Mark Lyn­der­say

For years, the con­cert se­ries Jazz Artists on the Greens has been the stub­born hold­out on the Caribbean "jazz" cir­cuit, a col­lec­tion of shows fea­tur­ing R&B artistes mas­querad­ing as jazz. For no rea­son that I can ad­e­quate­ly un­der­stand, this year's JAOTG seemed to col­lapse like an in­dif­fer­ent flan, with a mix of soul, song styling and blas� play­ing that catered well to an ap­pre­cia­tive crowd but kicked jazz afi­ciona­dos in their soft and ten­ders. It was pret­ty clear that things were set­ting off on the wrong foot when two of the per­form­ers told the au­di­ence that they weren't jazz artistes.

The first to do so was Ja­son Bap­tiste, who led his band Afrol­yp­so through a 70s-flavoured groove that threw me back to the beats of Os­i­bisa and Cya­mande. Mix­ing funky, bass and drum riffs with folk-flavoured per­cus­sion and soul­ful wail­ings, the band was a de­light­ful anachro­nism, from their tie-dyed t-shirts to their an­gry black po­ets rap­ping. R'Kar­do St'Von was the first singer to be backed by the JAOTG All Star Band, an en­sem­ble fea­tur­ing Richie Joseph on drums, Dean Williams on gui­tar, Rus­sel Du­ri­ty on bass, Ming Low Chew Tung on key­boards, Modipe Onilu on per­cus­sion and a num­ber of soloists guest­ing through­out the night.

Those soloists in­clud­ed Tony Woodroffe on sax­o­phone and the per­former who proved to be the re­deem­ing grace of the evening, Nick "Brown­man" Ali, who was all about the sear­ing bursts of trum­pet glo­ry un­der the spot­light and the evening's on­ly re­minder that jazz is re­al­ly a col­lec­tion of acts of in­tel­lec­tu­al mu­si­cal ego, set to a melody. I thought of that and scrib­bled it down while R'Kar­do St'Von was duet­ting with Char­lene and Kel­ly Ann Grif­fith, the soul­ful and un­de­ni­ably hot duo known as 2Ntrigue on that old Flack/Hath­away num­ber, Where is the Love–but I kept mis­hear­ing "jazz" for "love."

LEFT: Bren­da But­ler sings at the eighth Jazz on the Greens con­cert at the UWI Greens on Sat­ur­day night.

St'Von's a great song styl­ist, find­ing in­trigu­ing shad­ings in his lyrics, but he needs a good in­stru­men­tal­ist to urge him on and he found that on his com­po­si­tion I Do Be­lieve, a duet with gui­tarist Dean Williams, and with Brown­man on Your Song. More song stylings were pro­vid­ed by Bren­da But­ler, who proved less ad­ven­tur­ous in her ap­proach than St'Von and, de­spite cred­itable out­ings on Randy Craw­ford's One Day I'll Fly Away and Ni­na Si­mone's Feel­ing Good, set to a reg­gae lilt, her set seemed to drag along, stum­bling to an in­dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion with an ir­ri­tat­ing­ly straight read­ing of Sting's It's Prob­a­bly Me.

The two big jazz im­ports for the evening were the now tra­di­tion­al pre­sen­ta­tion from Cu­ba, the William Rob­le­jo Trio and Cana­da's Kal­abash, a jazz en­sem­ble billed as a fu­sion of Caribbean rhythms, the steel­band and "con­tem­po­rary jazz ex­pres­sion." Kal­abash en­coun­tered some hor­rid feed­back prob­lems as they start­ed their set, but as a jazz-steel­band-fu­sion en­sem­ble, they have oth­er is­sues. The band mem­bers can clear­ly play, but they don't seem to have fig­ured out how they want to play to­geth­er.

The kind of deft in­ter­play they're go­ing af­ter found its zenith in Weath­er Re­port and its nadir in Spy­r­o­gy­ra and it's not en­tire­ly clear which di­rec­tion they are trend­ing to­ward. The com­fort­able po­lite­ness the band mem­bers dis­play in per­for­mance stole much of the po­ten­tial in their set which on­ly took off when Brown­man took star­tling so­los on Noth­ing Per­son­al and Car­a­van and in their clos­ing min­utes, when their drum­mer of­fered a riv­et­ing dis­play of craft.

The stand­out band of the evening, the William Rob­le­jo Trio, played a se­ries of com­po­si­tions on elec­tric bass, gui­tar and vi­o­lin. Their sound echoes the work of Ja­co Pas­to­ri­ous' Trio of Doom (sans drums) and John McLaugh­lin's Gui­tar Trio, but evolves well be­yond those group­ings with Rob­le­jo's long, melod­ic lines and swip­ing phras­ings on the vi­o­lin, the in­spired, per­cus­sive an­chor­ing of his bassist and his gui­tarist's gift for stac­ca­to flour­ish­es and fla­men­co-styled ex­pres­sions. With their All Star band woe­ful­ly un­der­utilised, the JAOTG ad­min­is­tra­tors owe a debt of grat­i­tude to Brown­man and William Rob­le­jo for al­low­ing them to re­tain their jazz cred with a show that was agree­ably, but in­du­bitably, oth­er­wise a cel­e­bra­tion of R&B mu­sic.