Si­mon Lee

The on­ly way I can get through this one, is with the help of an­oth­er mu­si­cian, who thank­ful­ly I dis­cov­ered a mere half an hour ago. Alain Pe­ters who died drunk on the streets of St De­nis, La R�union (a speck in the In­di­an Ocean east of Mada­gas­car) switched from play­ing cov­ers of King Crim­son and Pink Floyd to tap in­to mloya, the an­ces­tral mu­sic of his is­land–banned up till 1981–to cre­ate unique ac­com­pa­ni­ment for his own Cre­ole po­ems. Fab­u­lous rhythms and songs rem­i­nis­cent of the b�l� singers of Mar­tinique. Just the sort of thing I would have sent to Raf, ex­cept he's gone, I keep hav­ing to re­mind my­self.

I'm sor­ry for those of you who nev­er got to meet Rafael Robert­son or hear his mu­sic–how­ev­er, it's not too late to lis­ten to him–try Branch­es and Majesty and you'll be lis­ten­ing to a sound­track which pays homage to some of the best el­e­ments of Trinidad's kaiso her­itage, in the best way pos­si­ble, by re-in­ter­pret­ing and im­pro­vis­ing, keep­ing the past alive in­to the fu­ture. Raf's mu­sic was very much about the fu­ture; he used his ex­ten­sive play­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in Eu­rope, Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean to nur­ture a whole new gen­er­a­tion of Tri­ni mu­si­cians, through his col­lab­o­ra­tive work with the Bird­song Mu­sic School in Tu­na­puna. True to the com­mu­ni­ty-based, com­mu­nal style of tra­di­tion­al Caribbean mu­sic, Raf put his tal­ents and his net­work of like-mind­ed mu­si­cians at the ser­vice of any kid who walked in­to Bird­song, off the bad­lands of the East-West Cor­ri­dor where many per­ish.

I re­mem­ber stray­ing in­to a Bird­song sum­mer school re­hearsal, prob­a­bly back in 2008 and shak­ing my head in dis­be­lief to see old friends: Luther Fran­cois mul­ti-in­stru­men­tal­ist, jazz com­pos­er/arranger from St Lu­cia, Andy Nar­rell the Amer­i­can glob­al pan am­bas­sador and Frankie McIn­tosh, New York-based Vin­cent­ian com­pos­er/arranger/pro­duc­er all there in the midst of a bunch of as­pir­ing 'Puna mu­si­cians. That was Raf's work–bring­ing the best of the best to young peo­ple and show­ing them how through hard work, ded­i­ca­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion, they too could re­alise their dreams.

Any­one who's been to a Bird­song con­cert, or heard Ny­ol Man­swell sing, or Der­ri­ane Dyette play pan will have heard the re­sults of his ef­forts. Due to his ini­tia­tive these two were pro­vid­ed with schol­ar­ships to study abroad and launch ca­reers, there are more on the way.

At the bot­tom of my gar­den is a noni tree. Last year, I went down there with Raf. A hard­ened smok­er like my­self, he had the usu­al res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems which go with years of drag­ging on fags. We picked some fat ripe noni for him to make juice with, one of the most po­tent nat­ur­al reme­dies for smok­ers. I can still see his trade­mark gap-toothed smile as he hoist­ed the heavy bag in­to his car and went down the road. We were kind of long range neigh­bours, with a healthy pi­cong/fa­tigue re­la­tion­ship and a shared pas­sion for mu­sic and words.

Now he's not down the road any more I re­alise how much I'm go­ing to miss our ran­dom en­coun­ters at Trevor's Edge, our lo­cal wa­ter­ing hole, where he'd oc­ca­sion­al­ly play –to the de­light of a small but ap­pre­cia­tive au­di­ence, which in­clud­ed my now five-year-old daugh­ter, who danced away a Sun­day evening to his ac­com­pa­ni­ment.

We met back in the 1990s dur­ing his ex­tend­ed so­journ in Bar­ba­dos. I en­coun­tered him at the jazz fes­ti­val on Far­ley Hill, where (years lat­er) he re­mem­bered me mak­ing some fatu­ous or acer­bic com­ment on one of the per­form­ers. I prob­a­bly ran in­to him at oth­er Caribbean jazz fes­ti­vals –St Lu­cia, maybe Mar­tinique–but then lost sight of him un­til I got back from a five-year ex­ile in Lon­don in 2007.

I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised one night at Trevor's when he not on­ly quot­ed ver­ba­tim my Bar­ba­dos com­ments but ad­mit­ted he'd been a reg­u­lar read­er of my Notes in Ex­ile col­umn, which re­mind­ed him of his time in The Big Fug. Af­ter that we slipped in­to an ex­tend­ed con­ver­sa­tion about mu­sic, es­pe­cial­ly mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion as I was then in­volved with a re­gion­al project of Luther Fran­cois which am­bi­tious­ly aimed at a Caribbean-wide pro­gramme, very sim­i­lar to that which Raf was de­vel­op­ing with Bird­song. We spoke about col­lab­o­rat­ing–a words and mu­sic im­pro­vi­sa­tion, but sad­ly due to both our fam­i­ly and pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ments, it didn't hap­pen. We did share a lot of mu­sic and I of­ten sent him mu­sic files for him to sam­ple–a par­tic­u­lar favourite be­ing the Afro-Cuban jazz pi­anist Omar Sosa.

The past few months he'd been full of an­tic­i­pa­tion and ex­cite­ment about go­ing to Cu­ba to record an al­bum he'd been work­ing on for months. He'd promised to bring me back a ba­ta drum, the root in­stru­ment of San­te­ria cer­e­mo­ni­al mu­sic. We were both look­ing for­ward to his bring­ing down to Trinidad a mas­ter Afro-Cuban per­cus­sion­ist to do Bird­song work­shops. This was yet an­oth­er of his strate­gies to pull us out of what he some­times wry­ly re­ferred to as "this Siberia of mu­sic".

Raf boy, we all salute your life of bring­ing ex­cel­lence in mu­sic to those who are your lega­cy.

Play on.