DAL­TON NAR­INE

Pan, parang, ca­lyp­so and chut­ney aren't by de­f­i­n­i­tion what you would ex­pect on a playlist at an Amer­i­can jazz sta­tion that sends riffs around the world. But Trinida­di­an Skip­py Louis Leza­ma, a ra­dio host and pro­gram­mer at WD­NA (wd­na.org), based in South Flori­da, makes it hap­pen every Sat­ur­day morn­ing from 8 am till noon. Leza­ma, who hosts 88 Jazz Place Week­end, has a good time rub­bing off the na­tion­al cul­ture as an erot­ic sub­text to the pop­u­lar show. It's his hinge of Tri­ni en­light­en­ment mo­ment. Leza­ma's ex­pe­di­tion of the range of jazz, from Miles Davis to Son­ny Rollins, John Coltrane to Et­ta James, and Ni­na Si­mone to Th­elo­nious Monk, among oth­er ex­po­nents of con­tem­po­rary jazz, is anal­o­gous to hang­ing out at a pop­u­lar St James lounge and bel­ly­ing up to a sound­track fused with a va­ri­ety of lan­guages with so many ac­cents on the beat. So, oc­ca­sion­al­ly, you are treat­ed to crunch­ing riffs on a dou­ble sec­ond that flow like the East Dry Riv­er in stormy weath­er. And, not to sweat Ken­ny J, Panazz, Crazy and Liam Teague min­gling with Di­ana Krall, Ah­mad Ja­mal and Ken­ny Bur­rell. It's ear­ly De­cem­ber. His pac­ing im­pe­ri­al­ly right, Leza­ma al­so ex­cels at flesh­ing out the artistes.

In­deed, when the pro­gramme opens, a fog­gy, mono­phon­ic bari­tone, thick­ened by pre­vi­ous years of cig­a­rette smok­ing, breaks the ice in a so­phis­ti­cat­ed way. That voice is his own ex­pres­sive mu­si­cal in­stru­ment to il­lu­mi­nate a mu­si­cal set with lin­er notes and oth­er in­for­ma­tion about the per­form­ers. Leza­ma's pro­fi­cien­cy is leg­end. Paul Al­cala, a re­tired in­sur­ance ex­ec­u­tive from Diego Mar­tin, whose favourite, but not ex­clu­sive, pas­time is lis­ten­ing to jazz, says Leza­ma's playlists are nev­er un­in­ter­est­ing. Even the most-tight­ly-dis­crim­i­nat­ing lis­ten­er, Al­cala sur­mis­es, would find en­joy­ment at more points in the broad­cast than he would at first an­tic­i­pate. "I rate Skip­py pret­ty high­ly as a jazz pro­gram­mer," he said, "not on­ly for his in­ti­mate knowl­edge of the con­tent he pro­duces but for the breadth of jazz and mu­sic forms that he fear­less­ly in­cludes in his in­ven­to­ry; and for the skill­ful and taste­ful way in which he in­ter­weaves these some­times di­verse el­e­ments in­to his show." Al­cala is by no means sin­gu­lar in his re­spect for the Mi­a­mi res­i­dent, who a col­league calls "the coolest cat I know on ra­dio."

Frank Rivera, host of Latin Jazz Quar­ter on Sat­ur­day nights, al­so refers to Leza­ma as a com­pos­er. Se­ri­ous­ly."A good com­pos­er," Rivera, a Viet­nam vet­er­an, said. "He's the on­ly pro­gram­mer I know who plays Ji­mi Hen­drix and fol­lows up with Miles Davis. Some peo­ple have to strug­gle to work at it, but to Skip­py, it's a nat­ur­al, ef­fort­less con­veyance of mu­sic. He can get away with it be­cause he un­der­stands the very fi­bre of mu­sic. When he in­serts that kaiso, pan, parang thing, I smile. Even to con­sid­er do­ing that! Yet, there's no neg­a­tiv­i­ty from his au­di­ence-and they're quick to let the sta­tion know."

One can hard­ly ar­gue that Leza­ma grabs the at­ten­tion, and peo­ple im­me­di­ate­ly grav­i­tate to him. That his chore­og­ra­phy rings unique is nat­ur­al with lis­ten­ers. When he stacks the deck with mu­sic from Bil­ly Bang, the late jazz mu­si­cian and Viet­nam vet­er­an, every­body gets it that it's Memo­r­i­al Day week­end. His show is as good as the artistes he plays. Leza­ma cor­ners tru­ly ex­cep­tion­al jazz fans around the world. It is hard­ly sur­pris­ing that his cool con­nec­tion to lis­ten­ers runs deep, with a breadth of re­search that has fat­tened his ex­quis­ite work. And it's not that he's try­ing hard to im­press. They be­lieve him. A lis­ten­er, moved by the fire and orig­i­nal­i­ty in a pan jazz piece, is schmooz­ing on Leza­ma's ear­phones. An­oth­er calls about a song he hadn't heard in a while-Love me or Leave Me by Ni­na Si­mone. A mail car­ri­er lets him know that he's nev­er in his van un­less he's lis­ten­ing. A vis­i­tor to Mi­a­mi ad­mits to at no time ever hear­ing the Tri­ni mu­sic that he found while surf­ing the band­width in his ho­tel room, so he'll spread the joy on Face­book, which, iron­i­cal­ly is how some dis­ci­ples world­wide con­nect. "Seems kind of strange, but here I am, a Tri­ni, liv­ing in Lon­don, tun­ing in­to a ra­dio sta­tion in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da, to get my week­ly fix of 'back home' vibes!" Den­nis Drakes cites a num­ber of on­line jazz sta­tions that he can turn on, "but Skip­py has the edge. Not on­ly do I get what I want to hear, but he has a knack for let­ting the mu­sic run, and in­clud­ing mu­sic from the Tri­ni scene in par­tic­u­lar, which he has shown can hold its own in any world fo­rum.

