Dominica’s Shades of Green, bring The Jazz to light

DOMINICA

Catching up on The Jazz in most Caribbean festivals nowadays can be quite the juggling act. Either it is buried somewhere in the middle of the roster or the bands are “disposed” of at the top of the schedule before the fans start showing up in earnest. To be fair, so to the modern and indigenous dance troupes and the “Dub Poets” at Creole in the Park, Commonwealth of Dominica in the week leading up to the World Creole Music Festival.

A tidbit of Jazz was slipped into the four-day event between midday and 05:00 pm on October 25, 2011.  The lucky souls were Shades of Green, a Dominican band which has been part of the Jazz revival in the Nature Isle.

I got to the Botanic Gardens ahead of time not to miss the performance of this band, which I had only heard about but never seen live, braving the inclement weather and the muddy conditions resulting from days of torrential showers.

Fortunately, on this particular afternoon, the umbrellas could well have been left tied up or bagged as Shades, dressed all in black, broke through the murmur with a mind-awakening piece drenched, not in rain, but in Mazouk. Great! After all, it was Independence time and everyone was expected to eat creole, talk creole, dress up in madras, dance the quadrille and bélé, tell the unbelievably tall tales in the ‘kont‘ tradition, listen to and play recorded Jing ping music, Cadence-lypso and Bouyon music…and, yes, take in The Jazz spiced up with creole rhythms.

I am being carried away here…

Quanti Bomani

That opening song was all the creole Jazz Shades of Green would play.  They quickly turned to what they are probably most comfortable doing, Smooth-Jazz. But theirs was less clichéd than expected mainly because of the addition of rock guitar and the straight-ahead tenor saxophone of fleeting guest, Yusufu Quanti Bomani, the Dominican Jazz troubadour visiting from the US.

Still in this edgy vein, Shades presented a curious composition called “Arise,” a composition with a funky back beat, bridged by Salsa and Latin sensibilities underneath a lead guitar reminiscent of Carlos Santana.

The band cooled down the pressure by bringing on the wonderful Tiffany to do my one-time radio theme song, “Smooth Operator” and “Route 66.”

To close, Shades of Green completely transformed “My Favorite Things” into a Jump-Blues romp setting the stage beautifully for the rest of the Creole in the Park acts to follow.