Best Calypso_jazz Podcasts (2024)

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Episode 21: Island Jazz Chat with Anthony Pierre 1:31:45

3d ago1:31:45

1:31:45

Anthony Pierre represents a pioneering effort of a Caribbean musician to establish a sustained island jazz presence in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. That multi-decade journey has resulted, by the 1990s, in the formation of the Caribbean jazz sextet Kalabash, which focused on "using the steel drum as a lead voice in a jazz ensemble, while ex…

1
Episode 21: Island Jazz Chat with Vaughnette Bigford 59:20

21d ago59:20

59:20

Vaughnette Bigford is the Creole Chanteuse, the island songbird who "has made the local [Trinidad and Tobago, and the Caribbean] songbook the new jazz standard in the Caribbean...the premier jazz song stylist in these islands whose palette knows no boundaries. Tone, beauty, presence: the definition of the New World African." An apt description from…

1
Episode 20: Island Jazz Chat with Garvin Blake 1:15:47

5M ago1:15:47

1:15:47

Garvin Blake, pan jazz musician based in New York has re-discovered his intention to preserve and promote the idea of steelpan and jazz as global music. After a pair of significant albums in 1999, Belle Eau Road Blues, and 2015, Parallel Overtones, Blake is now in a place in his life to continue to record and let the music of the steelpan be the 'n…

1
Episode 19: Creole Christmas Chat with Etienne Charles 41:09

9M ago41:09

41:09

Island Jazz Chat host, Nigel Campbell chats with globe-trotting Trinidadian musician and Guggenheim Fellow Etienne Charles about his upcoming performance in Trinidad and Tobago, A Creole Christmas Gift: Concert and Cocktails presented by HADCO Experiences. This event will showcase the extraordinary talents of Caribbean music legend and 7-time Gramm…

1
Episode 18: Island Jazz Chat with Etienne Charles 59:53

11M ago59:53

59:53

Etienne Charles is a creole soul. A Caribbean intellectual and sublime musician who positions the "native gaze" to reflect a new perspective on the wider Americas beyond a boundary. From Trinidad, with a trumpet in his hand and a rhythm in his veins, he has, over an 18-year recording career, observed and composed music that "re-charts the ruins," e…

1
Episode 17: Island Jazz Chat with Jacques Schwarz-Bart 1:31:32

1+ y ago1:31:32

1:31:32

Jacques Schwarz-Bart from Guadeloupe can be considered a Caribbean jazz explorer who is mining musical histories and creating new experiences based on tradition, heritage, spirituality, and a full understanding of the Caribbean legacy of being at the centre of many cultural moments in the Americas. His dual Afro-Caribbean and Jewish heritage has al…

1
Episode 16: Island Jazz Chat with Leon 'Foster' Thomas 1:35:39

1+ y ago1:35:39

1:35:39

Leon 'Foster' Thomas, contemporary steelpan jazz musician and composer from Trinidad, and at present, Caribbean Jazz researcher now based in the UK, chats on his career and the continuing journey to move the steelpan to the front of the jazz bandstand with his recordings and performances. His compositions, what he calls his "book of stories", posit…

1
Epidose 38 - The Grim Poteuthis

1+ y ago

—

Cometh the hour, drinketh the tea. Ceylon succours! Brist to thy mill, my decimo modulo. Undergunned and outperforated, nudibranches sprout multifariously from the Great Orme's latitudinous valve. Press thy lips to the slug's salty slime, scrotfurtler, and dance visceral fandangos where the moominfish fair grint. Listen Now Crank my ever-yodeling g…

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Episode 15: Island Jazz Chat with Richard Bailey 1:23:51

1+ y ago1:23:51

1:23:51

Richard Bailey, born in Guyana (then British Guiana), raised in Trinidad, and long resident in England, is the go-to drummer for major recording and touring artists in the UK since the 1970s. Jamming and recording with the likes of Jeff Beck and Bob Marley as a teenager, Bailey was a pivotal member of the new generation of musicians who forged a fu…

