This month’s listening picks from the Caribbean — featuring reviews by Nigel Campbell of new music by Anthony Joseph; Djazil; Kaiso Power featuring various artists; and Jivanna x Annalie Prime
Anthony Joseph
The Ark (Heavenly Sweetness Records)
Anthony Joseph is back at it, pushing the boundaries of what Caribbean spoken word albums can explore while retaining a regional identity. Even more than its distinctive cadence or stories, music has defined the genre’s trajectories — going back to African diaspora innovations by The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, and Linton Kwesi Johnson. Joseph returns for a second consecutive album with English musician and producer Dave Okumu, who Joseph says has a “spiritual kind of electronic vibe”, to engage with Afrofuturism’s ideologies and African diaspora music ranging from trippy future funk to booming island drum ‘n’ bass. The words flow like prose unleashed to reclaim Caribbean stories from the depths of forgotten memory and international indifference. The title track sees Black icons and heroes — from Sun Ra to the Roaring Lion, Paul Robeson to CLR James — on a metaphorical vessel to preserve history, to spread culture, to survive. Progressive and poetic.
Djazil
Sunday (Self-released)
This is the second album by the jazz fusion band Djazil, which uses the steelpan as a lead instrument. More than a lead instrument, the steelpan on this album in the capable hands of Mathieu Borgne effectively supplements and complements other leads — electric guitar (Cedric Baud) and saxophone (Alain Debiossat) — to aptly paint sonic colours beyond the Caribbean experience. Borgne, who is a frequent visitor to Trinidad for steelband competition and inspiration, has a touch that moves away from the frenetic pace of a jam. The subtle mix of Creole rhythmic pulses grounded in a range of Antillean influences and metropolitan aesthetics — from Martinique to the French mainland — render this album as an example of possibilities for the pan. The players in this ensemble display composition and arranging acumen that places high priority on delivering the sound of steel juxtaposed with a jazz quintet at a level worthy of repeat listening. Dynamic and daring, Djazil delivers.
Various Artists
Kaiso Power (Soundway Records)
This compilation album, subtitled Sound Revolution in Trinidad 1970–1980, collects early kaiso jazz innovations, revolutionary calypso, and performance poetry that resonated with the “ancient spiritual consciousness” and rhythms of Africa and centred a new “nation language”. A new generation of artists on the islands and in the diaspora were developing burgeoning fusion music genres that radically transformed the status quo from mimicked foreign music towards a rebellious national identity with influences from the Global South. The 10 tracks here chart the musical creations of artists who would become legends in Trinidad, including Sensational Roots (later to become powerhouse Carnival music band Charlie’s Roots), calypso jazz pioneers Clive Zanda and Michael Boothman, and genre icons Lancelot Layne and Andre Tanker. The act of reminiscing on this music from a fertile era in the island’s history is an exercise of joy and pride.
Jivanna x Annalie Prime
Pot & Kettle (Nakama Music) • Single
“The pot calling the kettle black” is one of those old idioms that describes the hypocrisy of someone finding fault with another for something they themselves have/do. Jivanna is an amalgam of alternative pop and folk calypso influences who has taken the temperature of young people in the region and sings earnest ditties that reflect a modern island ideal of honesty without restraint. This compact island pop adventure in fusion is bookended by the old extempo calypso war musical refrain “Santimanitay”, and provides an opportunity for these two young singers to give it to the older generation in a war of words that displays wit and bravado. Shared vocal duties allow roots-pop singer Prime ready comebacks for actions that seem to irritate: You say that I’m lost / You say I’m defeated / You tell me these things / Then say you doh mean it / But you’re no better than me / Yuh blinded by hypocrisy… Yuh always right and never wrong. Biting and bitter but not sorry.