Car­ol Quash

There are few artistes who have sup­port­ed the re­gion’s mu­si­cal art form like Na­tal­ie Yorke.

Her voice is well known on the sound­tracks of Caribbean mu­sic, hav­ing pro­vid­ed back­ing vo­cals for cel­e­brat­ed ca­lyp­so and so­ca artistes such as The Mighty Spar­row, Lord Kitch­en­er, Shad­ow, David Rud­der, Machel Mon­tano and De­stra Gar­cia. She has toured ex­ten­sive­ly with the leg­endary Kas­sav’, per­form­ing in French and Cre­ole, and was a mem­ber of the Caribbean girl group Shades of Black, which was signed to Sony France. She has even col­lab­o­rat­ed with in­ter­na­tion­al Gram­my Award-win­ning acts such as Shab­ba Ranks and Tony! Toni! Toné!

“Across the Caribbean, I have had the ho­n­our of work­ing along­side nu­mer­ous ca­lyp­so mon­archs and icon­ic per­form­ers, earn­ing a rep­u­ta­tion as one of the re­gion’s lead­ing sup­port­ing vo­cal­ists,” Yorke told Guardian Me­dia.

“In recog­ni­tion of my con­tri­bu­tion to the art form, I was ho­n­oured by TU­CO in 2017 for my long and dis­tin­guished ser­vice to ca­lyp­so mu­sic as a sup­port­ing vo­cal­ist.”

Her mu­si­cal jour­ney has spanned over four decades, and in ad­di­tion to her per­for­mances, Yorke has made a name for her­self be­yond the stage, hav­ing record­ed over 2,000 com­mer­cial jin­gles and over 1,000 voice-overs through­out the Caribbean.

“A body of work that has earned me the af­fec­tion­ate ti­tle of The Jin­gle Queen.”

On Au­gust 15, at Kafe Blue on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, the cul­tur­al am­bas­sador will share snip­pets of that jour­ney in song – from so­ca to ca­lyp­so, zouk to jazz, R&B and chut­ney – while pay­ing trib­ute to some of the peo­ple who made that road pos­si­ble.

“The pro­duc­tion, The Jour­ney of Me and Mu­sic, will be less a per­for­mance and more a cel­e­bra­tion of the ex­tra­or­di­nary peo­ple, col­lab­o­ra­tions and ex­pe­ri­ences that have shaped my life and ca­reer. It is my op­por­tu­ni­ty to ho­n­our the mu­si­cians, arrangers, pro­duc­ers and men­tors who helped de­fine Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mu­si­cal land­scape and to ex­press my grat­i­tude through the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of mu­sic.”

The show will fea­ture a num­ber of mu­si­cal icons, in­clud­ing Pel­ham God­dard and KV Charles, and will pay trib­ute to the rich lega­cy of the Big Band era and the many en­sem­bles that have in­flu­enced Yorke’s ca­reer, among them Blue Ven­tures, Roots, Sound Rev­o­lu­tion and Roy Cape All Stars.

As a child, Yorke said, she lived in the heart of Port-of-Spain, giv­ing her easy ac­cess to the bands pass­ing along Fred­er­ick Street on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

“But I hat­ed every­thing about Car­ni­val; I did not like the blue dev­ils and the moko jumbies, I just found Car­ni­val was just too loud, and I didn’t un­der­stand pan mu­sic. But mind you, I would play kid­dies Car­ni­val,” she said with a loud laugh.

Iron­i­cal­ly, short­ly af­ter leav­ing sec­ondary school, Yorke be­came a vo­cal­ist with Blue Ven­tures.

“The first song that I ever sang was a chut­ney so­ca called Mr Bisses­sar by Dru­patee Ram­goon­ai. That, I be­lieve it was 1988. So this was how Trinidad and To­ba­go was in­tro­duced to Na­tal­ie Yorke, and that’s why I’m go­ing to be per­form­ing it at my show.”

An­oth­er mem­o­rable gem, she said, was when Blue Ven­tures did Glo­ria Es­te­fan and the Mi­a­mi Sound Ma­chine’s 1-2-3 to a so­ca beat.

“We did a video for it, and I see the video has been cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia. I re­mem­ber those days. I was so shy and I didn’t even think I could sing those songs…So yeah, that’s an­oth­er song that I’m go­ing to be per­form­ing.”

At her first con­cert with Kas­sav’ in Paris, she re­called per­form­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,000 peo­ple.

“It was a sold out con­cert.”

Af­ter that re­cep­tion, Yorke and two oth­er vo­cal­ists, Kar­la Gon­za­les and Jus­lyn Jones, formed Shades of Black and per­formed all of Kas­sav’s hits in Eng­lish and French. Al­though she was not flu­ent in French, she un­der­stood it well enough to get the mes­sage across.

“Be­cause, you know, in or­der for any song to be ex­pressed prop­er­ly, to give the right in­to­na­tion and ex­pres­sion, you must un­der­stand what you’re singing about. So I al­ways made it my busi­ness to find out what the Eng­lish trans­la­tion was, what were the hook lines, and what they meant.”

She said be­cause zouk, like so­ca and ca­lyp­so, tells a sto­ry, it was easy for her to make the tran­si­tion.

Zouk is very “root­sy” be­cause that’s what Kas­sav’ means. Roots, like cas­sa­va. But it went deep­er than that; the roots of the peo­ple. So we felt very com­fort­able be­ing in that genre of mu­sic be­cause it was very sim­i­lar to the mu­sic we knew. And of course I’ll be singing in Eng­lish and French at the show,” she chuck­led.

God­dard, with whom she will be per­form­ing some jazzy songs, was the one who opened the door to her per­for­mances in Japan wide open.

“One day he (God­dard) called me and he asked, ‘You want to go to Japan?’ I got to go on tour in 1988, the on­ly singer, per­form­ing with Ex­o­dus Steel Or­ches­tra. We toured about 36 cities, and I al­so sang in Japan­ese.”

Over the years, she has en­gaged in nu­mer­ous dis­cus­sions on the val­ue of her con­tri­bu­tion to the na­tion­al and re­gion­al mu­si­cal land­scape. This time around, she said, she want­ed the dis­cus­sion to take a dif­fer­ent form.

“Rather than sim­ply dis­cussing a per­for­mance, I would wel­come the op­por­tu­ni­ty to share the ex­pe­ri­ences, lessons and per­spec­tives gained from a life­time in mu­sic – from pre­serv­ing our cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty and nav­i­gat­ing the chang­ing mu­sic in­dus­try, to the of­ten un­seen role of sup­port­ing vo­cal­ists, the im­por­tance of men­tor­ship, artis­tic longevi­ty, and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of our cul­tur­al prac­ti­tion­ers in in­spir­ing the next gen­er­a­tion.”

She be­lieves these con­ver­sa­tions sur­round­ing the ex­pe­ri­ences of artistes are im­por­tant, no mat­ter what form they take.

“I be­lieve there is tremen­dous val­ue in pre­serv­ing and shar­ing these sto­ries, not on­ly to cel­e­brate our cul­tur­al her­itage, but to in­spire fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of mu­si­cians, cre­atives and cul­tur­al lead­ers.”