The oc­ca­sion­al in­ter­view, such as a re­cent ses­sion with Eti­enne Charles, is al­so some­thing that I look for­ward to."

Leza­ma, who or­gan­ised a sold-out con­cert by Charles at the sta­tion in Oc­to­ber, de­lights in the fas­ci­na­tion of par­al­lels be­tween steel pan and ca­lyp­so and jazz and blues. "They tell the sto­ry of a peo­ple from a his­tor­i­cal so­cio-po­lit­i­cal con­text, which, ini­tial­ly, was the on­ly al­lowed medi­um of ex­pres­sion for com­men­tary on the prob­lems with­in the so­ci­ety." Leza­ma might not agree, but he has made his leg­end in the jazz busi­ness, not nec­es­sar­i­ly the meet­ings and busi­ness re­ports of the cor­po­rate world, from which he re­tired as di­rec­tor of ad­min­is­tra­tion at Mi­a­mi-Dade Coun­ty In­for­ma­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy De­part­ment. He trad­ed a ca­reer of punc­tu­a­tions for a post-ca­reer of un­con­ven­tion­al bound­aries. Swapped sta­tus sym­bols for sym­bols with which to iden­ti­fy an emerg­ing world cul­ture. And ex­changed a sys­tem where voic­es get lost, for one in which they are re­alised. In his late teens in Trinidad, Leza­ma took up jazz se­ri­ous­ly through An­drew Skeete, of Bel­mont, who built his own speak­ers."I was on the white side of jazz-Ger­ry Mul­li­gan, Dave Brubeck, and so on, un­til I found Coltrane's A Love Supreme, which was a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive," Leza­ma re­called. "Eu­gene Man­war­ren, Wen­dell's fa­ther, had a dy­na­mite col­lec­tion. The mid-60s was more of a con­fir­ma­tion, not a bap­tism." Leza­ma found Eden in record stores and jazz haunts in Green­wich Vil­lage when he im­mi­grat­ed to New York in 1967. It was at the Fill­more East where he struck up a re­la­tion­ship with blues, saw­dust and peanut shells un­der­foot. And the blues has al­ways re­mind­ed of a sad­ness of not be­ing rel­e­vant. It's why Leza­ma plays up ties that bind ca­lyp­so to its an­ces­tral pro­to­type. And how he ex­plains the on­ly hour-long blues ses­sion at WD­NA.

In 1979, Leza­ma re­lo­cat­ed to Mi­a­mi with his wife San­dra and their two chil­dren. Along with a friend, Hen­ry Shaw Jr, the fam­i­ly host­ed for­mer WD­NA pro­gram­mer Gar­ry Keene at their home in Mi­a­mi Shores, an evening of jazz even­tu­al­ly lead­ing to a gig at the sta­tion for Leza­ma. At first, he was hop­ing to get in­volved in Caribbean ra­dio, but with all that jazz stacked to the ceil­ing, he hasn't re­gret­ted his choice 16 years lat­er. Keene was so en­am­ored of Leza­ma's for­mat that he switched his pro­gram­ming style when he moved to Wis­con­sin, says Shaw, a den­tal tech­nol­o­gist in Mi­a­mi, and an au­dio­phile whose col­lec­tion tops 4,000 al­bums and CDs. "When some­thing about jazz or an artiste stumps me," says Shaw, "I turn to Skip­py-pe­dia, be­cause he's so knowl­edge­able." Shaw re­mem­bers warn­ing Leza­ma that Amer­i­cans might not un­der­stand pan-the in­stru­ments and the mu­sic. "But he went ahead, and now he's an am­bas­sador of our cul­ture, which he fits nice­ly in­to his jazz playlist. His show def­i­nite­ly is a must-lis­ten." Hard-core fans tend to take in 88 Jazz Place Week­end all the way to its con­clu­sion, with Aretha Franklin's sig­na­ture groove, Reach out and Touch Some­body's Hand, which ar­rives not with a flour­ish, but nonethe­less as pure clas­sic-an il­lus­tra­tion of Leza­ma's char­ac­ter. And that just about does it for Skip­py Leza­ma, the host signs off, wish­ing you love, peace and jazz.