JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, February 24, 2025

High notes and a bright future

by

20130104

In the dwin­dling days of 2012 there was a hub­bub over the cre­ative in­dus­tries and the state-en­ter­prise mod­el for its growth, as well as the pend­ing fall-out over the gov­ern­ment's counter-strat­e­gy of us­ing its favoured so­ca son to dri­ve the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try.

These con­flict­ing plans by sep­a­rate min­istries to make T&T's mu­sic glob­al ig­nore the fact that the mu­sic in­dus­try hap­pi­ly went along, dy­nam­ic and flu­id, yet all the time im­pro­vis­ing to the changes in the land­scape of at­tri­bu­tion (copy­right), dis­tri­b­u­tion and now glob­al ex­ploita­tion.

Im­pro­vi­sa­tion is a key el­e­ment of jazz, and here in T&T, that niche of the lo­cal mu­sic land­scape re­flects some of the big­ger is­sues that plague and guide that in­dus­try.

The demise of the on­ly lo­cal ter­res­tri­al sta­tion ded­i­cat­ed to jazz, WMJX FM, and its sub­se­quent con­ver­sion to an on­line for­mat a cou­ple of years ago would have put the nail in the cof­fin of a less cher­ished mu­si­cal her­itage, but jazz and cer­tain­ly its Caribbean vari­ant con­tin­ues find­ing its cen­tre via con­certs and a few new CD re­leas­es by those ded­i­cat­ed artistes chal­leng­ing the mu­sic land­scape out­side of so­ca, ca­lyp­so and parang.

The an­nu­al Jazz Artists on the Greens (JAOTG) in Trinidad in March, and the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence (TJE) and Jazz on the Beach, both in To­ba­go in April, have proven that the orig­i­nal tem­plate for Caribbean jazz fes­ti­vals, de­signed as mag­nets for Amer­i­can mu­sic lovers-cum-tourists view­ing pop and R&B acts, are rapid­ly pass­ing in­to the ir­rel­e­vance of aban­don­ment.

To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence–four years old in 2012–is a tem­plate for the growth of a des­ti­na­tion trav­el mod­el that Trinidad was look­ing to cre­ate out­side of Car­ni­val to no avail, with events like the for­got­ten World Beat Fes­ti­val. TJE is not nec­es­sar­i­ly bring­ing many for­eign vis­i­tors, but rather Trinida­di­ans look­ing for a quick mu­si­cal feast of the oft-re­peat­ed de­sign of su­per­star with lo­cal sup­port­ing act.

JAOTG and Jazz on the Beach at Mt Irvine har­bour the no­tion that Caribbean jazz can be the sig­nal for a new lo­cal mu­sic ap­pre­ci­a­tion and have for ten years and six years re­spec­tive­ly done ex­act­ly that. Hold­ing fast to the mantra "jazz is free­dom," rules are dis­pensed with, and any­thing goes. The ap­ing of for­eign mod­el of per­for­mance and style are es­chewed in favour of in­flu­ences and rhythms from up and down the Caribbean.

All these shows are prov­ing more and more that Caribbean acts are fan favourites. Ba­jan sax­o­phon­ist Ar­turo Tap­pin on a rainy Sun­day night at TJE, and ear­li­er Michelle Hen­der­son of Do­mini­ca at JAOTG de­light­ed au­di­ences there and showed a stan­dard of play­ing, singing and im­por­tant­ly, a stan­dard of per­for­mance–that nu­anced con­nec­tion that artistes have with an au­di­ence–that have not ful­ly blos­somed among the many singers and mu­si­cians mar­ket­ing

them­selves as jazz artists.

Fear not, all hope is not lost, how­ev­er. A new di­men­sion in the evolved mu­sic busi­ness in T&T is the idea of es­chew­ing the pro­fes­sion­al pro­mot­er in favour of do­ing it one­self. Artist-pro­duced con­certs are putting younger tal­ents that have evolved the tra­di­tion of lo­cal jazz in­to the spot­light.

The zeit­geist of a gen­er­a­tion or two ago placed lo­cal mu­sic in the mi­lieu of jazz with ca­lyp­soes be­ing played by our equiv­a­lent of the jazz big band, the brass band. Young mu­si­cians are now deal­ing, with vary­ing suc­cess, in the chal­lenges of in­ter­pret­ing or in some cas­es re-in­ter­pret­ing the canon of lo­cal and for­eign mu­si­cians.

Two high­ly rec­om­mend artists pur­su­ing with de­ter­mi­na­tion a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the lan­guage of jazz are sax­o­phon­ist/flautist An­tho­ny Woodroffe, Jr and singer Vaugh­nette Big­ford.

They per­formed the an­nu­al rit­u­al of the live con­cert as mu­sic the­atre for the unini­ti­at­ed. An­tho­ny, who is ad­mit­ted­ly not a song­writer, can coax new mean­ing out of the evolv­ing new jazz stan­dard. With his sixth an­nu­al Evening of Jazz, in Au­gust, he deeply mined the song­books of mod­ern jazz sax­o­phon­ists to repli­cate the sound and tone of a Bob Reynolds, Ken­ny Gar­rett or a Grover Wash­ing­ton, yet pro­vid­ing enough im­pro­vi­sa­tion skill to keep the au­di­ence in­ter­est piqued.

For a sec­ond year, Big­ford de­liv­ered a con­cert ex­pe­ri­ence that epit­o­mised a pro­duc­tion stan­dard too un­fa­mil­iar to artists here. Her tone and phras­ing in­forms the lo­cal song­book of Shorty I, Ray Hol­man with a sonor­i­ty prob­a­bly not con­sid­ered by the com­posers, but one which tests the lim­its of the song struc­ture to a pos­si­bil­i­ty that our mu­sic can be glob­al with­out the wail of a so­ca singer seek­ing suc­cour in for­eign pro­duc­ers.

The pauci­ty of new lo­cal jazz record­ings this year, and the diminu­tion of lo­cal copy­rights by few­er com­posers adding to the jazz canon, sig­nal the po­ten­tial for a re­ver­sal of the blos­som­ing of new av­enues for the busi­ness of jazz. The new year could evolve as a wa­ter­shed year.

Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to em­bold­en the cre­ative in­dus­tries should awak­en the spir­it of cre­ativ­i­ty that flour­ished be­tween WWII and In­de­pen­dence. The re­silience of this mu­sic called jazz, in all its vari­a­tions, sug­gests that there'll be more to lis­ten to and talk about in the fu­ture.

�2 Nigel A Camp­bell pro­duces con­certs and blogs about Caribbean jazz and mu­sic at www.jazz­intt.blogspot.com

The zeit­geist of a gen­er­a­tion or two ago placed lo­cal mu­sic in the mi­lieu of jazz with ca­lyp­soes be­ing played by our equiv­a­lent of the jazz big band, the brass band.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored