Pe­ter Ray Blood

Clive "Zan­da" Alexan­der, pi­o­neer of ex­tem­po/kaiso jazz mu­sic is large­ly a self-taught com­pos­er/im­pro­vi­sor, pi­anist who has gained recog­ni­tion at home, in the Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Zan­da, as he is known in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, re­cent­ly re­turned from a vis­it to South Africa pri­mar­i­ly to see his sons (Tshipi and Zolani) and four grand­chil­dren, spend­ing al­most four months there. "It was a spir­i­tu­al and phe­nom­e­nal ex­pe­ri­ence," said Zan­da.

"In terms of re­unit­ing with where we came from as a peo­ple and to see what South Africa has achieved com­ing out of apartheid. In 25 years, what they have ac­com­plished and the op­por­tu­ni­ties of what they were de­nied are as­tound­ing. As a peo­ple they are ag­gres­sive and in pos­i­tive pur­suit of their as­pi­ra­tions."

Zan­da's el­der son Tshipi is mar­ried to the daugh­ter of a Zu­lu trib­al chief (Chief Musa) and he was able to have the rare op­por­tu­ni­ty of meet­ing the vil­lage el­ders. He ob­served the trib­al struc­ture first hand and was im­pressed by how they mit­i­gate prob­lems.

Said Zan­da: "I was as­tound­ed by the mu­sic and dance. I have al­ways want­ed to re­turn to my Moth­er­land and meet the Zu­lu el­ders ful­ly clothed. The el­ders in­struct­ed me to re­move my shoes and be bare­foot–on­ly then would I be tru­ly con­nect­ed to 'the Moth­er­land,'" said Zan­da.

Zan­da, now 77, was al­so blown away by the cul­ture and his in­ter­est in mu­sic was fu­elled by the ex­pe­ri­ence.

He said: "My ex­pec­ta­tion was to see how the mu­sic of South Africa had evolved from their cul­ture of Zu­lu and Xhosa mu­sic. I was sur­prised to see that there was a great in­flu­ence of Hip Hop, R&B and mu­sic from West Africa. When I re­flect­ed I re­alised that Kaiso Jazz, which the late Schofield Pil­grim, Michael Booth­man and my­self pi­o­neered, was the right di­rec­tion in terms of de­vel­op­ing our mu­sic emerg­ing from the roots of ex­tem­pore ca­lyp­so. This demon­strates the pow­er of West­ern mu­sic and shows how in­flu­en­tial it is glob­al­ly."

Aside from meet­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned South African mu­si­cian Hugh Masekela, Zan­da al­so met a num­ber of high­ly ac­claimed mu­si­cians. "I didn't meet or see many wind in­stru­men­tal­ists there," said Zan­da. "This is a prob­lem that we al­so have in Trinidad. UWI and UTT would be well ad­vised to have cours­es to at­tract more young peo­ple who wish to be­come pro­fi­cient play­ing wind in­stru­ments."

Dur­ing his stay, Zan­da was in­ter­viewed on South African ra­dio and when he played his two CDs (Clive Zan­da is Here with Dat Kin­da Ting and Pan­tas­tic Vi­sions Re­vis­it­ed), peo­ple were very ea­ger and thirsty for this type of mu­sic.

Zan­da said: "Our mu­sic is loved in South Africa and the peo­ple were ask­ing how come more of T&T's mu­sic is not mar­ket­ed there. Olatun­ji Year­wood's hit song Ola is very pop­u­lar in South Africa. In­ter­est­ing­ly, the South Africans said that the word 'Ola' is not African but Brazil­ian. They were al­so very im­pressed by Len "Boogsie" Sharpe's mu­sic and de­scribed his mu­sic as 'a mon­ster'."

As a child of Siparia, Zan­da can be con­sid­ered a mu­sic prodi­gy, al­ways cre­at­ing some­thing or the oth­er as well. He start­ed mak­ing mu­sic on self-made card­board, minia­ture bon­gos at age ten beat­ing out ca­lyp­so rhythms, scat­ting and com­pos­ing lines on top of the rhythms. At age 15, Zan­da be­gan clas­si­cal pi­ano lessons with Sybil Joseph in Siparia. Af­ter a cou­ple of lessons, up to grade one, he start­ed ex­tem­po­ris­ing on the pi­ano, in­cor­po­rat­ing some of what was learnt with his own tunes. Joseph gave up on him and left him alone to do so.

At a young age, Zan­da be­gan hang­ing out with sev­er­al lo­cal com­bos and dance bands in jam ses­sions. Not long af­ter Zan­da got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sit-in with some top lo­cal com­bos main­ly play­ing bon­gos and singing some of his com­po­si­tions.

How­ev­er, it was not un­til the age of 20 he mi­grat­ed to Eng­land pri­mar­i­ly to pur­sue stud­ies in ar­chi­tec­ture be­cause the fu­ture in mu­sic was con­sid­ered not lu­cra­tive. But mu­sic was al­ways in his head and be­cause of the na­ture of ar­chi­tec­ture, be­ing con­sid­ered "frozen mu­sic," he was able to study and com­bine both dis­ci­plines suc­cess­ful­ly.

It was dur­ing his stay in Eng­land that Zan­da had his ear­li­est en­coun­ters with live and di­rect Jazz mu­sic. Im­pressed by how much mu­sic a jazz trio could gen­er­ate, he se­ri­ous­ly im­mersed him­self in­to the genre of jazz and sub­se­quent­ly com­menced in­tense pri­vate lessons with well known British Com­pos­er Michael Grant.

