Nigel A Camp­bell

In a month of many en­ter­tain­ment op­tions la­belled "jazz," the first week­end show­cased some of the best mu­sic per­for­mances heard in these parts for a while. April was recog­nised as Jazz Ap­pre­ci­a­tion Month in the Unit­ed States via the Smith­son­ian along with the UN­ESCO spon­sored In­ter­na­tion­al Jazz Day cul­mi­nat­ing at month's end with glob­al jazz events in­clud­ing Trinidad.

Pi­anist Mas­ter Gun­nery Sgt Robert Bo­gus­law, and dou­ble bassist Gun­nery Sgt Er­ic Sabo–of The Pres­i­dent's Own US Ma­rine Band–along with sax­o­phon­ist Jef­frey Wills of Nashville, Ten­nessee were here in T&T for a sec­ond year to give jazz per­for­mances and do mu­sic work­shops on the first week­end.

These skilled mu­si­cians spoke the lan­guage of jazz that has not been heard lo­cal­ly for a while with per­for­mances re­flect­ing the styles of Th­elo­nius Monk, Chick Corea, even han­dling Eti­enne Charles San­ti­man­it� with tech­ni­cal aplomb. Mix­ing stan­dards with orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions, the so­los cap­tured the swing mu­sic ethos ma­jes­ti­cal­ly with the vir­tu­os­i­ty of the so­los of a high cal­i­bre.

Wyn­ton Marsalis said in his book Mov­ing to High­er Ground, "The jazzman's ob­jec­tive...was sole­ly mu­si­cal: Through his im­pro­vi­sa­tion, he want­ed to take peo­ple deep in­to his ac­tu­al feel­ings and his world." Marsalis us­es the idea of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy to de­fine the con­ver­sa­tions be­tween mu­si­cians.

At the Band­stand out­side Pres­i­dent's House on a cool Thurs­day evening last week, the Amer­i­can mu­si­cians' in­ter­ac­tion with lo­cal pan mae­stro Len "Boogsie" Sharpe ex­posed a re­al­i­ty we chau­vin­is­ti­cal­ly over­look: nev­er dis­count the ne­ces­si­ty for high­er mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion in­clud­ing clas­si­cal train­ing for su­perla­tive mu­sic per­for­mance.

Im­pro­vi­sa­tion is a key el­e­ment in jazz and a skill in which cer­tain mu­sic rules are fol­lowed. To say that Boogsie does not have a gift­ed mu­si­cal ear would be stat­ing un­truths about a man who is a kind of mu­si­cal ge­nius, a sa­vant of the steel­pan. Un­less the in­ten­tion was free im­pro­vi­sa­tion de­void of all rules, the "clash" of the steel­pan lead-voice with the chords pro­gres­sions was ap­par­ent and no­table. What that says about Boogsie and his world, it may al­so say about the T&T au­di­ence.

Jux­ta­pos­ing, on stage, mu­si­cians of dif­fer­ent tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties, or more im­por­tant­ly, dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ence lev­els can be an eye-open­er to lo­cal au­di­ences ac­cus­tomed with the sta­tus quo. It can al­so, with rep­e­ti­tion, im­prove the per­for­mance of the less­er ex­pe­ri­enced mu­si­cians.

Boston-based Trinida­di­an mu­si­cian Ron Reid, in con­cert for One Night On­ly at the new­ly re­fur­bished All Saints Memo­r­i­al Hall on Sat­ur­day, mar­shalled his sup­port­ing lo­cal mu­si­cians to a su­perla­tive per­for­mance mode un­heard by these ears for a very long time in­clud­ing the re­cent Jazz Artists on the Greens.

Reid, an as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of con­tem­po­rary writ­ing and pro­duc­tion at Berklee Col­lege of Mu­sic, trans­formed an au­di­ence as well as his fel­low mu­si­cians. Josh Gross­man, artis­tic di­rec­tor for Toron­to Down­town Jazz, which pro­duces the an­nu­al TD Toron­to Jazz Fes­ti­val re­cent­ly wrote "...en­ter­tain­ing an au­di­ence means en­sur­ing that they en­joy them­selves...En­gag­ing an au­di­ence, on the oth­er hand means draw­ing them in–guar­an­tee­ing that they'll like the ex­pe­ri­ence it­self, if not what they ex­pe­ri­ence." Ar­rang­ing and play­ing many com­po­si­tions from the lo­cal canon, in­clud­ing his own cat­a­logue, Ron "di­rect­ed" per­for­mances by lo­cal jazz stal­warts Raf Robert­son, Theron Shaw and An­tho­ny Woodroffe that drew tu­mul­tuous ova­tion from a sat­is­fied au­di­ence. He pulled en­gag­ing per­for­mances from the Xavier Strings that matched the mood and tem­po of a jazz bal­lad with the sonor­i­ty of a vi­o­lin with­out the ac­cus­tomed harsh­ness of a bow with too much rosin.

Lo­cal jazz mu­si­cians who for years have per­formed live, cre­at­ed and dis­trib­uted record­ed mu­sic as a part of the nascent mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try here in T&T rep­re­sent the acme of mu­sic tal­ent to some ob­servers.

I reck­on there are about ten mu­si­cians of re­pute who get the ma­jor­i­ty of gigs and per­for­mances.

The pos­si­bil­i­ties for tech­ni­cal and styl­is­tic evo­lu­tion are stymied by the lack of in­ter­face with vis­it­ing mu­si­cians ex­posed to more ideas and skills. These two events show­cased the po­ten­tial for more cross-fer­til­i­sa­tion and its re­sul­tant im­pact.

Nigel Camp­bell is a pro­duc­er of the an­nu­al Jazz Artists on the Greens and the se­ries SONG­BIRDS...live. He blogs on mu­sic and the mu­sic busi­ness in Trinidad at http://ira­diott.word­press.com