Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray

The words dayo and be­jide are from Africa, which when put to­geth­er mean "Hap­pi­ness has come in the rainy sea­son." These words de­scribe the Dayo Be­jide Jazz Project, a col­lec­tion of mu­si­cians led by per­cus­sion­ist, teacher and jew­el­ry de­sign­er Mod­upe Onilu. The band start­ed off as a trio with Onilu's old­er broth­er Ba­ba Ayinde Onilu and their close friend, vo­cal­ist and mu­si­cian Kepha Yah­seph.

In an in­ter­view, Mod­upe Onilu said, "One day when some­one called me to do my own gig as a band leader, I had to think of a name cre­ative and mean­ing­ful so I chose Dayo Be­jide."

Found­ed three years ago, the band has per­formed at sev­er­al venues and events in­clud­ing La Casa de Ibiza, Drink Wine Bar, the Hy­att Re­gency, gov­ern­ment min­istries and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions. The band has worked with many mu­si­cians over the years, which has added in­ter­est­ing vari­a­tions and in­flu­ences to its sound. The cur­rent band in­cludes Mod­upe Onilu on drums and per­cus­sion, Javed Ju­man on gui­tar, Joshua Sal­cedo on bass, An­to­nio Mitchell on trum­pet and John John Fran­cis on vo­cals.

Ac­cord­ing to Onilu, "Mu­si­cians come and go in Trinidad. I'm glad to have worked with some of the great­est, and glad they brought their en­er­gy and knowl­edge to cre­ate the sound that we have to­day."

They re­fer to their sound as New Caribbean World mu­sic, a sub-genre of new jazz. Ac­cord­ing to Onilu, the band draws in­spi­ra­tion for its sound from ear­ly kaiso.

"I won't say we are a jazz band. Some say (our mu­sic is) Caribbean rhythms with jazz chords. My de­f­i­n­i­tion is cre­at­ing jazz mu­sic–a con­ver­sa­tion be­tween mu­si­cians and in­stru­ments–us­ing our folk cul­ture and play­ing from the heart. Play­ing from the heart brings the most gen­uine sound to cap­ture the ears of peo­ple in the Caribbean au­di­ence."

He added, "The sound of the Dayo Be­jide Jazz project is very mod­ern. We have been play­ing a lot of Afro-soul mu­sic with lo­cal vo­cal­ist John John and we have been ex­per­i­ment­ing in cre­at­ing a new in­stru­men­tal sound us­ing ca­lyp­so, jazz and oth­er trib­al grooves to cre­ate a most unique sound on the Trinidad mu­sic scene."

The in­spi­ra­tion for cre­at­ing the band came from Onilu's late fa­ther Ja­Jah Oga Onilu, per­cus­sion­ist, drum­mer, mu­si­cian, crafts­man, and pi­o­neer in us­ing or­gan­ic in­stru­ments in Afro-Caribbean mu­sic. From this orig­i­nal style, Mod­upe learned and be­gan to ex­per­i­ment and delve in­to more elec­tric sounds, fus­ing it with the or­gan­ic to cre­ate the Dayo Be­jide Jazz Project sound.

"I al­so try to be in­no­v­a­tive and try to set trends with my drums. I use a set up I call 'drum­cus­sion'. It's a fu­sion of drum set parts and per­cus­sion parts to cre­ate a new sound, and in the band, our in­stru­men­ta­tion is nev­er the same. I al­ways keep it small and or­gan­ic sound­ing."

Dayo Be­jide will play at Fi­es­ta Plaza, Movi­eTowne, In­vaders Bay, Port-of-Spain, on May 18, from 8 pm. Raf Robert­son will make a guest ap­pear­ance on key­boards. Ad­mis­sion is free.