If Jingle Bells and the prospect of riding a one-horse open sleigh is as appealing as rumless black cake; if you're heartily sick of roasting chestnuts on open fires, looking for a chimney, helping Santa find a wife or calling your selectively deaf neighbour to bring out the ham, then treat yourself and those you love to a Creole Christmas.
After topping the jazz charts with his 2013 Creole Soul album, son of the soil Etienne Charles, trumpeter, percussionist, pan and cuatro player, arranger and composer, whose sartorial style matches the elegance of his playing, demonstrates impeccable timing with the launch of his Creole Christmas album, which will be highlighted at next Sunday's one-off Queen's Hall concert.
One of the undisputed leaders of a new generation of Caribbean jazzmen who besides being fully conversant with the North American jazz tradition, are infusing the genre with the rhythms and melodies of their amazingly diverse Creole music heritage (from classic kaiso to Haitian Rara and sacred Vodou music), Charles straddles the past and the contemporary with an ease and creativity nurtured by a profound respect for his Afro-Creole roots.
There's a tradition of Christmas albums in Trinidad, and while he tips one of his many signature hats to this, it seems that once again he has set a new benchmark with an album as eclectic as it is musically electrifying.
Speaking to the T&T Guardian on a flying visit last week, Charles explained "I wanted to showcase a different Christmas tradition from Jingle Bells." The 13-track playlist kicks off with an arrangement of Spoiler's Father Christmas, laconically delivered by Relator who returns with his own compositions Make A Friend for the Christmas and Christmas is Yours, Christmas is Mine.
Two Lionel Belasco compositions (Juliana and Roses of Caracas Waltz) attest to Charles' familiarity with, and love of an earlier and largely neglected era of Trinidadian music, when the Venezuelan String Band dominated the dancehalls with syncopated versions of waltzes, Castilians and paseos which rivaled the experiments of jazz pioneers in both New Orleans and St Pierre, Martinique.
While he does include such perennial international seasonal favourites as Santa Claus is Coming to Town, This Christmas and I'll be Home for Christmas, Charles offers more local fare with Tell Santa Claus (featuring David Rudder on vocals) and Indian Parang Chick (as in put more pepper in the channa).
What may well distinguish Creole Christmas from a slew of sometimes cheesy Yuletide discs are the arrangements of two Tchaikovsky compositions associated with Christmas � Chocolate, or Spanish Dance and Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, inspired by earlier jazz interpretations like that of Duke Ellington. Generous eclecticism continues with two tracks from rising star vocalist Mykal Kilgore–a powerful gospel version of Go Tell It on the Mountain and the soulful This Christmas.
As an astute jobbing musician, who combines teaching at Michigan State University with his performing career, thereby avoiding the penury or amateur status which is the lot of many regionally based jazz musicians, Charlo has produced an album which while appealing to a broad range of tastes, never compromises on technical excellence and abundant seasonal spirit and humour.
His time in graduate school at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music is paying rich dividends. "That's the beauty of Juilliard," he remarks, "there are people from all over the world."
Among his former classmates who makes an indelible impression on the album is the inimitable Macedonian-Gypsy clarinetist Ismail Luminovski, equally adept at the viscerally folkloric or the lyrically classical modes, who intuitively renders the two Belasco arrangements with a sensitivity worthy of this early maestro.
Only a dedicated album review can do full justice to all the personnel who recorded 18 tracks over threedays in New York, but it would be remiss not to mention local stars like Robert Munro and Stanley Roach, one of the Caribbean's most neglected but brilliant Creole fiddlers–and not forgetting soundman Robin Foster, drafted in to play percussion on Chocolate.
Besides the members of the Creole Soul band (including Charles's frequent collaborator, the Guadeloupean saxophonist Jacques Schwarz-Bart) other stand-out performers include American flautist Elena Pinderhughes (who adds sparkling brio particularly to "Chocolate") and Venezuelan cuatro player Jorge Clem, who adds authenticity and rhythmic vigour to the Belasco arrangements.
There is no doubt that Charles is a riveting and highly gifted soloist � the mainstream jazz media recognise him variously as "an auteur", "a daring improviser" who "delivers his ebullient improvisation with the elegance of a world-class ballet dancer", but it is to his credit that despite his early virtuosity he never plays the primo don. It is a measure of his Caribbean roots that he has both the personal and musical understanding that music making is a communal activity and he rarely takes much space for himself throughout the album.
As an educator he's aware that "Art is the highest form of communication and music is the highest form of art" but that does not prevent him from being a regular guy on the block who delights in the vagaries of ol' talk and the cut and thrust of picong, as much as he revels in an impromptu jam session.
Having revisited Trinidad's classic calypso era on his earlier Kaiso album, it is not entirely surprising to discover his affinity for Spoiler ("That's the beast")–who he considers "the bridge between kaiso and hip hop", because "If you don't sing a melody that's hiphop!" There's humility and respect in his thinking behind how he accompanied Spoiler's Father Christmas–"How to stay out of the lyrics is the challenge."
It is the mark of a gifted interpreter/arranger to balance "staying out" and interpretation and Charles walks the tightrope with assurance but when he does grab a few bars of impro he ranges from cheeky and comic to his trademark intense lyricism and a fiery exuberance which recalls that of some of the great Cuban trumpeters who inspired his early playing. Treat yourself and those you love to an early Christmas present- if you can't make the Queen's Hall concert on November 29, still make sure to hang up the Creole Christmas album on your tree by Christmas Eve.