Élan Parlé talked the talk at Jazz on the Hill, Virgin Gorda (updated June 08)

 Tn’T

performed on May 17, 2008

Élan Parlé:

Michael Low Chew Tung (Ming): piano

Sean Friday: electric bass

Richard Joseph: drums

David Bertrand: flute, recorder, chekeré

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This long-awaited headline act unsurprisingly fired off their opening salvo with the signature flag-waiver for Calypso-Jazz, Sonny Rollins’ St. Thomas.  The featured instruments were the flute and pan.  David Bertrand and Mikhail Salcedo would turn out to be the leading soloists throughout the set.

 Ming: in Zen mode 

Lavantille by Andy Narell was next.  As Michael Low Chew Tung aka Ming explained in his narrative, Lavantille, Trinidad birthed the pan.  And I would chip in that the composer was made an honorary Trinidadian for his groundbreaking work in popularizing and raising the profile of the steel drum, the only instrument to have been invented in the twentieth century, by melding it with Jazz, the landmark style of music that came out of the American Black experience.  But would Narell have thought of arranging the song with unison lines between flute and piano alongside pointed pan fills…and then a recorder solo?  A recorder!

 

 

Salcedo and Bertrand

The flautist (Bertrand) played the head.  The pannist (Salcedo) restated it but at an angle.  Then the flute and pan followed suit.  The pannist was the most dramatic; he took his turn on the chrome and stepped away from it to take up duty on the congas.  In parallel with that, the flautist shed his main instrument for the recorder.

 

 

Now, as if to say, “We have referenced Rollins’ introduction of the Jazz crowd to Caribbean music; we have updated the fusion of the idioms courtesy of pan hero Narell; here is an Élan Parlé take on the Calypso-Jazz movement.  We present our original Outta da Blue.  Parlé did not stop there.  Ming and his dynasty quoted Miles Davis’ “So What” at the head to supposedly reemphasize the fact that Calypso-Jazz is neither a gimmick nor a fad, that the beat was tailor made for improvisation.

 

 

  Friday: blue bassist

Outta da Blue was sort of a dramatic composition embodied by stiff breaks.  As stated above, it was made for solo expression as evidenced by that of the flautist, the six-string bassist (Sean Friday) and the pannist whose deep pleadings of, what, something forsaken or forbidden is resolved with credulity on a reggae bridge.  All too soon, the song tapers away under the guidance of a flute that trails off into thin air.

 

    Richard Joseph

 

The musical explorations of styles progressed to Brazil and Luiz Bonfa and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Morning of the Carnival.  Talk about what a song can do for you.  The story I heard in this song was nothing carnival.  To the contrary, I sensed the subtle difference between being on the windswept St. Mary’s hill and the breeziness of this smooth tropical anthem.

 

Alas, the Jumbie Call for me was not by Andre Tanka, but by the Master of Ceremonies who advised the ferry riders like me that the operators would not wait for the show to end and that we should make our way to the dock. 

 

I turned and twisted like cornered prey, but I had to go.  Jumbie Call receded into the background eventually being drowned by the engine noise of the courtesy vehicle.  I could only imagine what I had left behind on Mount St. Mary.  Sadly it was the super band Élan Parlé.

 

 

Ming has since told me that I missed three originals in Pebbles and Seashells, Mating Call and Jacket; and Mr. Walker by the Mighty Sparrow (Slinger Francisco) and Old Lady Walk a Mile by Lord Kitchener (Aldwyn Roberts). 

 

Ming was also gracious enough to send me what might very well be his band’s entire discography.  I will thus be able to recreate Jazz on the Hill in my listening room and continue enjoying the festival from where I left off on Saturday, May 17, 2008 when the ferry dragged me away from Virgin Gorda.