First Sounds Charles pays tribute to First Nation peoples

These sounds coupled with Creole Christmas will reverberate throughout Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s this Sunday.

Trinidadian trumpeter Charles’ ten-piece “suite” - released in June this year was described by John Stevenson in ejazznews.com as being one of his most ambitious projects to date. The Suite which rose to number two on the Jazz Week Charts would feature as part of the first half of the show on Sunday, the other half would feature Creole Christmas with joint performances by Clarita Rivas, Ernesto Garcia, Stanley Roach and Enrico Camejo. Local songbird Llettesha Sylvester would replace Orange is the New Black star Danielle Brooks, who was originally scheduled to perform along with Charles.

Other performance will come from Alex Wyntz, Brian Hogan, Jonathan Michel, Sullivan Fortner and John Davis.

But for Charles it is important the people attend the show because it gives an opportunity for them to become curious about their history.

Each piece of the Suite tells the story of a geographical space and its people.

In a phone interview, he said, “Each place that we went, were socio-cultural pieces in a sense, where I got to know the people through a cultural perspective.

The piece “Boruca” was born out of the Costa Rican festival Juego de los Diablitos which celebrates/ commemorates the fight against Spanish conquest.

Charles listened to the music of the Boruca, [the indigenous people in Costa Rica] and how they sang in harmony and their rhythms. The adaptation of that song gave rise to the same titled piece, “Boruca”.

In the re-telling of the story of the Californian Bay Muwekma Ohlone tribe whom he described as having a “very dark” historical story, Charles said he created a, “sombre forlorn tone with the music” but then, “move[d] it up to sow hope.” The other San Jose City, San Jose de Oruna later known as St Joseph, Trinidad, tells, musically, of the battle between Nepuyoan warrior Hyarima and his fight against the main Spanish settlement of St Joseph.

“I tried to fuse the idea of the wars, with the current sound of the Spanish and African descendants in San Jose today. I took that and I doubled it. So I waltzed a waltzed,” he said.

In “Revolt”, Charles took the 1837 revolt led by Makandal Daaga in St Joseph and told of his fight against the British with “heavy dark harmonies and heavy drums.” The songs take a run through history.

“Speed City” tells of the black student population of San Jose State University which had a powerful track team in 1968. The team supplied most of the US’ Olympic gold medallists in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and of the movement to de-segregate that Campus.

Each piece building a sound story board of its various peoples and their struggle.

The song “Cahuita” tells of one of the Costa Rican Caribbean Community and their music, calypso.

For Charles this is his way of telling the stories of people others tried to write out of history-in a sense.

He recalled, “When I met with Maureen Campbell the chairperson of the council of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe in California and I said to her what can I do to help and she said I want you to write a song and tell my story, our story, the story of my people.” “By writing a song and having the name of that song be “Muwekma”, it immediately creates a question in the mind of the listener as to what is Muwekma and they might Google or just ask or they might open the CD jacket and it would get them to read about this beautiful people that is living in the California Bay Area and what they have been through.” It is his hope that the show makes people curious about their histories and the histories about other First World peoples.

While tickets sales have been good, Charles hopes it gets better.

He has performed for sold-out audiences in spaces such as Toronto, New York and California.

Noting that “Music is healer”, he encouraged people to come out and be taken on a journey.