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Guyana-born jazz singer, songwriter and flautist Ruth Osman and guitarist, composer and arranger Theron Shaw, have vowed to take the audience of Soul Journeys: An Intimate and Interactive Concert Experience, on a musical journey.
The event will be held at the beautiful Rain Tree Plant and Wellness Centre located at Century Drive, Macoya, Trinidad, on August 28 at 3 pm.
Explaining the philosophy behind the show Osman remarked: “There’s so much hype and noise in our everyday lives that we wanted to do something different.”
She noted that while hype has its place “so does the other kind of energy, the type that calms, refreshes and heals, and we want to do that through our music.”
Shaw explained that the aim of the show is to take the audience along on a journey with the two artistes through songs, stories and dialogue.
“This isn’t the kind of show where the audience just sits and listens. They’re on that journey with us,” while Osman relayed, “That interaction of that sort comes naturally to Caribbean people. It’s what we do. Call and response, telling stories, that sense of play. It’s how we express community and wholeness and we wanted to explore that.”
Theron Michael Shaw began his foray into the world of music as a young boy with a four-stringed plastic guitar bought by his mother and tuned by his cousin. Over the years, he has toured and performed with a wide variety of acts, and served the Caribbean with distinction as a member of the Kaiso Jazz Workshop with Michael Tobas.
Shaw is a well-known feature on the jazz circuit locally and internationally having appeared at Pan Ramajay, Caribbean Jazz Waves, We Beat Festival, Jazz on the Hill, Jazz Artists on the Greens and the Tobago Jazz Experience.
Ruth Osman
With a continued hefty slate of experiences, Shaw optimistically considers himself an out of-the-box thinker in his quest to create different ways to express his Caribbean African ancestry.
His music is decidedly Caribbean in the way it registers “at home” while also evoking ancestral cultures. He infuses familiar rhythms with unexpected beats and melodies that tell the story of a musician who has walked through the grand bazaar of world music, absorbing flavours to bring them home to add to a bubbling pot.
Ruth Osman, based in T&T is a poet disguised as a songbird, according to Caribbean Beat Magazine. She has been writing and performing her music and poetry since childhood, drawing from her lived experience as a Caribbean woman of mixed heritage, and from the rich worlds that she encountered in books and in her father’s favourite musicals. Her work, usually performed with her band, Love Warriors, has been described as profound, entrancing and authentic, and her sophomore album, Elemental (2016), was dubbed a 10-track gem by the Trinidad Guardian. Osman says that her inspiration comes from the desire to help us connect with each other and with the transcendent beauty of the human experience.
• Websites: ruthosman.com | theronshaw.com.