Nigel A Camp­bell

Over the re­cent Car­ni­val sea­son, two Tri­ni ex­pat jazz mu­si­cians res­i­dent in the Great White North of Cana­da–Toron­to, to be ex­act–re­turned home for sus­te­nance, va­ca­tion, and cre­ative idyll.

An­tho­ny Pierre, founder of Caribbean jazz out­fit Kal­abash, and Brown­man Ali, mul­ti­ple award-win­ning trum­peter, in­for­mal­ly "pressed the flesh" with lo­cal mu­si­cians and fans, both out­lin­ing their plans for 2013. Their com­mon ex­pe­ri­ence in Toron­to is one that can set a tem­plate for lo­cal mu­si­cians who seek favour in the world be­yond the Caribbean di­as­po­ra cities.

Kal­abash, fea­tur­ing Pierre, has just fin­ished record­ing a new CD–its sec­ond in 12 years–and is shop­ping it around to the sum­mer jazz fes­ti­val pro­mot­ers as it seeks to get back in­to the ac­tive jazz per­for­mance scene af­ter a qui­et 2012.

Brown­man is the epit­o­me of a busy mu­si­cian, per­form­ing close to 200 dates per year when not al­so teach­ing and do­ing work­shops.

He re­turned to T&T af­ter Car­ni­val to per­form two small gigs with top jazz drum­mer Sean Thomas and bassist BJ Saun­ders as a trio, ex­plor­ing mod­ern elec­tric jazz, orig­i­nal­ly de­fined by Miles Davis af­ter his Bitch­es Brew pe­ri­od.

The re­turn of Pierre and Ali led to ques­tions about the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of a mu­sic ca­reer out­side of this space, and es­pe­cial­ly a jazz mu­sic ca­reer.

Toron­to seems to be a haven for the Caribbean mi­grant seek­ing for­tune in the cre­ative in­dus­tries. Caribbean-born au­thors have found com­mer­cial and lit­er­ary suc­cess there.

Cana­da has been de­scribed, in re­cent times, as post-eth­nic and trans-cul­tur­al, so the idea of Caribbean-born mu­si­cians play­ing jazz, in­flu­enced by their home­lands, to an ea­ger mar­ket there is not un­re­al.

It is a more open-mar­ket than the in­tro­vert­ed Unit­ed States, which is genre-re­strict­ed and de­fines mu­sic with jar­gon terms such as world fu­sion jazz, eth­nic jazz or non-west­ern jazz.

Brown­man and Kal­abash rep­re­sent test cas­es for the ex­am­i­na­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of lo­cal mu­si­cians mak­ing a space in the crowd­ed glob­al mu­sic mar­ket.

Or­gan­ised mu­sic mar­kets like Cana­da have the range of com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties in record­ing, mu­sic pub­lish­ing and live per­for­mance with sup­port­ing leg­is­la­tion, cor­po­rate struc­ture and high lev­els of sub­sidy to en­hance and sta­bilise them.

Too of­ten, lo­cal­ly-based mu­si­cians de­cry the con­di­tions and the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment here in T&T: low lev­els of copy­right in­fringe­ment pros­e­cu­tion; low lo­cal con­tent played on broad­cast me­dia; min­i­mal pro­mo­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties out­side of Car­ni­val; few­er venues for live per­for­mances; high pro­duc­tion costs, low prospects of re­turn on in­vest­ment, based on all of the above.

As a sec­tor of the cre­ative in­dus­tries in Cana­da, the mu­sic in­dus­try there has yield­ed some of the biggest artists on the plan­et across mul­ti­ple gen­res: Ce­line Dion, Justin Bieber, Di­ana Krall, Michael Bubl�, Drake, Sha­nia Twain, Nick­el­back, to name a few.

The ease of en­ter­ing the lu­cra­tive US mar­ket from Cana­da is sure­ly a plus com­pared with the near­ly im­prob­a­ble task of ex­port­ing to Cana­da from the Caribbean.

