ALBUM REVIEWS

Reginald Cyntje

Rise of the Protester (Self Released)

Ronald Boo Hinkson My Good Day (Zephryn Records)

St Lucian music icon and guitarist

Ronald “Boo” Hinkson has a career equivalent to that of an ambassador for his native island and its annual jazz festival. The languid pleasures of Caribbean life are mirrored in the tropical smooth jazz feel of this song. Featuring the vocals of Irvin “Ace” Loctar and Shannon Pinel, and Hinkson’s “signature feathery touch,” this song’s inspirational message of hope and gratitude is made clearer when you grasp the relationship between our Caribbean realities and the vision

Jeremy Hector Ascension (Thunder Dome Records)

Young, gifted Grenadian guitarist

In a series of splendid jazz albums, trombonist and composer Reginald Cyntje has been musically chronicling the range of human emotions, and providing a musical engagement with the human spirit, the soul, the cerebral self. An intelligent understanding of ourselves culminates in this new recording, Rise of the Protester, which documents the resistance of the “hue man” to bondage, to deprivation, to prejudice, and to injustice in both Caribbean and American spaces, reflecting Cyntje’s multiple heritages as a Dominican raised in the US Virgin Islands, and now living in the United States. Taking his cues from a historical record of resistance, literal and figurative — from the likes of Harriet

Tubman and “Queen” Mary Thomas of St Croix to Malcolm X and others — Cyntje’s evolution of protest is given gravitas with music that engages the urgent rhythms of Caribbean movement and the contemplative space of jazz. This is by no means mournful dissonance, but a joyous celebration of spirit wanting to be free.

Available at iTunes of the tourist brochure. “Survival is the triumph of stubbornness,” said St Lucian poet Derek Walcott, and in these lyrics, you get the sense that a good day is just around the corner from a series of regular bad yesterdays. The jazz guitar in the hands of giants like Wes Montgomery and George Benson became the smooth sonic antidote to melancholy, and Hinkson merrily continues that tradition here.

Jeremy Hector makes his album debut with the aid of countryman, and Canadian music award winner, Eddie Bullen at the production helm. What this means is that there is a flawless sheen to the smooth jazz tropes that ooze like treacle from the eleven tracks. That could be a bad thing in that there is a sameness of the song profile, but there is a silver lining in the sound of that guitar. The tone of his instrument is one that is remarkably listenable, and one that suggests that there could be more for the listener than sonic fantasies of island life and tropical vacations. Hector’s mature supple fretting technique that allows for a fluid playing and the obvious ease of engagement for the listener with these compositions — ten, self-composed — add to the idea that this debut was long overdue. A Caribbean rhythmic aesthetic shines through on the tracks, “St Paul” and “Islander”, to give this album a unique distinction.

Available at iTunes

Available at iTunes