shouldn’t suggest any sell-out to the aesthetics of Caribbean luxe tourism or middlebrow leisure culture, but in the hands of the players, Tony Paul (sax), Rodney Alexander (bass), Modupe Onilu (percussion), Dean Williams (guitar) and smoky voiced chanteuse Vaughnette Bigford these ten tunes are a celebration of how we sing, dance and live in these islands. The reframed calypsoes of Bigford, the rhythmic pulse of Onilu, and the improvised joy by the others say “trinijazz” is the definition of accomplished.

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1. More Caribbean Playlist reviews appear in the July/August 2014 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

April is Jazz Month in Trinidad too¹

In a month of many entertainment options labelled “jazz”, the first weekend showcased some of the best music performances heard in these parts for a while. April has been recognised as Jazz Appreciation Month in the United States via the Smithsonian along with the UNESCO sponsored International Jazz Day culminating at month’s end with global jazz events including Trinidad.

Pianist Master Gunnery Sgt Robert Boguslaw, and double bassist Gunnery Sgt Eric Sabo—of “The President’s Own” US Marine Band—along with saxophonist Jeffrey Wills of Nashville, Tennessee were here in T&T for a second year to give jazz performances and do music workshops on the first weekend. These skilled musicians spoke the language of jazz that has not been heard locally for a while with performances reflecting the styles of Thelonius Monk, Chick Corea, even handling Etienne Charles “Santimanité” with technical aplomb. Mixing standards with original compositions, the solos captured the swing music ethos majestically with the virtuosity of the solos of a high calibre. Boguslaw's piano style is worth emulating locally as an immediate template for expansion of the genre.

High Notes and a Bright Future: 2012, a Year in TT Jazz¹

In the dwindling days of 2012 when there was a hubbub over the creative industries and the planned state enterprise model for its growth, we had the pending fall-out over the government's counter-strategy of using its favoured soca son to drive the local music industry. These conflicting regimes by separate ministries to make our music global ignored the fact that the industry of music happily went along, dynamic and fluid, all the time improvising to the changes in the nature of attribution (copyright), distribution and now global exploitation. Improvisation is a key element of jazz, and here in TT, that niche of the local music landscape reflects some of the bigger issues that plague and guide that industry.

The demise of the only local terrestrial station dedicated to jazz, WMJX 100.5 FM and its subsequent conversion to an online format a couple years ago would have put the nail in the coffin of a less cherished musical heritage. Jazz and certainly its Caribbean variant, however, continue finding its centre via concerts and a few new CD releases by those dedicated artistes challenging the music genres outside of soca, calypso and parang.

Shades of Vaughnette: A Review

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Vaughnette Bigford, forever in my mind, a SONGBIRD, delivered a magnum opus with her sold-out production "Shades of Vaughnette: The concert experience" at the Naparima Bowl in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago that can serve as a template for singers and performers here in these islands. Her song list touched Nat 'King' Cole and Bob Marley, and ranged from torch songs and jazz standards made popular by Nancy Wilson (An Older Man Is Like An Elegant Wine), Abbey Lincoln (Long as You're Living) to international hits originally sung by Miriam Makeba (Soweto Blues) and Tania Maria (Yatra Ta), and included enough local compositions by Andre Tanker, 'Nappy' Meyers and Ras Shorty I to make this reviewer happy. But I err on the side of caution when I sit in an audience of fans, happily, whose body language suggests that we need to listen to a lot more music from any and all genres.

Audiences are hard to please, and the suspension of belief that an entertainer takes when confronting an audience that generally gravitates towards a handful of songs and memories of songs of others, makes song choice difficult. Very accessible music like Randy Crawford's "One Day I'll Fly Away" is a crowd-pleaser, but the more esoteric song choices like "Yatra Ta" by Tania Maria are applauded with respect at musicianship and obligation suggesting at not knowing how to react. I heard an audience member commenting, "when will she sing songs that I know?" To cringe at the indiscipline of the audience is faux elitism. I understand, but I refuse to pander to nostalgia and escapism. Behave and learn. However, to know one's place in an auditorium of folks looking to be entertained after restrictive curfew limitations have been recently lifted is to be part of the joy of sharing in great talent.