DAVID CUFFY

Last Sat­ur­day night, at the Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um on the cam­pus of UWI, St Au­gus­tine, pa­trons showed sin­cere ap­pre­ci­a­tion for ca­lyp­so mu­sic pre­sent­ed in a new for­mat of mo­tifs and tex­tures through the col­lab­o­ra­tive sound of jazz.

The oc­ca­sion was Fore­day Mornin' En­ter­tain­ment's pro­duc­tion of Love Yuh Own II–The Con­cert Ex­pe­ri­ence, fea­tur­ing per­for­mances by Black Stal­in (Dr Leroy Cal­liste), Vaugh­nette Big­ford, and a guest ap­pear­ance by Broth­er Valenti­no (Em­rold Phillip), ac­com­pa­nied by gui­tarist Theron Shaw and his band, TS Project.

In its first show­case, at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre in Wood­brook af­ter this year's car­ni­val, the pro­duc­tion won rave re­views for the "re-in­ter­pret­ed and re-har­monised" Caribbean jazz styling in which the mu­sic was pre­sent­ed, while los­ing very lit­tle of its orig­i­nal flavour.

Ear­ly ev­i­dence of the trend sur­faced when Big­ford ap­peared as first per­former on Sat­ur­day. Us­ing her rich, earthy vo­cals, and en­gag­ing stage pres­ence, she of­fered her unique jazz stylings to the late Ras Shorty I's Who God Bless, Richard "Nap­py" May­ers' Ole Time Days, Ken­neth Mar­lon Charles' (KMC) Soul on Fire, and Broth­er Valenti­no's Birds That Fly High, nev­er los­ing any of the orig­i­nal melodies in the arrange­ments, all done by Shaw who "de­lights in ex­per­i­ment­ing with lo­cal mu­sic, pro­duc­ing bril­liant­ly or­gan­ic hy­brids," ac­cord­ing to an in­for­ma­tion leaflet of­fered to pa­trons.

Per­form­ing main­ly in the jazz id­iom, Big­ford con­fessed to re­cent­ly gain­ing an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of lo­cal mu­sic, of which this coun­try abounds, she stressed.

Dur­ing her ten-year ca­reer, she has col­lab­o­rat­ed with many top-tier mu­si­cians, and ap­peared at sev­er­al mu­sic fes­ti­vals at home and abroad.

Broth­er Valenti­no, re­cent­ly re­turned from Zim­bab­we where he vis­it­ed with a T&T cul­tur­al con­tin­gent, gave a re­mark­able ren­di­tion of the late An­dre Tanker's Smokey Joe, ac­com­pa­nied on­ly by Shaw on gui­tar.

A record of the col­lab­o­ra­tion is be­ing pro­duced as it is the on­ly se­lec­tion Valenti­no has not com­posed that he per­forms. His oth­er choice was the ever­green Life Is A Stage.

Fea­tured per­former, five-time na­tion­al ca­lyp­so monarch Black Stal­in, treat­ed the au­di­ence to in­ter­est­ing new con­cepts in style to en­dear­ing old favourites. His in­sight­ful so­cial com­men­tary Love Yuh Own, sung way back in 1973, from which the pro­duc­tion got its ti­tle, was de­liv­ered with deep con­vic­tion that en­cour­aged lis­ten­ers to join in and sing the hook-line "if ah did know, ah woul­da hold on to mih steel­band and ca­lyp­so."

When he sang Bun Dem (1987), the au­di­ence, again, was loud in singing the cho­rus. His 1979 hit Play One was en­hanced with skil­ful play­ing by Nigel Su­per­sad on dou­ble sec­ond pans. His duet with Big­ford of Free­dom Song was pure mag­ic. Caribbean Man, Bet­ter Days Are Com­ing, Cyar Tun Back Now, We Can Make It If We Try, Come With It, and Black Man Feel­ing To Par­ty, all ex­plored ex­cit­ing in­di­vid­ual styles of pre­sen­ta­tion.

The TS Project mu­si­cians were Theron Shaw (gui­tar), Nigel Su­per­sad (dou­ble sec­ond), Rod­ney Alexan­der (bass) James Fen­ton (per­cus­sion),

Jill-Ann Wal­ters (keys) and­Khalen Alexan­der (drums). Cho­rus singers were sis­ters Ma­lene and­Shan­na Joseph.

Strong in the be­lief that there is much to be ex­plored in our own mu­sic, Fore­day Mornin' En­ter­tain­ment at­tempts to pro­vide a reg­u­lar plat­form for these artis­tic ex­pres­sions, which, they say, ul­ti­mate­ly cel­e­brate us all as a peo­ple.