Nigel A Camp­bell

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.