1
Episode 14: Island Jazz Chat with Chantal Esdelle 1:30:13

2y ago1:30:13

1:30:13

Trinidadian composer and educator Chantal Esdelle, a Berklee College of Music graduate, holds an important place among jazz musicians in the islands, as she is one of, if not the only female band leader who is a renowned pianist there. A multifaceted individual — performer, producer, promoter — who has, since 2000, released two albums as leader wit…

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Episode 13: Island Jazz Chat with Andy Narell 1:31:10

2y ago1:31:10

1:31:10

Andy Narell, globe-trotting and pioneering steelpan jazz musician, composer and arranger chats about his beginnings in the world of steelpan in the 1960s, and the evolution of the sound that he is leading in the 2020s with a new sample library of steelpan instruments created by the legendary master tuner Ellie Mannette. And everything in between. F…

1
Episode 12: Island Jazz Chat with Victor Provost 1:58:10

2y ago1:58:10

1:58:10

Victor Provost, from St John, USVI, has been variously described as a "rising steelpan master...whose refreshing melodic approach to soloing on the pan is wholly steeped in the jazz tradition," and "living proof of the nuance and versatility of the [steelpan]." In this chat, Victor discusses his beginnings, his influences and the practicality and p…

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Episode 11: Island Jazz Chat with Annise Hadeed 1:32:28

2y ago1:32:28

1:32:28

Panman, steelpan virtuoso, steeldrum musician. Just don't call Annise 'Halfers' Hadeed a "pannist". He is more than that! This important musician and recording artist from Trinidad and Tobago, now resident in the U.K., has been blazing a trail in the jazz scene there, as well as contributing significantly to the Caribbean presence there as an award…

1
Episode 10: Island Jazz Chat with Cameron Pierre 1:25:59

2y ago1:25:59

1:25:59

Guitarist Cameron Pierre has come full circle returning to his native Dominica after a multi-decade recording and performing career in the UK. After establishing an important Caribbean jazz presence there, with six albums produced, he reflects on the journey to this point. Beginning in the reggae scene here in the islands and into the UK, his evolu…

1
Episode 9: Island Jazz Chat with Theron Shaw 1:20:26

2y ago1:20:26

1:20:26

Reticent. Diffident. Two words to describe the personality of guitarist Theron Shaw of Trinidad and Tobago. Another pair of apt adjectives would be determined and inventive. In a revealing conversation, we get into what made Shaw the popular choice for the islands' premier jazz guitarist. Three acclaimed albums, years of touring and working at defi…

1
Episode 8: Island Jazz Chat with Clifford Charles 45:29

2y ago45:29

45:29

Trinidadian guitarist Clifford Charles describes his music as "smooth soca jazz." Grounded in the sounds and language of Trinidad, his liking for transforming the music of Carnival, the popular sound of Trinidad, into a contemporary jazz idiom sets him apart from other Caribbean jazz guitarists. With 5 albums under his belt, and counting, since 200…

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Episode 5: Island Jazz Chat with Reginald Cyntje 1:17:24

2y ago1:17:24

1:17:24

Jazz trombonist, Reginald Cyntje is the ultimate Caribbean jazz musician. Born in Dominica, raised in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, of Curaçaoan heritage, he is the epitome of a Caribbean musician making it in the United States. With the release of his sixth album, Healing, Reginald chats with us on this album and his previous albums' their develop…

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Episode 7: Island Jazz Chat with John Arnold 1:13:32

2y ago1:13:32

1:13:32

John Arnold is the pioneering musician, recording artist and jazz festival coordinator on the island of Tobago. As a recording artist, he has helmed half a dozen albums that play with the idea of Caribbean jazz as original music, including his latest, Jazz Standards in the Tambrin Sauce, which incorporates the Tobago-native tambrin drum family. Thi…

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Episode 6: Island Jazz Chat with Michael Boothman 1:42:27

3y ago1:42:27

1:42:27

Michael Boothman is the personification of excellence in the arts in Trinidad and Tobago. Pioneering, innovative and consistently successful as a performer, composer, arranger and recording artist, Boothman continues his 50-plus year career that showcases a number of firsts and milestones in the development of modern music in Trinidad and Tobago. H…

