With his sim­ple de­c­la­ra­tion, "sound is my art...I just try to cre­ate," Trinida­di­an jazz trum­peter Eti­enne Charles puts in­to con­text his role of cre­ator and pro­duc­er in re­la­tion to his lat­est record­ing Cre­ole Soul, out now. This new chart-top­ping al­bum, pre­viewed ear­li­er this year in To­ba­go at Jazz on the Beach at Mt Irvine re­veals an evo­lu­tion of his art.The fourth stu­dio al­bum from this US-based mu­si­cian and teacher bris­tles with a kind of en­er­gy that comes from the re­al­i­sa­tion that one has gone be­yond; be­yond the usu­al ex­pec­ta­tions of a Caribbean ex­is­tence, be­yond the bound­ary of the usu­al son­ic in­flu­ences that have paved the way for this jazz li­on. The­mat­i­cal­ly, this should come as no sur­prise.Charles has said the vi­sion of this al­bum is the show­cas­ing of the in­flu­ences of all this mu­sic in the African di­as­po­ra, a melt­ing pot of sounds that shape and de­ter­mine who he is as a mu­si­cian and who we are as a peo­ple. We are all cre­ole.

De­ci­pher­ing an arc in the themes of his four al­bums to date, one sees in Cul­ture Shock (2006), a mu­si­cal di­ary of the new­ly-mint­ed artist in his New World of Amer­i­ca. Folk­lore (2009), the suite based on lo­cal leg­ends and Kaiso (2011); go­ing back to the source of in­spi­ra­tion. Now, with Cre­ole Soul, which cur­rent­ly sits atop the Jazz­week al­bum charts, he takes flight. On this record­ing, there are two dis­tinc­tive threads, the orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions and the cov­ers. On the orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions, we can hear the rhyth­mic melange that de­fines a cre­ole soul. Hait­ian mas­caron dance groove meets bom­ba rhythms and jazz syn­co­pa­tion on Mid­night (an ode to the end of day), The Folks (a ded­i­ca­tion to this par­ents) in­cor­po­rat­ing ca­lyp­so's syn­co­pat­ed bass with rhythm and blues, and Doin' The Thing fea­tur­ing jump blues and ca­lyp­so, all ma­jes­ti­cal­ly an­chored by Gram­my award-win­ning bassist Ben Williams and drum­mer Obed Cal­vaire.

Charles strate­gi­cal­ly makes use of the cov­ers: Bob Mar­ley's Turn the Lights Down Low and the Dawn Penn pop­u­larised You Don't Love Me (No No No), po­si­tion this CD to be heard in the right places by the right ears. Reg­gae/dance­hall mu­sic is em­bed­ded in­to main­stream con­scious­ness to a greater ex­tent than ca­lyp­so. The rev­er­en­tial cov­er of Wins­ford "Jok­er" Devine's Mem­o­ries and the boun­cy cov­er of Th­elo­nius Monk's Green Chim­neys (with the "dis­tinc­tive ca­lyp­so lope to the beat" that re­lo­cates Monk in the old San Juan Hill dis­trict of Caribbean New York) com­pletes this West In­di­an quar­tet of mem­o­rable melodies and artist lega­cies that are eas­i­ly saleable.Cre­ole Soul may al­so be con­sid­ered as Charles' elec­tric al­bum. Land­mark dis­tinc­tions in pop­u­lar mu­sic have been made by pi­o­neers: Miles Davis' In A Silent Way and Bitch­es Brew in 1969/70 trans­formed jazz by util­is­ing elec­tric in­stru­ments. Charles in­tro­duces lis­ten­ers to the sounds of the elec­tric gui­tar mark­ing a shift in the sound, pre­vi­ous­ly all acoustic. The al­bum open­er Cre­ole (a re­flec­tion on his first Hait­ian so­journ in 2012), fea­tur­ing the Hait­ian singer and Houn­gan Erol Jo­su� com­bines the kon­go drum rhythm of north­ern Haiti with the ur­gent funky elec­tric gui­tar of Alex Wintz that forces one to get up and dance. This is spir­it mov­ing feet. This is jazz in the Caribbean. This is im­pro­vised joy.

Kris Bow­ers' me­an­der­ing Fend­er Rhodes on The Folks sig­nals that the in­ten­tion is to keep the arrange­ments mod­ern. The elec­tric gui­tar and pi­ano is again re­peat­ed on Roots (an ode to his fam­i­ly roots fea­tur­ing the Mar­tini­quan be­lair rhythm); the French Caribbean rhythms seem to lend a place for the elec­tric as­cen­dence of Charles.This is a ex­cep­tion­al record by an artist who has grown tech­ni­cal­ly in both his play­ing and im­pro­vi­sa­tion. An artist/ pro­duc­er sub­lim­i­nal­ly makes com­mer­cial de­ci­sions that af­fects aes­thet­ic out­comes but Charles dis­agrees with this, how­ev­er."I didn't re­al­ly think about busi­ness when I was writ­ing the mu­sic or choos­ing the tunes. Busi­ness hap­pens af­ter the mu­sic is made."The sum of these songs say oth­er­wise. That said, this CD can have an im­pact on the con­sid­er­a­tion of mu­sic from these is­lands.Cre­ole Soul is in that mould of trend­set­ter.

To read a longerver­sion of this­re­view, go to http://wp.me/p2sdr9-fq