Nigel Camp­bell

On Thurs­day, Au­gust 6, lo­cal leg­end of song, Mavis John de­liv­ered what many hint­ed as the de­noue­ment in her long con­cert per­for­mance and record­ing ca­reer to a se­lect au­di­ence at Kil­lar­ney (Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle) in Port-of-Spain. This per­for­mance event, Shh­mu­sick, close­ly fol­lowed Gary Car­dinez’s Steel & Voic­es Trib­ute con­cert to her at Kafé Blue fea­tur­ing a hand­ful of singers, and the icon her­self, reimag­in­ing her vast reper­toire of is­land pop songs from her cat­a­logue go­ing back to the 1960s.

I wrote on so­cial me­dia af­ter that event that “we were in the pres­ence of ex­tra­or­di­nary tal­ent and an im­por­tant lega­cy per­former who can still run cir­cles around a co­hort of her ju­nior pro­fes­sion­al peers and a younger gen­er­a­tion of fe­male singers in this is­land.”

The Ki­lar­ney event re­in­forced that opin­ion. De­spite a poor sound re­in­force­ment sys­tem that did no one any favours, the in­ti­ma­cy of the space—about sev­en­ty souls in that for­mer draw­ing room of a Caribbean cas­tle—pro­vid­ed the back­drop for keen lis­ten­ing and al­so proved to be an echo of an era when one had to sing on pitch and with pow­er to sat­is­fy an au­di­ence ac­cus­tomed to for­eign pop in­flu­ences and stan­dards. Re­splen­dent in a gold gown, John de­liv­ered the goods with per­fect dic­tion in her phras­ing and el­e­gant nu­ance in her tim­bre to tack­le a span of gen­res with lit­tle ef­fort.

Those hits from her sto­ried past were brought back to life with ac­com­pa­ni­ment from a trio of mu­si­cians that suf­ficed. Michael “Ming” Low Chew Tung on pi­ano, “the ar­chi­tect of the new ca­lyp­so jazz in the 21st cen­tu­ry” and the arranger of a pair of songs on her 2001 al­bum Mavis Sings, served as mu­si­cal di­rec­tor of this tight unit, with Richard Joseph on drums and Ker­nal Roberts on per­cus­sion.

Three fe­male voic­es—Kar­la Gon­za­les, Rachel El­cock, Jami­la Hy­po­lite Mitchell—sup­port­ed John as she moved through songs that de­fined her ca­reer and re­mind­ed those gath­ered why that ca­reer con­tin­ues.

Ein­tou Pearl Springer’s Jazz in the Callaloo awak­ened spir­its in that colo­nial cas­tle to hear what con­tem­po­rary Black voic­es had to say and sing: “And when you see you feel­ing bit­ter / Sweet­en up the brew / Ah­mad Ja­mal, Ray Charles, Ms Fitzger­ald and La­dy Day too / And child, do put some jazz ‘n you callaloo.” An­dre Tanker’s More­na Os­ha was giv­en majesty with voic­es, au­di­ence in­clud­ed, beau­ti­ful­ly har­mon­is­ing to make that “beau­ti­ful woman al­ways dressed in black” go­ing for “wa­ter around a wind­ing track” a queen. Oliv­er “Stumpy” Chap­man’s I Will Be Your Friend was re­born as mod­ern is­land pop mu­sic. Gre­go­ry “GB” Bal­lan­tine was moved to tears as his clas­sic com­po­si­tion Ca­lyp­so Ris­ing soared up to the high ceil­ing of this space end­ing with ova­tion.

These songs, and oth­ers de­scribed a glo­ri­ous path, over 90 min­utes of per­for­mance, of the jour­ney of this singer and her con­tri­bu­tion to our in­dige­nous record­ing and is­land mu­sic in­dus­try. She was a teen idol in the 1960s, she was an icon in the new cen­tu­ry. Her col­lab­o­ra­tions over six decades with the cream of the crop of lo­cal mu­si­cians, song­writ­ers, mu­sic pro­duc­ers and im­pre­sar­ios were on show at Kil­lar­ney.

Michael Booth­man, Pel­ham God­dard, the late great Tony Wil­son along with the afore­men­tioned song­writ­ers rep­re­sent the pan­theon of mu­sic ge­nius and their com­po­si­tions show­case the broad range of lo­cal mu­sic that spanned gen­res out­side ca­lyp­so to show that soul, R&B, pop bal­lads, jazz and the blues have a place in the mu­sic scene here that is seem­ing­ly nar­row­ing to a si­lo around the an­nu­al Christ­mas–Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

Two cir­cum­scribed spaces, Kafé Blue and Kil­lar­ney, with seat­ing for about 100 peo­ple does not rep­re­sent, on the sur­face, an ur­gent and great de­mand for au­di­ence num­bers. In the mod­ern mu­sic econ­o­my here, qual­i­ty of­ten-times su­per­sedes quan­ti­ty, and that it what de­fines lega­cy for many, if not all. It al­so de­fined the joy of a gath­er­ing en­gag­ing with great­ness.

On that evening, her last two song were her an­thems, if you will. Her hit duet with her late hus­band, Dave El­cock, You Are What Love Is—ru­moured to be among the top three best-sell­ing vinyl records ever pro­duced lo­cal­ly—was a fam­i­ly af­fair as her son, Ja­son El­cock, stood in for his fa­ther to show in­deed “what love is.”

The con­cert clos­er was our na­tion­al song, Mar­jorie Pad­more’s God Bless Our Na­tion that had the full au­di­ence stand­ing proud and pos­si­bly grate­ful for be­ing there to see this per­for­mance.

This con­cert could have been a pos­si­ble farewell on stage for one who was de­scribed as “a gen­er­a­tional out­lier and the bell­wether of what icon­ic fe­male per­for­mance was and is and should be go­ing for­ward.” The stage for the fe­male per­former in T&T has seen ups and downs, re­sis­tance and push backs, and even hos­til­i­ty to­wards cer­tain ca­lyp­so­ni­ans and oth­er artists.

The stage on that night for Mavis John, 80 years old, was the spot­light for fame undi­min­ished and an are­na, small in size, grand in scope, for an ex­am­ple of what all those years of do­ing it right looks like.