1
Episode 4: Island Jazz Chat with Elan Trotman 39:14

5y ago39:14

39:14

Elan Trotman, Boston-based contemporary jazz saxophonist from Barbados discusses the business of jazz with Jazz in the Islands. In 2019, he released his new album Dear Marvin, a saxophone tribute to the late great Marvin Gaye on the Woodward Avenue label. We get the Caribbean-American perspective from this Berklee College of Music alumnus about the…

1
Epidose 37 - The Clinker's Trumpet

5y ago

—

Tan sandstone blocks, upon which lies like a shroud a vaporous husk, the branch system of a long-dead ivy, blushing dark cobweb of dusky vine. What enormous tonnage, what great weight of crumbling stone. All we lack is longterm thinking; the perspective of aeons. Civilisation as we know it can not be saved, could never in its entire history have ev…

1
Epidose 36 - Weighted Planar Stochastic Lettuce

5y ago

—

How furcate is my volley! How splend the strand of string that strays from straggle heath to sponly suedes! As Swayze sways, these rays persuade, he's raised the waves from wasteful ways. A length of clothespipe, flurdled in a codheap. Did your mother mither? Does your mister pass muster? (I blessed a blister-blaster with much bluster.) You can eat…

1
Epidose 35 - Dutch & Charles

5y ago

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Gnolling cloudless and winsome o'er the hobbledy froom, a snipjack trejury come treacling langwards from netherlandish parts. Hobskoosh onely wonders, the pibbletosh skim skimmety-skim on glasslake ribble. Nabberlack lip-licker frusking out the vanguard as pottle fall dreamylike through wode, long loomy wode, a light as baffleghast as wronglesky, t…

1
Epidose 34 - I, Cerambus!

5+ y ago

—

Jellyfish desperate to save their habitat crammed themselves a hundredfold into the nozzle, but the reactor continued to function. The queen's coronation pie was stuffed to the brim with lamprey, slave blood still dripping from their toothy maws, their gaping buccal funnels. They opened their pineal eyes and wept, as ancient worms transformed the S…

1
Episode 3: Island Jazz Chat with Clive Zanda 1:08:37

5+ y ago1:08:37

1:08:37

The father of modern kaisojazz, Trinidadian pianist Clive Zanda recounts a career spanning from his days in England in the 1960s innovating with the fusion of calypso in the language of jazz, to his return to Trinidad and his collaboration with Scofield Pilgrim, Bajan-born kaisojazz theorist and pedagogue and beyond. The explorations of this new fu…

1
Epidose 33 - Lasagna and Kacey

5+ y ago

—

When tender frond the turlingdromes, and vestas whiffle from their homes, out in the misty magma moonlight, neeping in the afternoon, bright Lesmerelda flaunts her chubbles, great malinky double-bubbles. What a wald! I wadnae yield to see her famed delights revealed! But hush now son, and graze your kneesden. My poem's done. OH GOD NOT THE BEES-den…

1
Episode 2: Island Jazz Chat with Élan Parlē 1:12:09

5+ y ago1:12:09

1:12:09

Composer, producer and recording artist, Michael 'Ming' Low Chew Tung is called by Jazz in the Islands, "the architect of the new calypso jazz in the 21st century in Trinidad and Tobago" for his band/brand Élan Parlē. In this in-depth and revealing chat, 'Ming' gives an oral autobiography that gives clues to how he became the major influence in mod…

1
Episode 1: Island Jazz Chat with Rudy Smith 24:38

6y ago24:38

24:38

Pioneering steelpan jazz musician, Rudy "Two Left" Smith chats with Jazz in the Islands editor, Nigel A. Campbell, about his career. His beginnings in Trinidad, his sojourn into Europe to perform and ultimately record are discussed. Landmark albums like his Otinku with the Modern Sound Quintet are put into context as a steelpan jazz first. Now resi…

1
Epidose 32 - The Sputtering Cleft

6+ y ago

—

The ungudly abuminations multiplied twentyfold in mere hours, gnashing their gnarled dentata and puffing out those coarsely bristled cheeks. The growls and grufflings bargled forth long and loudsome, trombonerous and chewbattic rumbunctions resonorating echoey through the corridrobes, surgeries and hauleyways. Listen Now. Lord Brannigan-7 relaxed b…

