Si­mon Lee

I swore, in mem­o­ry of Ras Shorty I and Ar­row, I'd nev­er sit and lis­ten to so­ca again in the king­dom of this world.But then I hadn't bar­gained on Eti­enne Charles' ver­sion of his favourite so­ca song-Sug­ar Bum Bum. Which just goes to prove how wrong I can be but more sig­nif­i­cant­ly what bril­liance can em­anate from a horn man who is as fas­tid­i­ous about his waist­coat as he is about har­mo­ny, phras­ing, im­pro­vi­sa­tion and ho­n­our­ing Trinidad's great kaiso lega­cy with sen­si­tive, genre-stretch­ing arrange­ments.

Still the right side of 30, Eti­enne, seems to be em­u­lat­ing the soar­ing tra­jec­to­ry of oth­er trum­pet­ing greats like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gille­spie, both in his pre­coc­i­ty and will­ing­ness to re­vis­it the past for his present ex­plo­rations.His con­cert at Queen's Hall on Sat­ur­day night, which closed this year's T&T Steel­pan & Jazz Fes­ti­val, pro­duced by the QRC Foun­da­tion, was a full-house ex­pec­tant af­fair.

Eti­enne and his sex­tet ful­filled and sur­passed ex­pec­ta­tions with a mu­si­cal jour­ney which trav­elled the jazz mi­gra­to­ry route from Africa and yes the Caribbean,to New Or­leans, with de­tours to Lon­don, Grena­da, Guade­loupe and spe­cif­ic lo­ca­tions in Trinidad, some of which like the in­fa­mous but fun fun fun Mi­ra­mar Club, are on­ly a twin­kle in an old head's eye.

Al­though as Sean Thomas can con­firm, a jazzman's life in Trinidad eh easy and the bal­lad is the same through­out the re­gion; even stay-at-home greats like St Lu­cia's Luther Fran­cois ex­ist pre­car­i­ous­ly be­tween the ho­tel lob­by and the oc­ca­sion­al gig, usu­al­ly an af­ter­thought on the bill of a stale trip trap R&B funky dunk fes­ti­val for dem from for­eign.

The as­pir­ing Caribbean jazzer af­ter stud­ies at Berklee or Jul­liard, usu­al­ly dis­ap­pears some­where north of Mi­a­mi, so it's to Eti­enne's cred­it that he's not turned his back, or his horn on T&T.Far from it. His three al­bums (Cul­ture Shock, Folk­lore and most re­cent­ly Kaiso) have all tapped heav­i­ly in­to our mu­si­cal lega­cy, re­work­ing it and in some in­stances open­ing up en­tire new mu­si­cal vis­tas and vi­sions, which be­side the plea­sure they evoke in the con­tem­po­rary scene, keep the mu­sic, spir­it and sto­ries of icons like Roar­ing Li­on, Mighty Spar­row and de Grand­mas­ter him­self, Lord Kitch­en­er, vi­brant­ly alive.

For the Queen's Hall show Eti­enne put to­geth­er a sex­tet, which oc­ca­sion­al­ly swelled to septet, fea­tur­ing Caribbean and North Amer­i­can per­son­nel.Match­ing Eti­enne's horn on sax was Guade­lou­pean Jacques Schwartz-Bart, look­ing every inch the fly Jew­ish Big Ap­ple di­a­mond mer­chant, in heavy frame glass­es perched un­der black with dis­creet ver­ti­cal white stripes be­bop pork pie, and beige linen suit.

You know these French An­til­leans are sharp, and Jacques doesn't on­ly dress but plays the part too: his lyri­cism com­ple­ment­ing Eti­enne, rarely self­ish­ly out­blow­ing him, even when the rhythms put fire in his blood.Sul­li­van Fort­ner on pi­ano be­trayed his New Or­leans ori­gins with a bar­rel-house in­flec­tion re­call­ing Jel­ly Roll Mor­ton and Fats Domi­no, while Terre­on Gul­ly on drums and Cur­tis Luques on bass showed affin­i­ty with the Caribbean rhythms the two sets de­mand­ed.

Bri­an Hogans on al­to sax looked to be con­tin­u­al­ly on the brink of talk­ing off through the au­di­to­ri­um roof. Among the high­lights of the first set was Kitch's "be­bop of ca­lyp­so," which al­lowed for an ex­tend­ed re­view of Kitch's mu­si­cal vo­cab­u­lary.While we know of Kitch's com­po­si­tions with steel­pan in mind, few know that he was an ac­com­plished dou­ble bassist, with an ear for the lat­est mu­si­cal de­vel­op­ments.

Ho­n­our­ing his men­tors, Eti­enne called Lord Su­pe­ri­or up for a cou­ple of num­bers, hit­ting the heady hu­mour of the tent with his "Michael Jack­son"-"When Michael Jack­son was black, every pres­i­dent was white but as soon as Michael Jack­son turned white, the pres­i­dent turned black."The first set con­clud­ed with Spar­row's bad­john an­them Ten to One, with men­ac­ing bass chop­ping un­der Eti­enne's rac­ing horn, a blood­cur­dling al­to sax so­lo and the au­di­ence roped in as call and re­sponse cho­rus.

In the sec­ond set Sug­ar Boom Boom romped away a clear win­ner with its un­der­stat­ed trum­pet melody prov­ing less is some­times more and pos­ing the ques­tion-why aren't more T&T mu­si­cians ex­plor­ing the trea­sures gath­er­ing dust like all those emp­ty sky scrap­ers in town?The fi­nale-Roar­ing Li­on's Jou­vay Bar­rio-con­firmed Eti­enne is a Jou­vert man (his out­ing on con­gas sealed his per­cus­sion creds).

Call­ing on 3 Canal to join the band, Eti­enne ac­knowl­edged oth­er (rea­son­ably) young J'Ou­vert devo­tees, whose Blue marked a re­vival of the most vi­brant part of Car­ni­val.While the cur­rent steel­band and jazz fes­ti­val may not match the in­ter­na­tion­al star stud­ded cast of its 80s and ear­ly 90s fore­run­ner, we are both for­tu­nate and proud to have Eti­enne Charles pay this fly­ing vis­it, which will keep us be­bop­ping Cre­ole style till his re­turn.