A chance meet­ing be­tween a mu­si­cian and a vo­cal­ist at a pop­u­lar live en­ter­tain­ment hub in Port-of-Spain re­sult­ed in a mu­sic lover’s dream—a free show on Au­gust 12, where jazz, soul, R&B, Caribbean in­flu­ences and time­less clas­sics formed a mu­si­cal ta­pes­try through sto­ry­telling and au­di­ence in­ter­ac­tion.

The event, Small Talk: Un­wrapped—Be­neath the Mu­sic, fea­tured Blak Kofi co-founders, gui­tarist Dean Williams and vo­cal­ist and per­former Ali­cia Knights, at Kafe Blue on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain—the very space where their mu­si­cal al­liance be­gan.

“We met at an im­promp­tu jam ses­sion at Kafe Blue last year and re­alised that we had sim­i­lar tastes in mu­sic, name­ly jazz and old mu­sic. We hit it off mu­si­cal­ly, and since then we’ve been work­ing to­geth­er,” Williams told Guardian Me­dia.

He said what struck him about Knights was that she is not afraid to ex­plore the hard­er or more ob­scure ar­eas of mu­sic.

“So for me, as a mu­si­cian, that’s re­al­ly great, be­cause I have been play­ing pop and ca­lyp­so and every­thing for decades now. So I’m kind of bored with the pop­u­lar and easy stuff.”

Knights’ mu­si­cal abil­i­ty spans jazz, soul, gospel, clas­si­cal and con­tem­po­rary mu­sic, com­ple­ment­ing Williams’ skills on the elec­tric, acoustic, Span­ish and clas­si­cal gui­tar, as well as the trum­pet, dou­ble bass, key­board and drums.

“What she does is dif­fi­cult and it takes time, so it’s eas­i­er for many singers to just do pop­u­lar stuff. And it’s the same thing with mu­si­cians. If this is our bread and but­ter, we do the easy stuff and get paid for it and we move on.”

Williams has been play­ing mu­sic pro­fes­sion­al­ly for 36 years, be­gin­ning in 1990 with the late ca­lyp­son­ian Denyse Plum­mer.

“Then I moved on to be­ing a stu­dio mu­si­cian, a ses­sion play­er. And I worked at vir­tu­al­ly every stu­dio around Port-of-Spain from the ’90s on to the 2000s. So I worked with a lot of artistes,” he said.

Among the artistes he has worked with are The Mighty Shad­ow, Ajala, Lord Kitch­en­er, The Mighty Spar­row, Ca­lyp­so Rose and Roy Cape. He has al­so per­formed along­side mu­si­cians Eti­enne Charles and Tony Paul and has per­formed and toured with bands in­clud­ing 3 Canal, Kin­dred, At­lantik and Machel Mon­tano HD.

Williams holds a Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts with a spe­cial­i­sa­tion in West­ern mu­sic and a Mas­ter’s in Car­ni­val Stud­ies, both from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go. He is cur­rent­ly a lec­tur­er and gui­tar in­struc­tor at COSTAATT.

Knights, who de­vel­oped a sub­stan­tial per­for­mance ca­reer on the New York mu­sic cir­cuit, has per­formed at venues in­clud­ing the Blue Note Jazz Club, Gra­cie Man­sion and The Nuy­or­i­can Po­ets Café.

She per­ma­nent­ly re­turned home to T&T two years ago af­ter liv­ing in the US for 33 years.

“I left T&T at age 11 and yearned to be back home. I came for my sis­ter’s wed­ding and her best friend’s wed­ding in ear­ly 2024. I lit­er­al­ly woke up one day while on that va­ca­tion and de­cid­ed to stay,” she said.

She re-en­tered the lo­cal mu­sic scene with the help of one of her fa­ther’s clos­est friends, Ju­nior Hut­son.

“He brought me to Kafe Blue one day. He want­ed me to sing for the band there. There was a chem­istry there, and the rest is his­to­ry.”

Williams and Knights re­cent­ly held their first Blak Kofi Small Talk show, which they deemed a suc­cess. The Au­gust 12 show fol­lowed the same for­mat.

“So it’s pret­ty much like a small talk be­tween us on stage and al­so be­tween us and the au­di­ence,” Williams ex­plained.

“So we lit­er­al­ly sit and chat about the songs, chat about our­selves, chat about the mu­sic. We chat about adult­hood be­cause we’re both ma­ture adults too. We speak about the songs, about the mu­sic, about me be­ing an in­stru­men­tal­ist, about me be­ing a man, about Ali­cia be­ing a woman. These are the top­ics we speak about, with the mu­sic.”

He said al­though they do not have any orig­i­nal lyri­cal songs to­geth­er, he has orig­i­nal mu­sic that he pre­sent­ed, and to­geth­er they had enough ma­te­r­i­al to keep pa­trons en­ter­tained for hours.

“The last time we had our show, we start­ed at 8.30 pm and we fin­ished close to 11 pm, so we have enough gas to keep go­ing. We have the sta­mi­na and we have the va­ri­ety. We can do any­thing, from clas­si­cal pieces to mu­si­cal the­atre, to church gospel, to kaiso, to ca­lyp­so, to reg­gae, to rock, to jazz, to ca­lyp­so jazz, to steel­band mu­sic.”

In ad­di­tion, Williams said he would be play­ing mul­ti­ple in­stru­ments.

“I switch in­stru­ments from time to time, which is fun for me, and I think it’s in­ter­est­ing for the au­di­ence to see that too.”