Etienne Charles’ Carnival Oratorio A grand gesture in composition, an opus writ large.
22 Jazz in the Islands
translate the emotions, the history and the psychology of the people and their dreams and actions as players on this grand stage called Carnival.
of music creation in the Caribbean. The method of composing new music over original music from a source was explored by Paul Simon on his classic Graceland album; music based on a “rhythmic premise.” Like Simon, Charles went back to the United States to record with some of the most gifted jazz musicians including Grammy winners Ben Williams on bass and David Sánchez on tenor saxophone. The work on Carnival continues: “Fourteen movements of the suite have been recorded, eight more to write…only gonna be able to play eleven in Trinidad for the sake of time.” Juxtaposition of native Carnival culture with the jazz response is intriguing. Charles notes that he “wanted to be cerebral, but rooted in the folk The catalyst for composition for element while being as vivid as possible Carnival: The Sound of a People was with the harmonic colours.” Among different from his recent San Jose Suite. the new improvisations garnered The broad quest was condensed to from the sound of the drum is the focus on the specific. Observations four-part “Black Echo”. Charles says of the wider Americas, its people and it represents “the European attempt communities gave way to the capture of to suppress our communication and and the reaction to the sound and vision Black musical expression.” It is the of a people, in real time, unravelling the African-Caribbean response that also “multiplicity of cross-cultural influences” illustrates the evolution, in Trinidad, of that drive this nation and this region the drum sound. The first movement to make a mas’ and to make a music. is the “Banning of the Drum” with the Resistance and persistence, in this case, is resultant initial tumult mirrored in hard specific to that impulse of ours to mimic bop musicality. The second movement and to parody imposed order, and to is on the “Tamboo Bamboo”, which absorb, re-enact and create the theatre was the local response to banning the that honours the indestructible courage drums. The third movement celebrates of ancestors. the “Iron Bands”, the precursor to the Charles: “I have hours and hours final movement, the “Steelbands”, the of field recordings that I had to sift “audacity of the creole imagination,” through. I wanted the real shit; to as described by researcher Dr. Kim see it and to fuse the sounds with the Johnson. sights and the history to make music.” There are many more musical stories These hours of field recordings, this like this that illustrate and signify raw ritual music serves as a bed for the that the creole imagination was more new improvisations that Charles would than audacious, but was determined layer. This melodic addition is not to never to be suppressed or forgotten. be construed as cultural appropriation, There have been dozens of books and but part of our hybridisation process scholarly articles as well as hundreds of
PHOTO: MARIA NUNES
In the heat and heart of the Carnival fête season when “we doh business”, Etienne Charles will allow us to imagine what creole intelligence sounds and looks like. On Sunday January 29, 2017 he will debut and preview at the Queen’s Hall selections of his newest extended piece—a planned 3-CD length oratorio— called Carnival: The Sound of a People that locates the musical response of Afro-Caribbean people within this island space to the circumstances of slavery, colonialism and freedom. Adoption, adaptation and incorporation of the cultural traditions rendered with an ear to the broader musical tradition of the Americas, jazz, has allowed Charles to produce music that recognises local audiences’ penchant to move to rhythm, and a global audiences’ willingness to discover and be awed by the brilliance of New World African music. Errol Hill, in his book The Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre, wrote that “Carnival is inconceivable without music.” Music is indeed a central pillar of the Trinidad Carnival. Charles, with the award of a 2015 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, was allowed to research and explore the music of the Carnivalesque processions, the canboulay and j’ouvert, the drum dances, the sacred and secular music with the call-and-response led by the chantwell, and other African cultural survivals in the Caribbean from preEmancipation to present. He embedded himself in the communities that retain the traditions of the blue devil, the jab jab, the black Indian, and in the gayelle of the stickfighter to capture the rhythm and song of the kalenda and the caliso In modern times, Trinidad Carnival has inspired plays, original dance and prose from our best playwrights, choreographers and authors. It has also created and inspired music that seeks to
