Caribbean Beat — 25th Anniversary Edition — March/April 2017 (#144)

playlist
Bright Eyes Victor Provost (Paquito Records)
Virgin Island steelpan jazz
virtuoso Victor Provost sets
an optimistic tone with his
second album, Bright Eyes,
capturing the influence of
the Caribbean more so than
on his debut album two
years ago. Bebop swagger
gives way to a progressive
jazz world fusion while still
maintaining a deft touch that allows the tenor pan to
ring true. On the eleven tunes on this album, Provost
runs through a gamut of styles and select composers, to
give the steelpan a context outside its calypso base. The
obligatory homage to calypso legend Lord Kitchener is
included — “Pan in Harmony” — but this album reflects
Provost’s recent apprenticeship with Cuban saxophonist
Paquito D’Rivera and his wider exploration of improvised
tropical music. Mazurka, baião, calypso, and funky
Afro-Cuban jazz all have a presence here. Guest soloists
— including the aforementioned D’Rivera, alongside
Etienne Charles and Ron Blake, to name a few — flavour
this Caribbean jazz gumbo which swings with enough
intensity to keep your attention.
Elemental Ruth Osman (self-released)
Trinidad-based Guyanese
singer-songwriter Ruth
Osman is a poet disguised as a
songbird. Not so much a poet
in the Dylanesque Nobel Prize
echelon, but from the milieu
of Caribbean poets who use
metaphor and emotional
narrative to imbue a sense
of order into our scattered
lives. The bookend opening and closing interludes of this
ten-song album showcase her talent as poet who moves
beyond mere lyricism. “Someone must, on bended knee /
Mourn the death of a star and sing another into being.”
The intervening eight songs showcase a singer who holds
a tune with an elastic multi-octave voice that echoes a
girlish timbre in contrast to the adult themes. Elemental,
Osman’s second album, succeeds in its simple setting,
where her debut wallowed in vapid excess, hiding the
richness of her voice that makes her lyrics ring. With cover
songs by Marley, Jobim, and Andre Tanker, this album also
focuses Osman’s neo-folk Caribbean aesthetic accurately
towards accomplishment and elation.
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