Its man­dat­ed quo­ta sys­tem, Can­Con (Cana­di­an Con­tent) seems to al­low for eas­i­er ac­cess to ra­dio air­play by small and di­verse niche acts. Acts in­clud­ing Brown­man and Kal­abash, as well as Caribbean jazz out­fits like Cane­Fire fea­tur­ing Trinida­di­an pan­nist Mark Mosca and Grena­di­an-born key­boardist Ed­die Bullen.

Scott Hen­der­son, writ­ing in Pop­u­lar Mu­sic Jour­nal in 2008, not­ed:

"The rise of a suc­cess­ful Cana­di­an 'scene'...demon­strates the im­pact of pol­i­cy in cre­at­ing a na­tion­al mu­sic cul­ture that is con­fi­dent enough to no longer have to be ex­plic­it­ly Cana­di­an, ei­ther son­i­cal­ly or lyri­cal­ly.

"Can­Con reg­u­la­tions would ap­pear to have aid­ed in sit­u­at­ing Cana­di­an acts com­fort­ably with­in a wider mu­sic cul­ture with­in Cana­da."

The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, that may be the case, but sto­ries vary among na­tion­als there.

Mu­sic in­dus­tries are dif­fi­cult to ma­noeu­vre every­where. The sub­jec­tive na­ture of pop­u­lar­i­ty varies from lo­cale to lo­cale. The idea of an all-en­com­pass­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al Toron­to has not ebbed de­spite the ap­par­ent dif­fi­cul­ties in break­ing non-pop mu­sic from there to every­where else. Trinidad-born writer, Neil Bis­soon­dath has bashed the of­fi­cial pol­i­cy of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in his book Sell­ing Il­lu­sions: The cult of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in Cana­da, for seek­ing to pre­serve the dif­fer­ences of its many im­mi­grants and "ex­oti­cis­ing and triv­i­al­is­ing cul­ture."

An­tho­ny Pierre says to be rel­e­vant and in de­mand, he had to mod­i­fy his sound from a ca­lyp­so-based fu­sion–in­flu­enced by his ap­pren­tice­ship with Carl­ton "Zan­da" Alexan­der and his Coalpot Band, then res­i­dent in Toron­to in the 1990s–to a more Cuban-based one.

The grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of Cu­ba's mu­si­cians in ex­ile in Toron­to may be af­fect­ing tastes in the city. Au­di­ence and fes­ti­val pro­gram­mers are de­ter­min­ing what works, and Kal­abash needs to work.

Brown­man leads a va­ri­ety of Latin-jazz en­sem­bles. He mar­kets him­self as be­ing from Trinidad, yet avoids melodies or rhythms from this is­land.

His length­i­er im­mi­grant ex­pe­ri­ence ren­ders him neu­tral to niche mar­ket gen­res, and points him to­wards what sells: hip-hop and Latin jazz. He says he just plays jazz! Even with­in this cal­i­brat­ed mu­sic mar­ket, the ex­ot­ic is "gen­tri­fied" to ir­rel­e­vance.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, Toron­to is a less com­mer­cial­ly com­pet­i­tive mu­sic mar­ket than LA or New York, but the min­i­mal gains of Caribbean-born artists in all gen­res in terms of wide com­mer­cial ap­peal de­fine a pat­tern in North Amer­i­ca of na­tive ap­peal su­per­sed­ing for­eign and more so for­eign-sound­ing mu­sic.

"Some­one else's lo­cal mu­sic" is nev­er enough. Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, be damned!

Brown­man is a con­stant­ly gig­ging globe-trot­ting mu­si­cian while Kal­abash's per­for­mances have been fo­cused on a few cities.

The record­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties be­yond per­for­mance re­main un­tapped in this city of po­ten­tial. The tem­plate for a mu­sic ca­reer out­side of T&T would need to fo­cus on pop­u­lar sim­i­lar­i­ties rather than ex­ot­ic dif­fer­ences.

�2 Ed­i­tor's note: Nigel A Camp­bell is a di­rec­tor of Pro­duc­tion One Ltd, which pro­duces the an­nu­al Jazz Artists on the Greens. An ex­pand­ed ver­sion of this ar­ti­cle is at http://jazz­intt.blogspot.com