Zahra Gor­don

On No­vem­ber 10, top lo­cal jazz mu­si­cians will join singer Vaugh­nette Big­ford on stage at the Na­pari­ma Bowl, San Fer­nan­do, for the sec­ond edi­tion of her con­cert Shades of Vaugh­nette.

The bill in­cludes mu­si­cians such as Ray Hol­man, Ron Reid, Theron Shaw, An­tho­ny Woodruffe and Michael Low Chew Tung-names that sur­face reg­u­lar­ly at lo­cal events like the To­ba­go Jazz Fes­ti­val, the Steel Pan Jazz Fes­ti­val and Jazz Artists on the Greens.

It seems like the lo­cal jazz scene has grown in the past decade with the ad­vent of events like those, yet, the art form seems to have a nar­row lo­cal au­di­ence and much space for im­prove­ment.

Dur­ing a prac­tice ses­sion last Sun­day at the Bird­song pa­n­yard in Tu­na­puna, Big­ford, gui­tarist Theron Shaw and sax­o­phon­ist An­tho­ny Woodruffe an­swered a few ques­tions about the state of lo­cal jazz. When asked if the lo­cal au­di­ence for jazz was pri­mar­i­ly the black mid­dle class, Big­ford an­swered with a re­sound­ing yes. She doesn't see the au­di­ence chang­ing any time soon.

How­ev­er, she point­ed out that in the eight years since she has been per­form­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly, what has changed are the peo­ple in­volved. "I'm see­ing a lot more young peo­ple... I don't know if they re­al­ly have a con­nec­tion with the mu­sic though," said Big­ford. Shaw said the de­mo­graph­ic at jazz events varies and couldn't be pinned down.

Woodruffe said al­though the mu­si­cians came from var­i­ous eco­nom­ic back­grounds, the au­di­ence was gen­er­al­ly be­tween mid­dle and up­per class. He al­so said that he some­times felt at­tend­ing jazz shows was trendy and not nec­es­sar­i­ly about mu­sic ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Woodruffe said the need for de­vel­op­ment of the lo­cal jazz scene was ob­vi­ous. He cit­ed ed­u­ca­tion and spon­sor­ship as two ma­jor ar­eas where this de­vel­op­ment had to take place.

Woodruffe de­scribed the sound of jazz in Trinidad as wide rang­ing. "It re­al­ly de­pends on who you lis­ten to. Some peo­ple don't com­pose; a lot cov­er pop mu­sic. Oth­ers do stan­dards. There're lots of mu­si­cians that mix orig­i­nals with cov­ers."

He added, "In terms of the type of jazz here, we have our own unique kaiso jazz pi­o­neered by Clive Zan­da Alexan­der. There's al­so a heavy Latin pres­ence and a lot of fu­sion with more con­tem­po­rary mu­sic. Our mu­si­cians don't just lis­ten to one type of mu­sic and they're in­flu­enced by every­thing."

Still, oth­er mu­si­cians have ques­tioned the very ex­is­tence of jazz in T&T. In a tele­phone in­ter­view pi­anist Raf Robert­son said there were many more ques­tions to be an­swered be­fore ques­tions of de­vel­op­ment and au­di­ence could be ad­dressed.

"How can we have a jazz scene when there aren't many mu­si­cians who can play jazz? In or­der to have a jazz scene you must have mu­si­cians and you must have an au­di­ence, and we don't have that here," he said.

"The con­duit be­tween artists and the peo­ple is the ra­dio sta­tion. How many (lo­cal) sta­tions do you hear play­ing jazz?" Pres­i­dent of the Jazz Al­liance of T&T Sean Thomas ex­pressed sim­i­lar views. "We could have what­ev­er events we want to have here but if there are no in­sti­tutes, no jobs, no places to play, then we are in a mess," he said. He added this was not a prob­lem spe­cif­ic to the jazz scene but the en­tire lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try, which he said suf­fered from a lack of cor­po­rate and gov­ern­ment sup­port.

They have Caribbean jazz mu­si­cians who've suc­ceed­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, such as Luther Fran­cois and Eti­enne Charles, but nei­ther Shaw nor Big­ford be­lieves that sort of suc­cess can be achieved at home. "You can't look at Eti­enne and think that could hap­pen here be­cause we have to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent con­text; we don't have that lev­el of ap­pre­ci­a­tion for our artists or for the art form," Big­ford said.

Shaw added that at­ti­tudes need­ed to change lo­cal­ly. "There needs to be much more com­mit­ment to the mu­sic. Many of us can't con­ceive the work eth­ic of some­body liv­ing in North Amer­i­ca like Eti­enne; you can't ex­pect to get an­oth­er Eti­enne with­out a sim­i­lar work eth­ic," said Shaw.

Yet not all is bad on the lo­cal front. Big­ford said the small size of the lo­cal jazz com­mu­ni­ty meant that there was a lot of in­ter-gen­er­a­tional col­lab­o­ra­tion. "It's not just about gig­ging to­geth­er ei­ther. A lot of the young mu­si­cians are in con­tact with the old­er ones and can bounce ideas off of them or just ask ques­tions. There's al­ways some­one to help you." Vaugh­nette Big­ford's show Shades of Vaugh­nette, The Con­cert Ex­pe­ri­ence II: In­spi­ra­tion takes place at Na­pari­ma Bowl on No­vem­ber 10 at 7.30 pm. Tick­ets and in­fo: 678 7809 or 724 3041, vaugh­net­te­big­ford@ya­hoo.com or shurlan@tstt.net.tt