The Sep­tem­ber 30 grand open­ing night of the eighth an­nu­al T&T Steel Pan and Jazz Fes­ti­val (TTSJF) at Queen's Hall, fea­tur­ing 3Canal, The Delfeayo Marsalis Quin­tet (with spe­cial guest pan vir­tu­oso Robert Greenidge) and Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus Steel Or­ches­tra, along­side sax­o­phon­ist Sandy Gabriel from the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, of­fers a look at the com­ple­men­tary in­ter­ac­tions and rec­i­p­ro­cal in­flu­ences be­tween T&T's mu­si­cal gen­res and Amer­i­can jazz.

One of the lo­cal art forms to be high­light­ed at the grand open­ing is rap­so, which is root­ed in the oral tra­di­tions of the African gri­ot, the ven­er­a­ble sto­ry­teller and mu­si­cian who hands down an­ces­tral cus­toms and rit­u­als through the gen­er­a­tions. By the late 19th cen­tu­ry in Trinidad, the gri­ot was called the chantuelle and was the di­rect fore­run­ner to the ca­lyp­son­ian, as well as sev­er­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters, es­pe­cial­ly the Mid­night Rob­ber, whose iden­ti­ty is as much de­fined by the in­tim­i­dat­ing con­tent and rhyth­mic ca­dence of his spo­ken words as by his dis­tinc­tive­ly noir mode of dress.

In the 21st cen­tu­ry, the Trinida­di­an rap­so act 3Canal (Wen­dell Man­war­ren, Roger Roberts and Stan­ton Kew­ley) proud­ly car­ry on the gri­ot/chantuelle tra­di­tion with their vo­cal vi­vac­i­ty, forth­right com­men­tary and cul­tur­al au­da­cious­ness, wrapped in­to ef­fer­ves­cent, dance­able songs, root­ed in the Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence but in­flu­enced by a glob­al son­ic land­scape. For their de­but per­for­mance at the TTSJF, 3Canal will show­case sev­er­al se­lec­tions from their 2009 al­bum–Joy And Fire–their most ma­ture work to date, which was record­ed in Trinidad with their band, the cut+clear crew.

"We cap­tion this al­bum Iere (the orig­i­nal name of Trinidad, mean­ing the Land of the Hum­ming­bird) 21st cen­tu­ry," ex­plains Wen­dell Man­war­ren, "so it goes back to the myth of Iere and every­thing that comes from that, the joy, fire, the land of the gi­ants.

"These songs are about who we are, where we come from and our per­spec­tive on the world right now, ground­ed in the Iere myth."

Roger Roberts de­scribes Joy and Fire as "a new sound for the new world; I don't know of any­thing that sounds like this. Parts of it sound like punk, parts of it like kaiso, there are strains of rap­so. The guys in the band all have dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences; one is a for­mer rock gui­tarist, the key­board play­er is from Venezuela and he plays his Span­ish licks. Our songs vary be­cause they re­flect who we are, dif­fer­ent peo­ple from dif­fer­ent parts of the world."

Like the chantuelle of yes­ter­year, who led bands of Car­ni­val rev­el­ers through the streets of Port-of-Spain, ex­pect 3Canal to cre­ate di­ver­si­fied, cul­tur­al­ly res­o­nant notes that the oth­er acts will be com­pelled to fol­low.

Al­so mak­ing their de­but at the fes­ti­val is the Delfeayo Marsalis Sex­tet, which has ex­pand­ed from quin­tet sta­tus with the re­cent re­cruit­ment of Ja­maican-born, New York-based tenor sax­o­phon­ist Mark Shim. An ac­claimed trom­bon­ist, as well as an ac­com­plished pro­duc­er, Delfeayo hails from New Or­leans' first fam­i­ly of jazz, which in­cludes his fa­ther pi­anist El­lis Marsalis Jr; broth­ers Brand­ford (sax­o­phone); Wyn­ton (trum­pet); and younger broth­er Ja­son, a drum­mer.