Soon af­ter this he formed his own com­bo ex­per­i­ment­ing with fus­ing ca­lyp­so el­e­ments with Jazz which in Zan­da's per­cep­tion were mu­si­cal sib­lings.Suc­cess­ful­ly pur­su­ing his aca­d­e­mics as an ar­chi­tect and play­ing mu­sic at nights.

The Dez Alex Com­bo, as his group was called, per­formed reg­u­lar­ly at the Lon­don Pi­galle night club do­ing cur­tain calls for such acts as Shirley Bassey, Matt Mon­roe and Sam­my Davis Jnr.

On his re­turn to Trinidad, the Zan­da Gayap Ex­tem­po/Kaiso Jazz Work­shop was es­tab­lished, in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Queen's Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) Jazz work­shop un­der the di­rec­tion of school teacher, mu­si­cian Schofield Pil­grim, re­search­ing and ex­per­i­ment­ing with the con­cept of Ex­tem­po/Kaiso Jazz which he con­tin­ued to pi­o­neer up to this day.

This mar­riage was the nu­cle­us for this unique genre of mu­sic spawn­ing out­stand­ing mu­si­cians like Michael Georges, Michael "To­by" To­bas, Bev­er­ly "Mutha­di" Thomas, Luther Fran­cois, Michael Booth­man, Rafael Robert­son, Ron Reid, Eti­enne Charles and Wayne "Bar­ney" Bona­parte.

Zan­da said: "I was sad­dened not just by Schofield's death but al­so when he died there was no mu­sic cre­at­ed by him to be played ei­ther on the ra­dio or at his fu­ner­al. At the time, I thought we must be­gin to doc­u­ment the mu­sic we cre­ate. It is why I de­cid­ed to doc­u­ment all my mu­sic for the ben­e­fit of fu­ture gen­er­a­tions."

It has been some years that Zan­da has been away from the main­stream mu­sic stage lo­cal­ly. He ex­plained: "I have been doc­u­ment­ing my Kaiso Jazz com­po­si­tions for the pur­pose of leav­ing be­hind a lega­cy for my chil­dren and the com­mu­ni­ty at large. When I pass on I hope to al­so con­trol the mu­sic from my grave. The clas­si­cal com­posers did this and that is why they are still alive through their mu­sic."

In 1975, Zan­da vis­it­ed the USA and at­tend­ed lec­ture demon­stra­tions in jazz im­pro­vi­sa­tions at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty un­der the di­rec­tion of Pro­fes­sor Chris White (a bassist of Trinida­di­an de­scent). He was award­ed a Cer­tifi­cate in Jazz im­pro­vi­sa­tion from Rut­gers. While in the States he formed a com­bo which in­clud­ed well known New York-based mu­si­cians such as Dun­more Louis Haynes known for his drum­ming with the Os­car Pe­ter­son Trio; so­pra­no sax­o­phon­ist Char­lie Davis; trum­peter Tex Allen; and, Trinida­di­an born bassist David "Hap­py" Williams.

Zan­da's group per­formed a se­ries of con­certs at the East Harlem Cul­tur­al Cen­ter play­ing orig­i­nal ca­lyp­so jazz com­po­si­tions and shar­ing the bill with an­oth­er of his well loved, the Archie Shepp Quin­tet. Zan­da has al­so ap­peared at all ma­jor Caribbean Jazz fes­ti­vals, the last be­ing St Lu­cia in 1994, De Mo­ra The­atre in Toron­to Pan Jazz Fes­ti­val and the T&T Jazz fes­ti­vals to name a few. Hav­ing es­tab­lished him­self as com­pos­er, im­pro­vis­er, pi­anist, his fans ex­pects noth­ing short of his in­no­v­a­tive in­ter­pre­ta­tions of ca­lyp­so and jazz stan­dards.

There is no ques­tion that Zan­da is a na­tion­al trea­sure and mu­si­cal am­bas­sador for the Caribbean who be­lieves that mu­sic is the in­ter­ces­sor for peace in the world. He is al­so com­mit­ted pass­ing on knowl­edge to the youth, who are the fu­ture and is in the process of pro­duc­ing videos and doc­u­ment­ing lit­er­a­ture as part of the holis­tic com­mit­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of the art of Ex­tem­po/Kaiso Jazz.

Zan­da's last ma­jor per­for­mance was a fund-rais­er at Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um for young Berklee Col­lege fresh­man Joshua Joseph. He said: "I be­liev­ing in men­tor­ing the young mu­si­cians. An­oth­er im­por­tant col­lab­o­ra­tion I did was with Louis Nurse at his con­cert."

In clos­ing, asked what ex­act­ly is Kaiso Jazz, Zan­da replied: "for me Kaiso Jazz is the cre­ative hy­brid prod­uct deep root­ed in our an­ces­tral con­scious­ness of the drum, the rid­dim of life, and our mul­ti cul­tur­al her­itage."

IN­FO

Clive "Zan­da" Alexan­der will be back on stage on No­vem­ber 18 when Eth­nic Jazz Club stages KaiSo­cA@the­Jaz­zS­tu­dio at The Jazz Stu­dio, 51 Cor­ne­lio Street, Wood­brook. Zan­da will be per­form­ing with Richard Joseph (drums), Rus­sell Du­ri­ty (bass) and Natasha Joseph (pans).

Ad­vance tick­ets will be avail­able for pur­chase at the stu­dio on No­vem­ber 15 and 17 be­tween 11 am and 5.30 pm at the Stu­dio. Pa­trons are asked to note that Zan­da has cho­sen to present his sets at 8pm and 10pm.