Nigel A Camp­bell

With a sold-out au­di­to­ri­um, re­flect­ing a sim­i­lar de­mand as his pre­vi­ous con­certs in 2015 and 2016, Charles was able to present in a well-pro­duced show the his­to­ry and sto­ry of the mu­sic that serves as a foun­da­tion for the tra­di­tions and rit­u­als that have formed our Car­ni­val for over 100 years.

What be­came ev­i­dent, as the night moved on, was that those in the au­di­ence who did not know of the his­to­ry and tra­di­tions of Car­ni­val and the mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment would be in­spired to recog­nise that the im­pe­tus for cre­ativ­i­ty in these is­lands is sus­tained by mod­ern folk pre­serv­ing tra­di­tions and cre­at­ing av­enues for new au­di­ences.

The mono­logue of the Mid­night Rob­ber (Dami­an Whiskey) served as a pre­cur­sor for the evening in which the whip crack of the jab jab, the chant of the Black In­di­an (An­der­son Patrick) and the screech of the jab mo­lassie res­onat­ed, jux­ta­posed, and syn­co­pat­ed with Charles and his band of Amer­i­can mu­si­cians to cre­ate new mu­sic that cel­e­brates cre­ole in­tel­li­gence much the same way as a 19-year-old Wal­cott's words in Hen­ri Christophe did in the past.

Those sounds worked to en­hance the har­mon­ic re­sponse of the com­pos­er and the im­pro­vi­sa­tions for soloists God­win Louis on al­to sax­o­phone, Alex Wintz on gui­tar, and the bril­liant Chris­t­ian Sands on pi­ano.

Aug­ment­ed by the pres­ence of Ever­ald "Red­man" Wat­son, "Li­on" Os­una and young Kay­o­de Charles, all on African per­cus­sion-djem­be, dun­dun, con­ga and shak shak-drum­mer John Davis drove the band and the body of mu­sic to paths of en­light­ened sur­prise and ela­tion.

The mu­sic of the Sweet Fin­gers Tam­brin band of To­ba­go, the chantuelle's call and re­sponse of the Clax­ton Bay tam­boo bam­boo band, the stac­ca­to tat­too on the Crix bis­cuit tins of the 2001 Jab Mo­lassie band from Paramin were all giv­en space to stand side by side with Charles' mu­si­cal an­swer to the his­to­ry of re­pres­sion and sub­ju­ga­tion of the na­tive drum sound that marked Car­ni­val's evo­lu­tion.

A high­light for many was the sub­lime duet with pan mas­ter on the fourth move­ment of the "suite with­in a suite," Black Echo, which chart­ed the Afro-Caribbean re­sponse to the ban­ning of the drum to the evo­lu­tion of the pan.

The bawdy "walk and wine" of the Dame Lor­raine and the flour­ish and par­ry of the bois man in the gayelle were the dances al­so giv­en promi­nence by mu­sic that ac­counts for the nu­mer­ous as­pects of our rich Car­ni­val his­to­ry.

Eti­enne Charles is the chantuelle with a horn.

With this pro­duc­tion he sug­gests that our an­nu­al mod­ern Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions and the events sur­round­ing it have far to go to cap­ture the ethos, the pro­duc­tion val­ues and, im­por­tant­ly, the in­tel­li­gence dis­played that night.

The cel­e­bra­tion of Car­ni­val: The Sound of a Peo­ple trav­elled out­side of the hall as the lavway con­tin­ued with an im­promp­tu sing-along by a sat­is­fied au­di­ence of vin­tage ca­lyp­soes ac­com­pa­nied by Charles and the drum­mers. The Sound of a Peo­ple was fes­tive, for jazz in the Caribbean is im­pro­vised joy.

Nigel Camp­bell