Pe­ter Ray Blood

Re­turn­ing to his home­land Trinidad, af­ter 27 years in the Unit­ed States, Carl Ja­cobs is liv­ing a dream he has nur­tured since his ear­ly days as an artiste and per­former. Af­ter 12 months, his Kaiso Blues Cafe is one of the coun­try's fastest-grow­ing per­for­mance spaces, at­tract­ing per­form­ers and pa­trons of all ages and tastes in mu­sic.

"Kaiso Blues Cafe has al­ways been a dream of mine," said Ja­cobs, "to cre­ate a venue where we could pro­mote and en­cour­age lo­cal mu­si­cians and mu­sic, and pro­vide a com­fort­able space for peo­ple who want to en­joy that kind of am­bi­ence at any age and any lev­el.

"I came up with the name be­cause I be­long to the 'kaiso' group of peo­ple–we cre­at­ed ca­lyp­so, and start­ed in ca­lyp­so–so­ca came af­ter. Af­ter de­cid­ing on that name, I re­alised that a lot of peo­ple don't even want to be con­nect­ed to kaiso any more, some­thing that is very sad to me.

I had sit­u­a­tions where peo­ple told me, 'kaiso is old school, kaiso is old peo­ple thing, kaiso dead'. My an­swer to them has al­ways been, 'I am kaiso, kaiso is where it all be­gan. So­ca was in­vent­ed to com­mer­cialise kaiso and ca­lyp­so, not to elim­i­nate it, or re­place it. A child isn't born to kill the moth­er. A child is born to sup­port its moth­er.'"

He added: "As far as the Blues part of the name is con­cerned, kaiso mu­sic has a lot of blues in it, and any­time we think of ca­lyp­so to­day, we could be suf­fer­ing from a lot of 'blues' from how it is treat­ed. Kaiso Blues Cafe is my way of say­ing it's not about just kaiso and ca­lyp­so, but al­so all the oth­er gen­res of mu­sic of the world, in­clud­ing blues, jazz, reg­gae, rock and roll, every­thing, un­der a kaiso roof."

Ja­cobs was full of grat­i­tude to his friend, fel­low mu­si­cian Raf Robert­son.

"Raf Robert­son was al­ways pas­sion­ate about our cul­ture, about the medi­oc­rity of the mu­sic, the abysmal­ly poor sup­port by the gov­ern­ments and the peo­ple who were re­spon­si­ble for nour­ish­ing and prop­a­gat­ing our mu­sic. He'd talk about all the great mu­si­cians, in­ven­tors and in­no­va­tors of our cul­ture who passed un­no­ticed, hence mak­ing it so im­por­tant for him to be teach­ing and try­ing to pass on knowl­edge, to give aware­ness and knowl­edge to young, up­com­ing, fer­tile-mind­ed stu­dents and artistes," Ja­cobs said.

"It is still a prob­lem to­day that so many of our young artistes don't have a clue of the roots of this en­tire thing, and feel it is not im­por­tant. De­spite all the tal­ent they have, sad­ly, they don't re­alise the im­por­tance of un­der­stand­ing where this all came from. They are to­tal­ly ig­no­rant about the essence of the rhythm, not re­al­is­ing that it is a lavway and the Shango, and that it is not just a vibe but some­thing that they are born with, some­thing that dwells with­in them. This is what Raf was try­ing to in­stil.

"For sev­er­al years Raf and I had been talk­ing about a place like Kaiso Blues Cafe–a place where mu­si­cians can come and ex­change ideas and ex­press them­selves to­geth­er."

The Kaiso Blues Cafe pre­miered in April 2015–and it was not as easy a task as Ja­cobs had thought.

"First of all, most peo­ple didn't be­lieve that we could have a suc­cess­ful venue based pure­ly on live per­for­mances every night. That was the ini­tial idea of Kaiso Blues Cafe–to be a live en­ter­tain­ment es­tab­lish­ment. But I know that it could hap­pen, as I had spent many years per­form­ing at such venues in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. So I want­ed to bring that kind of sta­tus to a venue in Trinidad," Ja­cobs said.

"We al­so had prob­lems, and still have them, with the res­i­dents of the neigh­bour­hood. We had to go through an ex­pen­sive process of sound­proof­ing the en­tire space to can­cel out most of the ex­ter­nal sound. Thank God that is now solved."

The late Raf Robert­son was the first artiste to per­form at the cafe, do­ing so at its me­dia launch. Since that day many oth­ers have en­joyed its stage.

