by Chris
Smith
In many ways, it makes more sense to
think of New Orleans as a northern Caribbean port than as a southern American
one. There has been a long musical
interchange between the city and the islands, stretching back to slavery times,
when slave owners fleeing the Haitian rebellion brought their human property to
Louisiana. In the thirties, Belasco's
Orchestra from Trinidad recorded an irresistible Sally You Not Ashamed? which
is the same tune as Ai Ai Ai (Creole Song), cut by the Wooden Joe Nicholas band
for American Music in 1949. More
recently, New Orleans R&B was one of the building blocks of ska, delivered
to Jamaica by radio, records and visiting artists. Today the circuit continues to operate, as
the Neville Brothers, for instance, incorporate Haitian and reggae elements
into their music. The music of Carlo
Jones and his band, of which more later, is yet another example, and a very
striking one, of way musical ideas have travelled between opposite ends of the
Caribbean, with the intervening islands seemingly used as stepping stones.
 |
| Tremé Brass Band |
Tremé Brass Band
First, however, the
Tremé Brass Band (or Tremè, as the artwork annoyingly, and illiterately, refers
to them). This outfit are a hot item in
New Orleans - I'm writing this section of the review the day after they won the
1997 Big Easy Entertainment Award for best traditional brass band - and listening
to the nine lengthy performances on this CD, it's easy to understand why. The lineup includes the unbelievable
sousaphone of Kirk Joseph, late of the Dirty Dozen, who plays lines which would
tax a good string bassist, and young trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, leader of the
Rebirth Jazz Band at age 12, and now heading up the Barbeque Swingsters, who
were best traditional jazz band in the same award ceremony, incidentally. (On four numbers, Joseph is replaced by Jeffrey
Hills, who is very good, but not in the same virtuosic league.) Percussion is provided by veterans Lionel
Batiste on bass drum and bandleader Benny Jones on snare, between them whipping
the music along to a nonstop second line strut.
The melody line also includes James Andrews (second trumpet), Corey
Henry (trombone), Fredric Kemp (soprano and alto saxes), and Stackman Callier
on tenor sax. The sax players are both
alumni of the Fats Domino band, and their alliance with the younger players,
out of the contemporary funk bands, is part of what makes the Tremé such an
exciting combination.
 |
| New Orelans Second Line. By Bob Graham |
I don't intend to suggest that the
sax men are stuck in their ways, or that the youngsters have no grounding in
tradition. On the contrary, the latter
seem to have mastered everything in the jazz tradition, from the earliest
freewheeling heterophony to the newest freewheeling heterophony. They also have a good grip on everything in
between - hear Ruffins and Andrews two-trumpet solo on Chinatown, My Chinatown,
pick 'n' mixing stylistic notions from Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Roy
Eldridge to add to their own ideas. Both
sax players, but especially Callier (and Roger Lewis, who replaces him on the
numbers where Kirk Joseph also sits out) also have a complete grasp of the jazz
lexicon, taking in everything from old time New Orleans woodwind sounds to
Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane and beyond.
On Back O'Town Blues, Lewis's post-Coltrane solo seems to fly in on a
wire like the Fairy Godmother in pantomime, work its magic, and scoot off
again. I'm not implying, by this that
the solo is arbitrary or ill-conceived; the Tremé's freewheeling, wide-ranging
ethos, which grabs any style or idiom it fancies, accommodates it quite
happily.
Lewis's solo is, in fact, about the
only reason to listen to Back O' Town, which at 11' 13" is far too long,
and too obviously trying in its rowdiness to meet the expectations of the
audience at the New Orleans Music Factory, where it was recorded. (If the expression "Put your hands
together!" were made illegal, I would not object.) It also points up the
shortcomings of Lionel Batiste's vocal style: his dry delivery, half-way
between singing and chanting, seems, here and elsewhere, to be distanced from
the lyrics. As so often with jazz bands,
and for some reason especially Crescent City ones, blues is viewed as a
structure, rather than as a vehicle for emotional expression, and the same
comment applies when Batiste sings gospel. It may be that he wants to make it clear that when he sings Jesus Is On
The Mainline he's doing so as an entertainer, not a worshipper, but the effect
is that the sung portions of this number fail as both religion and
entertainment.
That said, I should point out that
Batiste's singing is fine on the title track because, deriving from Mardi Gras
Indian chants, it emphasises rhythm rather than melody. Along with Food Stamp Blues (usually known as
Ain't Got No Foodstamps), Gimme My Money Back comes from the repertoire of the
younger bands, but the rest of the set is firmly in the older New Orleans parade
band tradition, from the blowsy, swaying Hindustan to standards like Oh Lady Be
Good, and the spirituals Just A Closer Walk With Thee and The Old Rugged Cross,
which is played at a hard to handle, but very effective, foot-dragging,
on-the-way-to-the cemetery tempo. I'm
told that Just A Closer Walk has been established by a Japanese researcher of
statistical (and masochistic) bent as the most often recorded of all jazz
tunes. Much-recorded though it is, the
Tremé's version breathes new life into the number, among other things by using
When The Red Red Robin Comes Bob-bob-bobbing Along as a quote and
counter-melody!
