Nigel A Camp­bell

Ro­pead­ope Records–an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant record la­bel in the US that is home to jazz pan play­ers Leon Fos­ter Thomas and Jonathan Scales–re­marks that the record, "is an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of jazz where the her­itage of the is­land (Trinidad) and the full sense of the African di­as­po­ra col­lide, some­times in a pol­ished way and some­times with a raw un­der­cur­rent."

In recog­nis­ing that si­mul­ta­ne­ous pat­tern of up and down pro­duc­tion val­ue, one is ef­fec­tive­ly ex­posed to two sides of the mu­si­cal ad­ven­ture that Sen­non has pur­sued in the mak­ing of this al­bum.

Sen­non, along with per­cus­sion­ist Tam­bi Gwin­di, works with four young Boston-based mu­si­cians, drum­mer Shane Dahler, pi­anist Chris Mc­Carthy, bassist Cole Davis and trum­peter Alon­zo Demetrius Ryan Jr on half the tunes on the eight-song al­bum. The Amer­i­cans in the ag­gre­ga­tion ap­proach the idea of the Caribbean and Sen­non's mu­sic with adroit so­los and con­verse mu­si­cal­ly in a lan­guage that speaks to a pro­fi­cien­cy of jazz im­pro­vi­sa­tion while still search­ing for the Afro-Caribbean aes­thet­ic.

On this group of songs, a stand out track is Doh Fight Meh. It fea­tures a spo­ken word piece by Per­sis Cae­sar that re­counts the hor­ror and tragedy of hav­ing black skin in the world–"...melanin has just been de­clared il­le­gal"–chal­leng­ing lis­ten­ers to dis­agree, but "doh fight meh!"

That jux­ta­po­si­tion of ver­nac­u­lar spo­ken word and jazz mu­sic is rem­i­nis­cent of Gil Scott-Heron's jazz po­et­ry. The piece ex­pos­es a fis­sure be­tween lo­cal voice and Amer­i­can mu­sic that–while not unas­sail­able–points to the dis­tance our ex­pres­sion has go be­fore glob­al con­sump­tion.

On the oth­er hand, the four songs that ex­clu­sive­ly fea­ture a lo­cal en­sem­ble gel con­vinc­ing­ly, and that it is re­flect­ed in the ease of per­for­mance and the re­sponse of Sen­non as soloist. His bold ges­tures of con­fi­dent play­ing–un­en­cum­bered by his ap­par­ent awe of the mu­si­cal re­spons­es of the Boston-based Amer­i­can quar­tet–show­case a touch that is both dy­nam­ic and sub­tle.

In these pieces we ac­tu­al­ly hear what the in­ten­tion of the Cousoumeh project is all about: a fu­sion ex­er­cise that re­sponds to the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of in­flu­ences and fo­cus­es it in the pan. Both Quinam Beach and Lega­cy House in this song group sup­port Sen­non's new meta­physics.

El Tu­cuche, the in­dige­nous phi­los­o­phy of one of Sen­non's men­tors, LeRoy Clarke, ar­tic­u­lates the supreme idea of our metaphor­ic as­cent. El Tu­cuche is man's high­est height (Aripo, the high­est of our moun­tains, is the God­head). The as­cent from the de­crepi­tude of Douen­dom cel­e­brates move­ment be­yond the per­ceived neg­a­tiv­i­ty in the lo­cal so­ci­ety.

Aki­no­la Sen­non, with this al­bum, has be­gun his de­f­i­n­i­tion of the Cousoumeh phi­los­o­phy.

Al­lud­ing to the lo­cal cook­ing tra­di­tion of sim­mer­ing the pot as the con­tents "boil down" and im­part myr­i­ad flavours to cre­ate the new, the pan play­er has be­gun a jour­ney of sup­plant­i­ng the no­tion of the "tossed sal­ad" with a "callaloo."

Both men are sug­gest­ing an evo­lu­tion, or a rev­o­lu­tion in this case, in our sound and in our mu­sic. Metaphors aside, this new al­bum al­so adds to the grow­ing cat­a­logue of jazz fu­sion records that lo­cal artists have been ex­per­i­ment­ing with for years and which have been slow­ly mov­ing to­wards the main­stream.

For an ex­pand­ed re­view, go to http://www.jazz.tt/blog