RECORD REVIEWS
Etienne Charles, the Trinidadian trumpeter, percussionist, and Guggenheim fellow, has a knack for album concepts. His 2013 album, Creole Soul, starts with an incantation from an actual Voodoo priest and goes on to cover Creoleinfluenced tunes from Bob Marley and the Mighty Sparrow. Thelonious Monk is also in the mix, with his “Green Chimneys,” which features a calypso melody Charles speculates Monk first heard in New York’s San Juan Hill, a Caribbean neighborhood where Monk lived for a while.
Like Nina Simone, Phil Woods, and Christian McBride, Etienne Charles is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where he studied trumpet with Joe Wilder. Before that he studied with pianist Marcus Roberts at Florida State University. Still in his 20s, Charles already has a faculty appointment at Michigan State University. And on his latest project, he plays his butt off.
Carnival: The Sound of a People, Vol 1 is inspired by Trinidad’s version of that traditional pre-Lent festival, but the album goes much deeper than beads and booze. According to the liner notes, by Tony Bell, “the arc of tunes” on Carnival “suggests a movement out of slavery via resistance to imposed order.” Not sure I got all that from listening, but the listening was fun.
Charles is joined on Carnival by a core crew no less skilled than he is. The main guy on keys is James Francies, the synesthetic pianist who, at 22, has already toured and recorded with Jeff “Tain” Watts, Chris Potter, and The Roots; you can often hear Francies on The Tonight Show. Sullivan Fortner—Cécile McLorin Salvant’s collaborator on her recent Grammy-winning album, The Window—takes keys on several tracks. Brian Hogans, a member of the Sean Jones Quintet, plays alto sax throughout to David Sánchez’s tenor. This group is joined by two drummers, two bassists, and traditional Trinidadian percussion troops including the Claxton Bay Tamboo Bamboo and the Laventille Rhythm Section.
The music on is a mix of straight-ahead jazz and Caribbean sounds. The album’s first track, “Jab Molassie,” was inspired by the “molasses devils,” who, at Trinidad’s Carnival—usually painted blue—embody the vengeful spirit of a slave who was boiled alive in molasses. The jab molassie are usually accompanied by steel drums—not the steel pans more typical on the island. “The haunting melody reflects agony and ecstasy,” Bell says in his note: “Hell on earth overcome.” Track 2, “Dame Lorraine,” evokes a sashaying Trinidadian woman. The ensuing tracks are similarly programmatic.