1
Epidose 31 - Vagrant Sinner Box

6+ y ago

—

An old woman walking her dog in a field of clover came across a shepherdess looking over her flock of forty-six brown sheep and two dozen lambs. Each sheep wore upon its face a pair of half-moon spectacles and an embarrassed expression (the lambs just wore the glasses.) The old woman asked the shepherdess why her flock looked so bashful. The shephe…

1
Epidose 30 - The Borscht Supremacy

7y ago

—

Will you face the racing thoughts that swell and swirl around your goldfish bowl, those thoughts that swallow you up whole and wrap themselves around your soul? And did you ever stop to place a guiding gentle hand upon your face and say, be still now child, and stop your foolish self from running wild? Listen Now. In clear water running over sand c…

1
Epidose 29 - All Gravy Now

7+ y ago

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A sprinkling of dusty flakes, the dead skin that makes crusts upon the brow and which blizzards away as one's forehead creases in blowzy consternation, fall lightly upon the humpbacked bellypaunch, the curly-haired chest. One is reluctant to move, lest they drift onto the upholstery. Best remain, then, sofa-besnared, until the tender springs of sum…

1
Epidose 28 - Death To Ming!

7+ y ago

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There are several really interesting clocks in Berlin. I've never been myself, but horology is an abiding interest. At the intersection of sciences between horology and botany, we find the dandelion clock, which the French call pissenlit. The English name also stems from French, dents de lion; the lion's teeth. Two lions killed and ate 135 Kenyan r…

1
Epidose 27 - The Underwater Pig

7+ y ago

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Scooping out great fistfuls of hogflesh: argument over who gets the choicest meat; me wants the bellymeat, no no no me wants the headmeat... Delicately flick the pointed tip of one's tongue into the vacant snout to slurp at the cool jelly up there. It is not true that we are three meals away from barbarism; we are there already. Listen Now. Why not…

1
Epidose 26 - Influentia!

7+ y ago

—

So many layers of cryptic meaning envelop this week's Epidose that I feel frankly giddy just imagining the possibility of thinking about it. Listen Now. You are intelligent creatures, at least so I'm given to understand, so you'll have no problem in whittling out the obdurate reality lurking behind these gauzy fairy-sprinkles of discombobulating gl…

1
Epidose 25 - GCU Yule Thank Me Later

7+ y ago

—

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you gave it away. Andrew Ridgely's transplant unit hijinks on Boxing Day notwithstanding, we are pleased as plum duff to present this somewhat delayed selection box of seasonally-flavoured musical monstrosities for your consideration: Listen Now. Everyone enjoys Christmas music, don't they…

1
Epidose 24 - Mildred & Patty

7+ y ago

—

A year and a day ago, the first Epidose of Esoteric Music Lounge careened forth, lurching and uncontrollable, like a jellied emission coughed quivering from the clot-flecked and mucous lungs of a verminous shoulder-whisperer, its uncertain trajectory revealing little portent of the steamrollering cosmic uberforce it would shortly become. Join us in…

1
Epidose 23 - Flod In The Bunket

7+ y ago

—

Imagine building an enormous sandwich packed full with all the world's rugs. That would take some serious eating. How big would one's mouth have to be to munch the ultimate rug sandwich? Pretty big mouth, I'm saying. Spreading alternate layers of mayonnaise and mustard upon each rug before lifting the next carefully into place. Listen Now. Not all …

1
Epidose 22 - Ruff Duck

7+ y ago

—

A foul wind blew from the west, and deathly silence fell across the land. Winter fell. The ground hardened, crusted over with ice sheets as hard as granite. Our hearts needs must become as the speckled lights of a hundred million tiny candles each kept sheltered and nourished through neverending night. Listen Now. It's Britpop Memorial Day down on …

1
Epidose 21 - Hollentide Revels

8y ago

—

Hoppo, Stadlin, Hellwain, Puckle: Mony's the mickle that macketh th' muckle. Listen Now. Firestone, Malkin, Jinny-the-Green, The crones of the coven work curses unseen, Work hexes of horror to succour your fears, Deathly, the evil they bring to your ears: The Hare And The Moon - The Willows Twink with Steve Peregrine Took - The Coming Of The Other …