"Ini­tial­ly we were cater­ing to more ma­ture au­di­ences but soon re­alised that the in­put mu­si­cal­ly of the young en­ter­tain­ers was so strong and en­cour­ag­ing that we glad­ly ex­tend­ed a wel­come to them, which has borne fruit. It's amaz­ing the abun­dance of tal­ent that ex­ists in our midst with­out hav­ing a plat­form to ex­press them­selves," Ja­cobs said.

"Among the younger artistes who have en­ter­tained large au­di­ences at Kaiso Blues are Dean Williams, Llete­sha Sylvester, Yung Rudd & Mark Hardy, Jon Jon, Joey Ng Wai & Im­ij, Col­lis Du­rante and Juli­et Robin. Oth­ers im­bu­ing ap­peal have been David Rud­der, Eti­enne Charles, Pel­ham God­dard & Roots, Re­la­tor, Michael Booth­man, Vaugh­nette Big­ford, Arthur Mar­cial, Syl Dop­son and Ter­ry Shaw."

Ja­cobs is fo­cussed on his vi­sion. His dream is to cre­ate a space for the artistes and mu­si­cians of T&T to in­ti­mate­ly con­nect with their au­di­ence in an un­plugged and friend­ly am­bi­ence and space.

From the mouths of the artistes:

Ali­cia Jag­gasar: "The ex­pe­ri­ence of per­form­ing at Kaiso Blues Cafe was won­der­ful. The first time I went there it was a shock to me. I sim­ply said 'wow'–the am­bi­ence and in­ti­ma­cy is sec­ond to none. As a per­former I am able to feed off the pa­trons. The stage, though a bit small, still gives you that in­ti­ma­cy with your band and mu­si­cians. Over­all I am ex­treme­ly pleased, so much so that I asked Carl to be part of an­oth­er show and that will be held on Ju­ly 9."

Vaugh­nette Big­ford: "I ab­solute­ly adore Kaiso Blues Cafe be­cause there's an en­er­gy and in­ti­ma­cy as­so­ci­at­ed with that space. Apart from the fact that the au­di­ence is close to you and you can see and touch peo­ple, the in­tents of the own­ers are very ev­i­dent. That's why that space is so spe­cial. It ful­fils what Carl and Car­ol set out the space to be."

Yung Rudd: "I host a show at Kaiso Blues Cafe every Tues­day called Un­plugged and Chill. We present two un­plugged acts and the feed­back is al­ways great; peo­ple love the per­for­mances, love the am­bi­ence and love the in­ti­ma­cy of the place. As a per­former I re­al­ly love per­form­ing there be­cause of the in­ti­mate vibes, and it's one of the few venues I get to per­form with a live band."

Dean Williams: "I was one of the ear­ly acts to sign on at Kaiso Blues and I def­i­nite­ly en­joy play­ing there. I was there for six months straight per­form­ing, a show every month. The ex­pe­ri­ence was very good for my band and my­self, and the club as well. Carl has a lot of faith in lo­cal bands and tal­ent and he has stood by that be­lief and con­vic­tion. I think's it's pay­ing off now. We plan to re­turn very soon to do a big show."

Joey Ng Wai: "It was amaz­ing per­form­ing at Kaiso Blues Cafe–def­i­nite­ly a retro feel that took me and my band mem­bers to bet­ter times in Trinidad, when peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly lis­tened to mu­sic. It was amaz­ing as well be­cause we were al­lowed to be who we want­ed to be on stage. To me Kaiso Blues is one of the epic per­for­mance spots in Trinidad and takes me back to the days of Pel­i­can and Rolls Royce In­ter­na­tion­al, on Aber­crom­by Street. Carl came here from liv­ing in the States and opened a place with his mind­set on what the mu­sic was when he left here years ago. Kaiso Blues is now the wa­ter­ing hole for our mu­si­cians, some­thing that has been need­ed a long time ago–and the food is al­so ex­cel­lent. We def­i­nite­ly would be re­turn­ing."

Col­lis Du­rante: "In­ti­ma­cy at Kaiso Blues Cafe for one was ful­fill­ing for an artistes like my­self. As you know I am an artiste who has a mes­sage in the mu­sic so it's nice when you can an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­act with your au­di­ence up close and per­son­al. The venue has am­biance. I love what they've done with the ceil­ing–it looks like you are per­form­ing open air, out doors. Carl is a very wel­com­ing host and he's very warm and pas­sion­ate about what he is do­ing. Artistes who have shared this space are of the same sen­ti­ment so, on be­half of all, big big big up to Carl Ja­cobs."