Etienne Charles - Kaiso

Styles: Trumpet Jazz
Year: 2011
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 70:17
Size: 162,7 MB
Art: Front

(5:20)  1. Kaiso
(7:19)  2. J'ouvert Barrio
(6:14)  3. Russian Satellite
(8:15)  4. Congo Bara
(6:47)  5. Ten to One is Murder
(6:50)  6. Teresa
(5:54)  7. Kitch's Bebop of Calypso
(5:57)  8. Rose
(4:05)  9. My Landlady
(5:16) 10. Margie
(8:14) 11. Sugar Bum Bum

With Kaiso, trumpeter Etienne Charles revisits his robust Trinidad-Tobago roots, brilliantly exposing their beauty, mystery and fascinating flavors. The fruits of Charles and crew's labor blossom from multiple Caribbean grooves into a highly energized performance, with more jazz-tinged interpretations than his prior outing, the highly acclaimed Folklore (Self-Produced, 2009).  The title tune, from an African word loosely defined as "proceed" (as in "play on"), is dark and hard. With the frontline boiling hot over a pulsing harmonic and rhythmic base, it announces, musically, that this effort will stray in a different, more complex musical direction. "J'overt Barrio" embraces a Latin feel as it weaves across genres and tempos; a New Orleans-style musical gumbo, consisting of Creole, African, and Caribbean musical flavors spiced with whistles and chants. Charles' tone is sweetly robust and a supreme joy throughout. His marvelous playing intentionally childlike and playful showcases his masterful abilities. His classical training and the influence of Miles Davis ("Congo Bara") and Wynton Marsalis are pleasantly obvious. Guadeloupean tenor saxophonist Jacques Schwarz-Bart adds a fine touch. Calypso master, Mighty Sparrow's "Russian Satellite" prances over a cool melody line before forging straight ahead. Alto saxophonist Brian Hogans generates boppish ideas and faux quotes that fire and pop, while the fine rhythm section lays a terrific, swinging foundation here and elsewhere.

Charles shows he can stretch out with the best on Mighty Sparrow's "Ten to One is Murder." Giving props to Marsalis and the bebop classic, "Salt Peanuts," Charles and Hogans fly on this burner, with guest pianist Monty Alexander and bassist Ben Williams both delivering heated solos. "Kitch's Bebop of Calypso" channels Charlie Parker, as Lord Superior's vocal and Hagans' solo confirm. Lord Superior's voice and Charles' cup-muted trumpet smile on the catchy calypso, "My Landlady," while bassist Ben Williams, drummer Obed Calvaire and percussionist Ralph MacDonald push without letting up. The lush orchestral prelude on Sparrow's "Teresa" sets up a luscious bossa nova melody, played with heart by Charles, while "Rose" showcases the orchestra's woodwinds flitting around Charles' calypso-dancing horn; two selections that are more accessible and, consequently, distinctive from the rest of the session. Charles' duo with Alexander on Lord Kitchner's "Margie," rounds out a trio of romantic beauties, and "Sugar Bum Bum," a jaunty calypso tip-of-the-hat to the Caribbean woman, perfectly seals this exotic date. Kaiso is an enticing recording by an extraordinary musician who is looking back historically and into his musical future. Whether calypso, straight-ahead, bebop or the mixture of all, Etienne Charles and his team show they have enough talent to cook up some truly spicy and wonderfully entertaining music. As they say in the Caribbean, "kaiso." ~ Nicholas F.Mondello https://www.allaboutjazz.com/kaiso-etienne-charles-culture-shock-music-review-by-nicholas-f-mondello.php
 

Personnel: Etienne Charles: trumpet, flugelhorn, cuatro, percussion, vocals; Brian Hogans: alto saxophone, piano (6), vocals; Jacques Schwarz-Bart: tenor saxophone, vocals; Sullivan Fortner: piano, vocals; Ben Williams: bass, vocals; Obed Calvaire: drums, vocals; 3 Canal: vocals (2); Monty Alexander: piano (5, 7, 9, 10); Ralph MacDonald: percussion (6-8, 11); Lord Superior: vocals (7, 9), guitar (7, 9).

Kaiso

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Etienne Charles - Culture Shock

Styles: Trumpet Jazz
Year: 2006
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 42:14
Size: 98,2 MB
Art: Front

(7:58)  1. Culture Shock
(4:52)  2. Sunday
(8:29)  3. Prayer for Lynette
(5:34)  4. Ruth
(5:33)  5. Lost in the Bronx
(5:02)  6. Embraceable You
(4:43)  7. Old School

There is no use in trying to pigeonhole 2006 National Trumpet Competition winner Etienne Charles. One listen to his debut album Culture Shock shows the depth and breadth of his varied musical heritage. From the Calypso and Caribbean steel pan grooves of his native Trinidad, to sophisticated swing firmly rooted in the jazz tradition, Charles deftly incorporates a multitude of styles while maintaining continuity, freshness, and maturity in his sound that is often lacking in other players of his generation. Twenty-three year old Etienne Charles comes from a rich legacy of musical tradition. His grandfather was seldom seen without his cuatro or guitar. His father Francis was a member of Phase II Pan Groove, one of the world's top steel bands and one that Etienne would later join himself. Music surrounded Charles as a child, emanating from his father's record collection, and the sounds of calypso, steel pan, and African shango and tassa drumming. These formative years inform Charles's playing and are evident in his sound today.  Already Charles is a celebrated award-winning trumpeter. 

