Si­mon Lee

The Jazz Al­liance of Trinidad and To­ba­go's (JATT) Car­ni­val jam–Jaz­zolyp­so–which had Mo­ka's Trin­i­ty Col­lege ten­nis courts hop­ping Sun­day af­ter­noon and evening, boast­ed a heavy­weight line up. In ad­di­tion to the by-now fa­mil­iar faces of the JATT All Stars (Ba­jan sax­man Ar­turo Tap­pin join­ing lo­cals–gui­tarist Theron Shaw, bass­man Dougie Re­don, key­boardist Dave Mar­cellin, vo­cal­ist Vaugh­nette Big­ford, Tam­ba Gwinde on per­cus­sion and Sean Thomas on drums–David Rud­der, Max­imus Dan, Black Stal­in and Al­i­son Hinds all came out to play and even­tu­al­ly get away.

But it was the man called "Gold," with teeth to match moniker and a rec­tan­gu­lar iron which nev­er stopped ring­ing, who gal­vanised a pa­tient, mod­est-sized crowd, in­to a ful­ly-fledged "canaval" posse. Gold, from Diego, won his tick­et to the se­mi-in­clu­sive on a ra­dio show and gave him­self sin­gle mind­ed­ly to en­joy­ing his free­ness with a brand of aban­don not quite matched by pay­ing pa­trons. The leisure­ly-paced be­gin­ning to the fete fell to Carib Wood­brook Play­boyz pan­side, who faced off against the deep greens of the rain­for­est and a blind­ing sun. While dou­bles, corn soup and souse were dis­patched and tor­por threat­ened, Max­imus Dan pulled the event in­to gear with a per­for­mance which marks him as a ver­sa­tile cross-gen­er­a­tional en­ter­tain­er, charm­ing what can on­ly be de­scribed, in the best tra­di­tion of ob­jec­tive re­port­ing, as a "ma­ture crowd."

Dan fre­quent­ly joked the col­lec­tive sense of hu­mour, with his calls for those born in long for­got­ten decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. But any hint of ageism aside, both Dan's pos­i­tive lyrics and the ring­ing of Mr Gold's iron weld­ed the bur­geon­ing crowd in­to par­ty readi­ness. Vaugh­nette Big­ford, whose vo­cals strug­gled against a mud­dy mix, kept the hu­mour flow­ing af­ter com­po­si­tions by Duke Elling­ton and the Brazil­ian Mil­ton Na­sciemen­to, with a per­son­alised ver­sion of the kaiso clas­sic No Mon­ey No Love, ded­i­cat­ed to her pho­tog­ra­ph­er hus­band frontstage, who re­spond­ed to "We cyar love with­out mon­ey" by of­fer­ing her his wal­let, like any sen­si­ble hus­band would.

In­tro­duced as "a hunk of Caribbean man," Aretha Franklyn side­man Ar­turo Tap­pin, who's mixed his Afro-Ras­ta styling with post­mod trip be­bophop (white sum­mers cap and shades; al­most an­kle length mane of locks swing­ing against two-tone blue cam­ou­flage jeans,) bound­ed in­to the groove with a fast-paced kaiso med­ley (Old La­dy, Steel­band Clash, Sly Mon­goose, Ben­wood Dick, Stop Spar­row Stop, Drunk and Dis­or­der­ly, Jean and Di­nah), backed by the JATT All­stars. Jazzers, who might have wished for more of Ar­turo's ex­tend­ed foghorn fi­nale, had to set­tle for no less than King David, who de­liv­ered the usu­al sus­pects: Ca­lyp­so Mu­sic, Tri­ni to D Bone and a ver­sion of The Ham­mer, graced by ace pan­nist Dane Gul­ston. Un­der the star­ry Mo­ka sky, Jaz­zolyp­so con­tin­ued jump­ing to Stal­in and Al­i­son Hinds.