SAN­DRA L BLOOD

Jaiso Fes­ti­val: The Sound of Fu­sion, held on May 17 at Sound­Forge in St James, was a seam­less, genre-bridg­ing show­case of steel, brass, and soul de­liv­ered with pre­ci­sion and flair by Jaiso the Band.

The pierc­ing lines of the band’s ra­zor-sharp horn sec­tion—Bar­ry Homer (trum­pet), Jer­ron Jones (sax), Ir­wyn Roach (bari­tone sax) and An­tho­ny O’Con­nor (tenor sax)—sig­nalled that this wasn’t just an­oth­er con­cert.

Jaiso leader Charl­ton “Char­lo” Al­fon­so’s ver­sion of Julie An­drews My Favourite Things on the tenor pan opened the show, which made way for Khayann Keilani’s ren­di­tion of Jill Scott’s He Loves Me and Be­y­on­cé’s Plas­tic Off The So­fa.

These per­for­mances re­ceived lusty ap­plause from pa­trons, in­clud­ing re­spect­ed vet­er­an mu­si­cian and pro­duc­er Carl “Beaver” Hen­der­son, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) CEO Kei­ba Mot­ley and for­mer min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Brigadier Carl Al­fon­so, Char­lo’s grand­fa­ther.

Jemi­ma Joseph brought the groove on with a cool, jazzy re­work­ing of Blaxx’s Mash Up, fol­lowed by Quin­ton Neck­les with Na­tal­ie Cole’s In­sep­a­ra­ble, and Luther Van­dross’ Nev­er Too Much which he ded­i­cat­ed to his wife, Moni­fa.

Mid­way through the show, Char­lo turned up the tem­po with a fiery ex­change be­tween pan­nist and per­cus­sion­ist Michael Jag­gasar, fol­lowed by a full-bod­ied con­ga show­down dur­ing his per­for­mance of Jose Al­ber­to’s La Flau­ta In­vis­i­ble.

The sec­ond half of the evening fea­tured Char­lo in full cre­ative com­mand. Lemuel Davis added per­cus­sive heat to Andy Narell’s If We Re­al­ly Want be­fore Char­lo’s mov­ing orig­i­nal Frus­tra­tion.

With a cast of per­form­ers that in­clud­ed moko jumbies and fire breathers, Jaiso trans­formed Sound­Forge in­to a kaiso are­na, un­earthing Shad­ow’s clas­sic, Stranger, and Spar­row’s, Ly­ing Ex­cus­es.

There were al­so cameos from ris­ing star Tevin Hart­man, de­liv­er­ing his Car­ni­val 2025 re­lease Dar­lin, while Eko, the Chase sis­ters Son­ja and Suraya, per­formed their groovy, con­tem­pla­tive num­ber Play­back (Can­boulay).

By the time Char­lo and com­pa­ny segued in­to Car­ni­val 2025 an­thems Too Own Way (Voice) and Throw­back (Viking Ding Dong), the crowd at Sound­Forge was on their feet, danc­ing, singing, ab­sorb­ing every note of played by the band.

The Jaiso Fes­ti­val was billed as a con­cert, but what un­fold­ed was a move­ment, which po­si­tions the band as gift­ed per­form­ers and cul­tur­al in­no­va­tors re­defin­ing Caribbean mu­sic.

Fol­low them on so­cial me­dia @jaisothe­band on In­sta­gram or email jaisothe­band@gmail.com.