Advertise With Us
About Us
Listen
Watch

Login

/

Subscribe

Home

News

Carnival

Business

Sports

E-Paper

Features

Opinion

Traffic Cameras

Life

Classifieds

Death Notices

Community

Real Estate

About Us

Contact Us

Home
News
Carnival
Sports
E-paper
Business
Classifieds
Other
Death Notices
Traffic Cameras
Covid-19
Features
Opinion
Games
Subscriptions
Real Estate

Canada a haven for Caribbean musicians

by

#meta[ag-author]
20130411

Nigel A Camp­bell

Over the re­cent Car­ni­val sea­son, two Tri­ni ex­pat jazz mu­si­cians res­i­dent in the Great White North of Cana­da–Toron­to, to be ex­act–re­turned home for sus­te­nance, va­ca­tion, and cre­ative idyll.

An­tho­ny Pierre, founder of Caribbean jazz out­fit Kal­abash, and Brown­man Ali, mul­ti­ple award-win­ning trum­peter, in­for­mal­ly "pressed the flesh" with lo­cal mu­si­cians and fans, both out­lin­ing their plans for 2013. Their com­mon ex­pe­ri­ence in Toron­to is one that can set a tem­plate for lo­cal mu­si­cians who seek favour in the world be­yond the Caribbean di­as­po­ra cities.

Kal­abash, fea­tur­ing Pierre, has just fin­ished record­ing a new CD–its sec­ond in 12 years–and is shop­ping it around to the sum­mer jazz fes­ti­val pro­mot­ers as it seeks to get back in­to the ac­tive jazz per­for­mance scene af­ter a qui­et 2012.

Brown­man is the epit­o­me of a busy mu­si­cian, per­form­ing close to 200 dates per year when not al­so teach­ing and do­ing work­shops.

He re­turned to T&T af­ter Car­ni­val to per­form two small gigs with top jazz drum­mer Sean Thomas and bassist BJ Saun­ders as a trio, ex­plor­ing mod­ern elec­tric jazz, orig­i­nal­ly de­fined by Miles Davis af­ter his Bitch­es Brew pe­ri­od.

The re­turn of Pierre and Ali led to ques­tions about the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of a mu­sic ca­reer out­side of this space, and es­pe­cial­ly a jazz mu­sic ca­reer.

Toron­to seems to be a haven for the Caribbean mi­grant seek­ing for­tune in the cre­ative in­dus­tries. Caribbean-born au­thors have found com­mer­cial and lit­er­ary suc­cess there.

Cana­da has been de­scribed, in re­cent times, as post-eth­nic and trans-cul­tur­al, so the idea of Caribbean-born mu­si­cians play­ing jazz, in­flu­enced by their home­lands, to an ea­ger mar­ket there is not un­re­al.

It is a more open-mar­ket than the in­tro­vert­ed Unit­ed States, which is genre-re­strict­ed and de­fines mu­sic with jar­gon terms such as world fu­sion jazz, eth­nic jazz or non-west­ern jazz.

Brown­man and Kal­abash rep­re­sent test cas­es for the ex­am­i­na­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of lo­cal mu­si­cians mak­ing a space in the crowd­ed glob­al mu­sic mar­ket.

Or­gan­ised mu­sic mar­kets like Cana­da have the range of com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties in record­ing, mu­sic pub­lish­ing and live per­for­mance with sup­port­ing leg­is­la­tion, cor­po­rate struc­ture and high lev­els of sub­sidy to en­hance and sta­bilise them.

Too of­ten, lo­cal­ly-based mu­si­cians de­cry the con­di­tions and the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment here in T&T: low lev­els of copy­right in­fringe­ment pros­e­cu­tion; low lo­cal con­tent played on broad­cast me­dia; min­i­mal pro­mo­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties out­side of Car­ni­val; few­er venues for live per­for­mances; high pro­duc­tion costs, low prospects of re­turn on in­vest­ment, based on all of the above.

As a sec­tor of the cre­ative in­dus­tries in Cana­da, the mu­sic in­dus­try there has yield­ed some of the biggest artists on the plan­et across mul­ti­ple gen­res: Ce­line Dion, Justin Bieber, Di­ana Krall, Michael Bubl�, Drake, Sha­nia Twain, Nick­el­back, to name a few.

The ease of en­ter­ing the lu­cra­tive US mar­ket from Cana­da is sure­ly a plus com­pared with the near­ly im­prob­a­ble task of ex­port­ing to Cana­da from the Caribbean.

Its man­dat­ed quo­ta sys­tem, Can­Con (Cana­di­an Con­tent) seems to al­low for eas­i­er ac­cess to ra­dio air­play by small and di­verse niche acts. Acts in­clud­ing Brown­man and Kal­abash, as well as Caribbean jazz out­fits like Cane­Fire fea­tur­ing Trinida­di­an pan­nist Mark Mosca and Grena­di­an-born key­boardist Ed­die Bullen.

Scott Hen­der­son, writ­ing in Pop­u­lar Mu­sic Jour­nal in 2008, not­ed:

"The rise of a suc­cess­ful Cana­di­an 'scene'...demon­strates the im­pact of pol­i­cy in cre­at­ing a na­tion­al mu­sic cul­ture that is con­fi­dent enough to no longer have to be ex­plic­it­ly Cana­di­an, ei­ther son­i­cal­ly or lyri­cal­ly.

"Can­Con reg­u­la­tions would ap­pear to have aid­ed in sit­u­at­ing Cana­di­an acts com­fort­ably with­in a wider mu­sic cul­ture with­in Cana­da."