At Fatima College in Trinidad, Charles was the first three-time winner of the coveted Provincial Cup, and was also the youngest person to ever receive the award at age 13. In 2002 he began his studies at Florida State University and in 2006 he graduated as Brautlecht Scholar of the College of Music, where he studied jazz with legendary pianist Marcus Roberts. He is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Jazz Studies at the Julliard School. Charles has been awarded the IAJE Award for Outstanding Service to Jazz Education and a Special Citation for Outstanding Musicianship. Charles is also an alumnus of the prestigious Henry Mancini Institute in Los Angeles where in 2006 he recorded on the album Elevation featuring Eddie Daniels and Tom Scott which received two Grammy award nominations. He has shared the stage with Grammy Award winners Roberta Flack and Ralph MacDonald, jazz piano great Marcus Roberts, Maria Schneider, Johnny Mandel, Rene Marie, Gerald Wilson, and a host of others.  For his first album, Culture Shock, Charles assembled an outstanding and seasoned band of veteran musicians to help him bring his vision of jazz fused with Afro-Caribbean rhythms to fruition. The aforementioned pianist extraordinaire Marcus Roberts is featured, with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra trombonist Vincent Gardner, Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, Ralph MacDonald, vocalist Pam Laws, saxophonist Dayve Stewart, and the hard swinging and solid rhythm section of Rodney Jordan and Leon Anderson on bass and drums respectively. This all-star cast brings together Charles's diverse influences and creates a unified, fresh, and urgent musical presentation on par with the best jazz being made today. Etienne Charles is a talented, creative soul with a vision and the will to bring it to the world. https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/etiennecharles

Culture Shock

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Etienne Charles - Creole Soul

Styles: Trumpet Jazz
Year: 2013
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 56:24
Size: 132,7 MB
Art: Front

(0:19)  1. Creole (Intro)
(6:25)  2. Creole
(5:20)  3. The Folks
(5:55)  4. You Don't Love Me
(6:30)  5. Roots
(6:03)  6. Memories
(5:42)  7. Green Chimneys
(4:54)  8. Turn Your Lights Down Low
(6:52)  9. Midnight
(4:52) 10. Close Your Eyes
(3:26) 11. Doin' The Thing

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. This new album, previewed earlier this year in Tobago at Jazz on the Beach at Mt Irvine, reveals an evolution of his art that parallels the jazz idiom's most eclectic trumpeter and influence. The fourth studio album from this US-based musician and teacher bristles with a kind of energy that comes from the realization 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. The familiar tropes of calypso rhythm inflected jazz that have been a hallmark of our jazz here for decades from Duke Ellington's A Drum is a Woman (1956) to Rupert Clemendore's Le Jazz Trinidad (1961) and Dizzy Gillespie's Jambo Caribe (1964)are abandoned for a modern post-bop and jazz fusion take on the material and all its thematic and stylistic influences in the New World. Thematically, this should come as no surprise. Charles has posited that 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. Etienne Charles tells New York-based jazz writer Eric Sandler: "Creole to me means a world within a world...I'm Trinidadian, but being Trinidadian means that I have many different cultural influences as well as many different influences based on my bloodline." This statement echoes a famous stanza of Nobel Prize winning St Lucian poet Derek Walcott's: "I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me/and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation." We are all creole.

The artistic parallel does not stop there. Deciphering an arc in the themes of the four albums by Charles to date, one sees in Culture Shock (2006), the name says it all, 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) are his "Trinidad" albums; going back to the source of inspiration. Now, with Creole Soul, he takes flight. A parallel to VS Naipaul: after his first four books set in Trinidad, he began to travel ..."my writing ambition grew. But when it was over I felt I had done all that I could do with my island material. No matter how much I meditated on it, no further fiction would come..." ultimately to a Nobel prize. Where Charles will go from here is the surprise that jazz holds in store for listeners.  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 his parents) incorporating calypso's syncopated bass with rhythm & 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 popularized "You Don't Love Me (No No No)" (the latter serendipitously being performed for millions on the BET Awards 2013 in June), 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 Thelonious 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 artistic 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. Bob Dylan going electric in 1965 with Bringing It All Back Home, and Miles Davis' In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew in 1969/70 transformed their respective genres by utilising electric instruments. Charles, on this CD, 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 Josué 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 and sound 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 ascendance of Charles. An artist/producer subliminally makes commercial decisions that affect aesthetic outcomes. Charles disagrees, 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. Business folks will decide based on what they hear if it's worth selling. If we're not happy with what we record, we won't sell it." The sum of these songs says otherwise. That said, this CD can have an impact on the consideration of music from these islands. Like Geoffrey Holder a generation before who had a significant impact on Trinidad music via "House of Flowers," before Harry Belafonte's Calypso, Creole Soul is in that mould of trend setter. Ideas of jazz globalization, Caribbean trans-nation, and diaspora, which Etienne suggests is the arithmetic of creolization, as formulae to contextualise this recording clouds the simple fact that this is a exceptional record by an artist who has grown technically in both his playing and improvisation. We all are creole! ~ Nigel Campbell https://www.allaboutjazz.com/etienne-charles-creole-soul-by-nigel-campbell.php
 

Personnel: Etienne Charles: trumpet, flugelhorn, percussion; Brian Hogans: alto sax; Obed Calvaire: drums; Jacques Schwarz-Bart: tenor sax; Kris Bowers: piano & Fender Rhodes; Ben Williams: bass; Erol Josué: vocals (1, 2); Daniel Sadownick: percussion &vocals (5); D'Achee: percussion (2, 3, 7, 11), vocals(5); Alex Wintz: guitar (2, 5, 6).

Creole Soul

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