Speaking of Japan, on the four live
tracks, the band is augmented by two anonymous tourists from the Land of the
Rising Sun on banjo and piano. Since
they are unmiked, it's not possible to hear whether their playing matches their
chutzpah, but the band seem to have been content to have them along for the
ride, and they are not a drawback; as indicated above, I have reservations
about the vocals, but that apart this is a very enjoyable CD.
 |
| Carlo Jones & The Surinam Kaseko Troubadours |
Carlo Jones & The Surinam Kaseko Troubadours
At the other end of the Caribbean,
on the northeast coast of South America, are the Guyanas, which, reading from
left to right, were formerly British, Dutch and French colonies. They've always been regarded locally as part
of the West Indies, and certainly Guyana, where I lived as a child when it was
still British Guiana, fits that cultural and economic bill, from cricket to
crops. Going out there in 1959, the
Dutch ship we were on spent three days in Paramaribo, the capital of Surinam,
and I still have hazy memories of bone-white Dutch architecture transplanted to
the tropics, and much clearer memories of superb ice cream. Of the music, naturally, I learned nothing, but
seeing a CD by Carlo Jones & The Surinam Kaseko Troubadours in Sterns last
year, I thought that a lineup of alto saxophone, sousaphone, banjo, trumpet,
skraki (a bass drum with cymbals atop), snare drum and trombone was bound to be
of interest. Apart from anything else,
the similarity to the New Orleans parade bands was most intriguing. In the event, kaseko turned out to be my
discovery of 1996.
Surinam is
a multi-racial society, like Guyana, as a result of the former colonial powers'
habit of moving labour around their empires as necessary, and the Indian,
Indonesian and Amerindian peoples of Surinam all have their own musical
cultures; gamelan, khawali and ghazal are among the styles to be found, along
with modern Indian and Javanese pop. More relevant to this recording, however, is Melville Herskovits' famous
observation, with reference to the Bush Negro descendants of runaway slaves,
that African culture in the New World is best preserved in Surinam. Kaseko is very evidently an African-American
music, highly polyrhythmic in a manner that's strongly reminsicent of both the
New Orleans parade bands and the Mardi Gras Indians, but more complex than
either. Indeed, according to the CD
notes, kaseko was considerably influenced by New Orleans jazz in the thirties,
so that the lineup similarities may be more than coincidence. Furthermore, bandleader and saxophonist Carlo
Jones refers to his band members as jazzmen, and older people apparently still
refer to kaseko as jazz.
Since the thirties, the music has
taken on board other influences, seemingly blending in all the new sounds
without deleting any of the older ones; during the forties and fifties, Cuban
mambo, son and montuño were all the rage, and in the sixties and seventies
calypso and Haitian compas were stirred in to the pot. The resulting music is given an unstoppable
drive by the tuba, drums and banjo, over which are laid the polyphonic
improvisations of jazz, the sinuously sexy lines of Cuban music, and the big,
brassy, call-and-response riffs of soca and compas. All these ingredients are evidently mixed in
with distinctively Surinamese elements, from the drum music of the Bush Negroes
to Christian hymnody: the three main genres played by the Troubadours are the
medium tempo bigi poku (which refers to the centrality of the bass drum in this
style), the slow, solemn groot bazuinkoor - hymns with added rhythm - and winti
poku, named after the winti, which are the spirit deities of the Bush Negroes.
All the tunes on the disc are
instrumentals, but in view of their titles, and the descriptions given, it
seems that they may have - or once have had - lyrics. Na So Mi Yere So, Sani De Na Uma Koto, for
instance, is said to be a set of innuendoes about what lies under women's
skirts, while Todo No Habi Wiwiri Ma' Tyari Loso, which means "the frog is
hairless but full of lice" effortlessly wins my "surreal title of the
year" award. The official language
of Surinam is Dutch, but these tune titles are in a creole of Dutch, English,
French, Spanish and Hebrew (!) called taki-taki, which is the day-to-day means
of communication among the different ethnic groups. Sometimes, it's easy enough for an English
speaker to understand: Wi De G'we, Wan Dey Unu Sa Miti Baka, the final track,
is obviously "we're going away, one day we'll meet again;" it would
be harder to deduce, however, that Bigi Emeri Fu Ban Ban Dyari Siton Graman
"commemorates Big Emelius with his hydrocele who lived in Bang Bang's
yard."
All this discussion - which is
assisted by the New Grove, and by the CD's very useful notes - is perhaps
peripheral to the main point. Kaseko is
an irresistibly joyful, jumping music; according to Grove, it's played for
setdansi - which I'm sure needs no translation - and for "various festive
occasions." On this record, it's
delivered by a team of immensely able musicians, both as ensemble players and
soloists. André Jones's sousaphone
playing easily stands comparison with Kirk Joseph's, while Carlo Jones brings
an unstoppable flow of invention to the alto saxophone; he is, incidentally, a
virtuoso of the reed squeak, always doing it at the right time, and never
overdoing it. The brass players seem
telepathic in the way they cede the front line to one another, switching
instantly from melody to riffing support, and never clashing or competing for
the limelight. If I have discussed
kaseko mainly in terms of the influences on it from outside, that's because I
know more about them than I do about Surinamese music. For me, and I suspect for most readers of
this review, the joy of discovering kaseko will reside equally in the
delightful exuberance of the music, and in that music's evident connectedness
to sounds running the length of the Caribbean island chain, from Trinidad to
the Crescent City where this review began.
Arhoolie CD 417
MW Records MWCD 3011
[from www.mustrad.org.uk]
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