The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, that may be the case, but sto­ries vary among na­tion­als there.

Mu­sic in­dus­tries are dif­fi­cult to ma­noeu­vre every­where. The sub­jec­tive na­ture of pop­u­lar­i­ty varies from lo­cale to lo­cale. The idea of an all-en­com­pass­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al Toron­to has not ebbed de­spite the ap­par­ent dif­fi­cul­ties in break­ing non-pop mu­sic from there to every­where else. Trinidad-born writer, Neil Bis­soon­dath has bashed the of­fi­cial pol­i­cy of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in his book Sell­ing Il­lu­sions: The cult of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in Cana­da, for seek­ing to pre­serve the dif­fer­ences of its many im­mi­grants and "ex­oti­cis­ing and triv­i­al­is­ing cul­ture."

An­tho­ny Pierre says to be rel­e­vant and in de­mand, he had to mod­i­fy his sound from a ca­lyp­so-based fu­sion–in­flu­enced by his ap­pren­tice­ship with Carl­ton "Zan­da" Alexan­der and his Coalpot Band, then res­i­dent in Toron­to in the 1990s–to a more Cuban-based one.

The grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of Cu­ba's mu­si­cians in ex­ile in Toron­to may be af­fect­ing tastes in the city. Au­di­ence and fes­ti­val pro­gram­mers are de­ter­min­ing what works, and Kal­abash needs to work.

Brown­man leads a va­ri­ety of Latin-jazz en­sem­bles. He mar­kets him­self as be­ing from Trinidad, yet avoids melodies or rhythms from this is­land.

His length­i­er im­mi­grant ex­pe­ri­ence ren­ders him neu­tral to niche mar­ket gen­res, and points him to­wards what sells: hip-hop and Latin jazz. He says he just plays jazz! Even with­in this cal­i­brat­ed mu­sic mar­ket, the ex­ot­ic is "gen­tri­fied" to ir­rel­e­vance.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, Toron­to is a less com­mer­cial­ly com­pet­i­tive mu­sic mar­ket than LA or New York, but the min­i­mal gains of Caribbean-born artists in all gen­res in terms of wide com­mer­cial ap­peal de­fine a pat­tern in North Amer­i­ca of na­tive ap­peal su­per­sed­ing for­eign and more so for­eign-sound­ing mu­sic.

"Some­one else's lo­cal mu­sic" is nev­er enough. Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, be damned!

Brown­man is a con­stant­ly gig­ging globe-trot­ting mu­si­cian while Kal­abash's per­for­mances have been fo­cused on a few cities.

The record­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties be­yond per­for­mance re­main un­tapped in this city of po­ten­tial. The tem­plate for a mu­sic ca­reer out­side of T&T would need to fo­cus on pop­u­lar sim­i­lar­i­ties rather than ex­ot­ic dif­fer­ences.

�2 Ed­i­tor's note: Nigel A Camp­bell is a di­rec­tor of Pro­duc­tion One Ltd, which pro­duces the an­nu­al Jazz Artists on the Greens. An ex­pand­ed ver­sion of this ar­ti­cle is at http://jazz­intt.blogspot.com


Click HERE to Login

Want FREE access to all our content? Sign up HERE!

Tagged in:

Responses

Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored

Trending

Man in viral video hitting woman captured
Spent shell with TTPS marking found at murder scene
Retired senior cop awarded $200,000 in damages
Soca Monarch competition cancelled
Dolsingh knighted by Queen of Denmark
Kamla: No retreat, no surrender
$300,000 missing from Siparia Corporation
President-Elect Kangaloo: I’ve received no political instructions since leaving PNM
The Renaissance woman
Chow: Heritage Petroleum is on a steady growth path
Today's
Guardian
View
Subscribe

Publications

Numbness in your feet?

20230123072450

Your walking gear matters!

20230116101944
Sat Balkaransingh

Sat Balkaransingh

Photo by Wesley Gibbings

Sat Balkaransingh

Sat Balkaransingh

Photo by Wesley Gibbings

The Wanderers–Sat Balkaransingh in verse

20230117074645
Vic Susanna Surajdeen with her children's Book "The Adventures Of Heidi The Boxer Pup!"

Vic Susanna Surajdeen with her children's Book "The Adventures Of Heidi The Boxer Pup!"

Vic Susanna Surajdeen with her children's Book "The Adventures Of Heidi The Boxer Pup!"

Vic Susanna Surajdeen with her children's Book "The Adventures Of Heidi The Boxer Pup!"

Beloved pet dog’s death inspires children’s book

20230112202635
Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

News

Business

Sports

Life

Opinion

Tobago Today

Classifieds

Death Notices

Subscriptions

Real Estate

Categories

News
Business
Sports
Features
Opinion
Traffic Cameras
Death Notices

INFORMATION

About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Privacy Policy
Subscriptions
Terms of Services

Digital Media

The Big Board Company.
Real Estate
Classifieds

TELEVISION

CNC3 Television

RADIO

951 Remix
Sangeet 106.1 FM
Sky 99.5FM
Slam 100.5 FM
Vibe CT 105 FM
Mix 90.1 FM (Guyana)
Freedom 106.5 FM

About Us

Guardian Media is the premier provider of multimedia solutions and authoritative insight on news, politics, business, finance, sports, and current affairs. Our brand portfolio includes CNC3, Guardian, TBC Radio Network and The Big Board Company.

Contact us

Send us an e-mail here or call us at +1-(868)-225-4465

Follow us