Paula Lindo – Our histories, stories, present, future.

Andre Tanker’s Bim Suite, as performed by members of the Ethnic Jazz Club (EJC) on January 31, brings the sounds of the Caribbean to life. The sounds of the sea rolling over the shells in the surf at the beach, the wind moving through the trees, the sounds of steelpan and sitar and merengue and jazz, and the shak shak and the iron and the drums all made their presence felt.

The songs, “Andre’s Drum Call”, “Bim”, “Carapichaima”, “Round and Round”, the “Drum Suite” and “Jumbie Call”, with a lagniappe song, Tanker’s “Forward Home”, were arranged by Chantalle Esdelle and performed by Esdelle on keys, Douglas Redon on bass, Natasha Joseph on steelpan and Tamba Gwindi supplied the percussion.
The camaraderie between the performers was evident, as they sang and vocalized to the songs together at the Jazz Studio located at the corner of Cornelio and Roberts Streets. Although performing for a handful of people, Esdelle refused to postpone the show until the later scheduled show, saying it would never enter their minds to do that. “I believe if you have something carded to be done, it should be done and the important thing is that it goes out into the Universe.”
Esdelle said she began the EJC in September 2014 and attendance had been good since, with more people coming to each performance. She attributed the low attendance on that particular night to the various Carnival events taking place, including Junior Panorama, but also acknowledged that even though the mailing list is some 200 strong, more needed to be done to get the word out to the public.
“We opened in September 2014 and we did a Carnival presentation with Earl Rodney, Richard Bailey and a tribute to Clive Xanda. Then we did this Bim Suite in April and in June we did a weekend of performances with a guest saxophonist from Cuba, Emir Santa Cruz. The current season started in November 2015 with a dinner at Jaffa where we honoured bass player Douglas Redon and every Saturday in November we presented a pannist. These were Darren Sheppard, Douglas Reddon, Kyle Noel and Natasha Joseph. So we arrive at Carnival again and we did a feature on Friday with Duvonne Stewart and today we repeated the Bim Suite. Coming up in April we’re doing a Women’s Weekend in conjunction with Bishop’s High School to raise funds for needy young girls and in June we’re doing a festival called Mayeya which is focused on the drum and the steelpan.”
She paid tribute to a member of the group who was no longer with them, Donald Noel Jr. “We lost our main source of rhythm, our friend for many years and that’s a big loss for us. We miss his energy completely but I know that it will be filled in some way sometime.”
Esdelle said her choices of music to showcase were determined by the need to keep the anthology of Caribbean music alive. “We do kaiso jazz, pan jazz, Andre Tanker, Clive Zanda, calypsos, socas and most prominently our own compositions, because I have two albums out, a lot of original compositions but all in the style of our own music. And also in reverence to people who I was inspired by as a young person reading the back of albums and I always cite Clive Bradley, Earl Rodney and Andre Tanker as three of them.”
She said everyone in the group had worked with Tanker at one time or another, with Gwindi being the longest around since 1983, Esdelle from 1998 to 2001 “He’s the first musical parent that I had in T&T on returning home because he called me and invited me to play and I went to many festivals with him. I last played with him in 2000 or 2001. Forward Home is a song of inspiration for me too, “I come to do what I come to do and I doing it.”
Persons interested in being on the mailing list for future events can email Esdelle at ethnicjazzclub@gmail.com or check out her work at https://chantalesdelle.wordpress.com.