Gillian Moore

Imag­ine a place where pa­trons come out in droves to sup­port the mu­si­cal arts, where the open­ing acts show up and the star at­trac­tion shows up on time. Ozy Mer­riq's Ur­ban Es­tates Sound and Light con­cert didn't have any of these ad­van­tages, yet the event man­aged to be a thor­ough­ly en­joy­able evening of mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment. Billed to open the show, Black Drag­ons didn't ap­pear, so Mer­riq (Ozy Mag­iq) and his band, Dop­tion, took the stage to start the ses­sion, be­fore a small but en­thu­si­as­tic au­di­ence at Mar­tin's in Wood­brook on May 20. Backed by Jonathan Ot­way on drums, Kinky Dan on djimbe drum, Jo­hann Ben­nett on bass, Sesal­i­to on keys and se­quencer, and Janique Den­nis on back­ground vo­cals, Mer­riq per­formed a se­lec­tion of his songs, draw­ing from his 20-year rap­so ca­reer.

With his char­ac­ter­is­tic wit and cheeky charm, Mer­riq spun his well-craft­ed lyrics to the beat of the mu­sic. Pa­trons ate up every word, re­act­ing to each pun and turn of phrase. The first set in­clud­ed Starlight; Free Yuh­self, and Boom Gen­er­a­tion from his Home­front days; Wha We Go Do, Re­al Trin­bag­o­ni­ans and New Tat­too. Mer­riq ex­plained that the Ur­ban Es­tate is a cre­ative state of mind, a beau­ti­ful place, his space of in­spi­ra­tion from which he draws new work. It will be an on­go­ing se­ries of art, video and mu­sic, to be pre­sent­ed at var­i­ous venues. A se­lec­tion of Mer­riq's paint­ings, en­ti­tled Reli­quary, was al­so on show at the con­cert. The bright­ly-hued im­ages re­flect­ed spir­i­tu­al realms and an Afro-Caribbean sen­si­bil­i­ty.

Janique Den­nis stepped up to the mic to de­liv­er a rap­so num­ber on self love, called Love Alone. With her en­gag­ing stage pres­ence she went on to de­liv­er Don't, part song, part po­em, set to bassy back­drop. Mer­riq re­turned to the stage with Clos­er, a love song, which was fol­lowed by some of his raci­er com­po­si­tions, in­clud­ing Iden­ti­fy (Lemme See Yuh ID), I Coul­da Sworn and Ch­aguara­mas. By the time he reached the end of his reper­toire, star at­trac­tion Su­perBlue still had not ar­rived and it seemed he, too, would be a no-show. He ar­rived, bet­ter late than nev­er, to mash up the place with sam­ples from a slew of his hits, like Get Some­thing and Wave, Bac­cha­nal Time, Sig­nal to Lara, Wine on Some­thing, Hel­lo, Re­bec­ca, Ethel and So­ca Bap­tist.