1
Epidose 20 - The Happenstance Way

8y ago

—

The mist grows heavy, the cobblestones slicken and black, and treacherous rumours go murmuring along dark alleyways. Lantern candles amber the faces of wanton gargoyles, and polyvinyl curtains slap like sea-leather from cullis windows. Out into this night ventures our hero, sideways-peeking behind from corner-folds, and yet though he does not pass …

1
Epidose 19 - Crow, Dog, And Bobby Hogg

8y ago

—

It is certainly impossible to think; impossible, really, to do anything at all. Circularity inhabits the wheel, and sheer exhaustion is all that keeps us pushing it forward. Had we only the energy to see it, we might then have the energy to stop. Centuries are dust; civilizations only the marginal scribblings in a disregarded apocrypha, the footnot…

1
Epidose 18 - Jam Bat Sonar

8y ago

—

Throw open your curlews, gentlefolds, and behold the tremulous chirruping of damsel-pies in dewy-fronded distress. What menacingly trite apparitions come emanating from yonder dismal crenels and merlons? Be it bunyip? Or quinkin? Ebu Gogo? Popobawa? Oh, all of these, all of these crawling slimy things, all the nightmares that lay a clammy flap upon…

1
Epidose 17 - Boneseeker Beach Barbecue

8y ago

—

On the summit skyline, a series of T-shapes in silhouette against thunderclouds. The bearded ones wander freely, unnoticed and undetected. Is it such a terrible thing, this thing they do? Since when has justice not allied herself to persecution? Parking restriction notices are the impenetrable glyphs of the apocalypse. Listen Now. The warden comes …

1
Epidose 16 - Narcissus In Nylons

8y ago

—

The scale is wrong: the vanishing points inconsistent. The steps between notes form no tone or half-tone, the perspective is forced or false. Lunging crazily over the skyline, the lunatic figure of a kingkong wraithed in moth-tattered robes, thrusting stubby fingers up, up, towards the imagined chemtrails of poisonous radiation-dipped seagulls. Lis…

1
Epidose 15 - A Curse of Pinks

8y ago

—

A score of tortoise-shells are piled before the prince. Sand and salt spray lift from the waves, whip across the face, form a crust around the eyes and ears. Thunder rolls across the ocean; a watercolour painted in grey. Listen Now. Perform the incrustation, and you'll unleash these mighty molluscs: Harry Cox - What Will Become Of England? Pigeonhe…

1
Epidose 14 - Pongo and Engeco

8y ago

—

Brexit came, and Turner the Worm was sick all over Donald Trump's face. "The conjunction of symbols at the vertex of chance is what the classical scholars called synchronicity." Yijing and yarrow float nebulously overhead and every course plotted seems full of ominous foreboding. Why needs must you tread on the tiger's tail? Listen Now. £0.10 for a…

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PROGRAM 36: LOST EPISODE #2, GOODBYE TO KEVIN AYERS [02.21.13]

10+ y ago

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There were atrocious sound problems with this show, and much of it had to be completely reconstructed from the library. The only unaffected parts were the mic sets, and I found those especially obnoxious after the fact (they haven't aged well either). Apologies to any Kevin Ayers fans for marring a tribute to the man with my amateurism. One note: t…

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PROGRAM 35: LOST EPISODE #1, A GRAND MESS [02.07.13]

10+ y ago

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For some reason I was unhappy with this program and never assembled it into a podcast. Probably because it's a disorganized, unplanned mess. Enjoy! Download | Podcast Bold text indicates relatively new releases (including reissues and comps). Ras Kommanda - "What is the Price?" Grouse sounds like he's throwing in the towel. The Mar-Keys - "Bush Bas…

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PROGRAM 39: AM I TOO LATE FOR RECORD STORE DAY? [05.02.13]

11+ y ago

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Or as we old birds call it: eBay Eve! paDOW! (I'm pretty sure I'm stealing that joke from someone, possibly even a music writer I've met. Lars? Christopher R.W.?) Grouse is low on planning time these days, so we get to hear that tried and true lazy DJ mainstay: the Let's Listen to Records I Just Bought But Haven't Listened To! show. It's a talky sh…

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