Marsalis has toured with nu­mer­ous jazz lu­mi­nar­ies, in­clud­ing Art Blakey, Ab­dul­lah Ibrahim and Max Roach, with his own mod­ern jazz en­sem­ble and as part of the Lin­coln Cen­ter Jazz Or­ches­tra, which was fea­tured in Ken Burns' cel­e­brat­ed doc­u­men­tary Jazz. Marsalis has re­leased three so­lo al­bums to crit­i­cal ac­claim–Pon­tius Pi­late's De­ci­sion (1992); Musashi (1997); and, Min­ions Do­min­ion, in Sep­tem­ber 2006.

Com­ple­ment­ing the Marsalis quin­tet will be spe­cial guest, pan­nist ex­tra­or­di­naire Robert Greenidge. "Delfeayo had in­di­cat­ed he would like to per­form with a pan­nist and we thought that con­cept would be com­mer­cial­ly and ar­tis­ti­cal­ly at­trac­tive to our au­di­ence," says Mor­timer Bap­tiste, an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the TTSJF's Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee. "So we reached out to Robert Greenidge, he was ex­cit­ed about the op­por­tu­ni­ty and we ex­pect it to be one of the fes­ti­val's (many) high­lights."

Born and raised in Trinidad and now based in Los An­ge­les, Greenidge is one of the world's most ac­com­plished pan­nists; his inim­itable crys­talline styling can be heard on re­leas­es rep­re­sent­ing a broad swathe of pop­u­lar mu­sic from John Lennon and Ringo Starr to Grover Wash­ing­ton Jr and Earth Wind and Fire. Through­out the Car­ni­val sea­son, Greenidge, who is al­so the res­i­dent pan­nist with Jim­my Buf­fet's much in de­mand Coral Reefers Band, can be found on the Hill, per­fect­ing Panora­ma arrange­ments for Wit­co Des­per­a­does, Laven­tille's long­stand­ing and leg­endary steel or­ches­tra, with whom he played a sig­nif­i­cant role in three of their ten Panora­ma vic­to­ries.

Mak­ing their fourth ap­pear­ance at the TTSJF is the renowned Ex­o­dus Steel Or­ches­tra. Found­ed in 1981, Ex­o­dus has dis­tin­guished them­selves as one of T&T's most pro­fes­sion­al steel out­fits. Ex­o­dus has won four Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tions un­der the guid­ance of their ace arranger Pel­ham God­dard, who has been with the band since 1989 and will most like­ly join them on­stage to play key­boards on a few se­lec­tions.

Apart from his suc­cess with Ex­o­dus, God­dard's laud­ed arrange­ments have brought fur­ther promi­nence to a galaxy of ca­lyp­so and so­ca stars, in­clud­ing the late Ras Shorty I (for­mer­ly known as Lord Shorty and one of the cre­ators of so­ca) Mighty Spar­row, Ca­lyp­so Rose, Shad­ow, Su­perBlue, and es­teemed band Char­lie's Roots, with cel­e­brat­ed lead vo­cal­ists David Rud­der and Chris "Tam­bu" Her­bert.?

Each of Ex­o­dus's per­for­mances is well re­hearsed, pre­cise­ly yet an­i­mat­ed­ly ex­e­cut­ed and strives to bring some­thing dif­fer­ent to its au­di­ence. This year, Ex­o­dus will fea­ture spe­cial guest tenor sax­o­phon­ist/com­pos­er/arranger and a lead­ing light of Latin jazz Sandy Gabriel, who hails from the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Gabriel's merengue-in­fused jazz rhythms will bril­liant­ly dove­tail with the wide-rang­ing reper­toire of one of T&T's most pli­ant steel­bands, con­clud­ing an evening of spir­it­ed as well as en­light­en­ing mu­si­cal di­a­logue be­tween lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al acts.