Nigel A Camp­bell

"The scars by which Amer­i­ca is marked are deep... The evils are man­i­fest, naked to the view of any­one who cares to see them."

–�SCAR ARIAS S�NCHEZ, No­bel speech, 1987.

"An­til­lean art is this restora­tion of our shat­tered his­to­ries."

–DEREK WAL­COTT, No­bel lec­ture, 1992.

"For me, art is the restora­tion of or­der. It may dis­cuss all sort of ter­ri­ble things, but there must be sat­is­fac­tion at the end. A lit­tle bit of hunger, but al­so sat­is­fac­tion."

–TONI MOR­RI­SON, No­bel lau­re­ate,in­ter­view with Don Swaim, 1987

When­ev­er T&T jazz trum­peter and com­pos­er Eti­enne Charles re­leas­es an al­bum, it is an event. In this case, it is the ten-part The San Jose Suite–soon to be per­formed live in T&T. The al­bum was re­leased in June this year but has not yet been per­formed lo­cal­ly. It will de­but on No­vem­ber 20 at Queen's Hall, from 7 pm.

This suite dares to mag­ni­fy the idea of the wider Amer­i­c­as as a cru­cible for the con­tin­u­ing as­sim­i­la­tion and trans­for­ma­tion of dis­parate mu­si­cal in­flu­ences. It is a space where the Naipau­lian idea of "small places with sim­ple economies bred small peo­ple with sim­ple des­tinies" is turned on its head for­ev­er.

Charles us­es the co­in­ci­dence of the name of San Jos� to make a sub­lim­i­nal link be­tween the Caribbean, Latin Amer­i­can and North Amer­i­can cul­tur­al ten­den­cies. The re­al com­mon­al­i­ty is the idea of the African di­as­po­ra in­ter­sec­tion with the Na­tive Amer­i­can an­tecedents to act as the base for a new di­rec­tion in jazz.

The per­sis­tence and re­silience of these San Jos� com­mu­ni­ties–in Trinidad (San Jos� de Oru�a be­came St Joseph), in Cos­ta Ri­ca, in Cal­i­for­nia–and their re­sult­ing mu­si­cal lega­cies serve as a cat­a­lyst for cre­ation. The re­ten­tions and the new hy­brids in these Amer­i­can spaces are ex­plored with adroit mu­si­cian­ship that cap­tures the new­er el­e­ments of the African con­fronta­tion with Eu­ro­pean mu­sic: jazz, "mu­sic be­yond the man­u­script."

This is a breath­tak­ing­ly large project and Charles' vi­sion is wide enough to han­dle it. He is the re­searcher, the trav­eller, the chron­i­cler of re­made sounds and rhythms, not the im­i­ta­tor who ar­ti­fi­cial­ly res­ur­rects a cat­a­logue of echoes and hand­ed-down mu­sic.

He is min­ing those sto­ries and ideas of Na­tive Amer­i­can her­itage, and the lat­er African in­ter­lude to rechart the ru­ins, as LeRoy Clarke would say, to present the mod­ern lis­ten­er with an in­tel­li­gent yet ac­ces­si­ble un­der­stand­ing of who we are in the Amer­i­c­as. A peo­ple re­made as a poly­glot mix of Meso-Amer­i­can, African, Eu­ro­pean lan­guages, be­liefs and in­her­i­tances. This is an ex­ten­sion of Charles' Cre­ole Soul in the New World.

These com­po­si­tions set a new par­a­digm for lo­cal cre­ativ­i­ty that must be ap­plaud­ed. With the re­ceipt of the Cham­ber Mu­sic Amer­i­ca New Jazz Works Grant, fund­ed by the Doris Duke Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion, Charles was able to use his imag­i­na­tion and to ex­plore the broad­er tra­di­tions of cre­ole cul­tur­al per­sis­tence.

As a re­sult, he was freed from the stric­tures of a "small place" phi­los­o­phy and its nar­row­ing com­mer­cial mi­lieu, to com­pose melodies and har­mon­ic re­spons­es to the shards of his­tor­i­cal ev­i­dence of the im­pact of col­lid­ing des­tinies and racial bi­ogra­phies of the peo­ple of this New World.

On this al­bum, we hear the sto­ries of abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples of each San Jos�: the Nepuyo of Trinidad, the Boru­ca of Cos­ta Ri­ca and the Muwek­ma Ohlone of Cal­i­for­nia.

Their epic mem­o­ry is re­born by mu­sic that ad­dress­es the dances and the songs of those first peo­ples. In some ar­eas, imag­i­na­tion leads Charles to mim­ic earth sounds with his rhythm sec­tion of Ben Williams on bass and John Davis on drums to great ef­fect. We are part of that son­ic his­to­ry.

On this al­bum, we hear the lega­cy of the late 19th cen­tu­ry pres­ence of the Caribbean mi­grant in Cos­ta Ri­can towns of Limon and Cahui­ta. The ca­lyp­so is a mu­si­cal re­ten­tion that is locked in­to mod­ern Cos­ta Ri­ca. In 2012, the gov­ern­ment of Cos­ta Ri­ca, by ex­ec­u­tive de­cree, gave spe­cial recog­ni­tion to ca­lyp­so as part of Cos­ta Ri­ca's cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal iden­ti­ty, and de­clared the style of mu­sic "na­tion­al pat­ri­mo­ny."

We are lis­ten­ing to a re­flec­tion of our Caribbean past sup­plant­ed on the Cen­tral Amer­i­can present.

On this al­bum, the African and African-Amer­i­can con­fronta­tions of Daa­ga in 1837 and Dr Har­ry Ed­wards in 1968 with the sta­tus quo of Trinidad and Cal­i­forn­ian in­sti­tu­tion­al mi­as­ma are re-in­ter­pret­ed as per­cus­sive and funky state­ments of re­bel­lion. Con­quests of ideas, of so­cial dic­tates, of sa­cred spaces are brought to bear as Charles fo­cus­es the lis­ten­er to un­der­stand that the Amer­i­ca of our imag­i­na­tion and some­times nar­row fields of view is not cir­cum­scribed. This mu­sic is the ex­ten­sion of the Cre­ole Soul in the New World.

The No­bel lau­re­ates cit­ed above have all de­fined art, and how we in­ter­act with our past. This al­bum is a no­ble de­c­la­ra­tion that this Trinidad space can and does un­der­stand the his­toric prece­dence of all peo­ple who have lived here. It con­tributes an ex­cel­lent ex­am­ple of how to rise above the ru­ins, be­yond am­ne­sia, be­yond lim­i­ta­tion and mere sim­plic­i­ty. It is left to Trinida­di­an No­bel lau­re­ate VS Naipaul to note: "The world out­side ex­ist­ed in a kind of dark­ness; and we in­quired about noth­ing."

San Jos� Suite makes us to see and hear a wider Amer­i­ca. We are blessed.

Nigel Camp­bell is a jazz crit­ic and events pro­duc­er.