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CARIBBEAN FESTIVALS: Cayman allure, plus all that jazz

BY ERIC MARX | Special to Newsday

February 26, 2006

The Caribbean, faithful cure for the winter blues, has rarely looked more alluring than it does now. Who wouldn't rather be sprawled out on a sun-drenched beach, drink in hand?

Still, you may want to put off that vacation a few months. Considerable off-peak season discounts will soon abound, for sure, but so will culturally enriching music festivals.

Charting that course, however, may prove challenging. For one thing, the Caribbean basin covers a vast area that includes thousands of islands stretching from Bermuda in the north to Venezuela in the south, Barbados in the east, and Costa Rica in the west. Moreover, it's a part of the world where cultures have been brought together into hybrid and mixed societies, said Jacob Edgar, an ethnomusicologist who heads Putumayo World Music label's artist development department.

Mix of musical styles

At the heart of the music is the Colonial-era slave experience and its intersection of African rhythms with European cultures. The result, Edgar said, was some distinctly different styles: calypso and soca from Trinidad; son, mambo and salsa from Cuba; merengue and bachata from the Dominican Republic; ska and reggae from Jamaica; cumbia and vallenato from Colombia; beguine and zouk from Martinique; compas from Haiti; punta from Belize; kaseko from Suriname; and many others. Gradually, many of these styles found success outside the region, with salsa, merengue and reggae becoming popular the world over.

Still, local and regional artists are typically not well known to American mainlanders. International recording artists usually headline these festivals, as was the case recently at the second annual Cayman JazzFest (www.caymanislands.ky/Jazz Fest), where George Duke, Al Jarreau, Najee and Ravi Coltrane were some of the first-rate performers.

One can be forgiven for not immediately associating jazz with the Cayman Islands, a British Dependent Territory established by runaway slaves, seafarers and pirates. World-class scuba diving and a booming off-shore banking industry are probably what come to mind. Nevertheless, Caymanian reggae, steel drum and kitchen band music are all popular and, when blended together with well-known jazz artists, make for a remarkable celebration.

The most recent Cayman festival offered both elegant late-night performances at an indoor concert hall and outdoor soundstage revelry amid a backdrop of deep blue waters and glowing sunshine. Concertgoers feasted on conch salad, turtle stew and jerk chicken. Some mingled alongside craft stalls, while others danced to the laid-back rhythms of local bands performing on a side stage.

An estimated 2,000 people attended the three-day festival in December, according to Shomari Scott, a promotion manager with the islands'tourism department. Although this was a small number compared with more established festivals in the Caribbean, Scott was quite pleased with the turnout, given feedback from island hotels indicating a significant increase in bookings.

Jazz every year

"We're definitely going forward with the jazz festival every year," Scott said. "It's going to be an annual event."

It's this success in filling rooms that often drives these events, but so is the recognition that music-fest tourism constitutes more than marketing gimmickry.

One of the more successful happenings is the St. Lucia Jazz Festival, which spreads itself out among a number of free venues throughout the island and encompasses both straight-ahead jazz and smooth jazz as well as fusion and rhythm and blues. In addition to those from the Caribbean and United States, acts from Africa, Latin America and Europe come to the May festival.

Giving locals a stake

But the St. Lucia festival's most significant achievement, Scott said, has been its success at providing an opportunity for local musicians.

"We want the locals to own it as well," said Scott of the Cayman festival, pointing to this year's inclusion of local bands.

Still, accomplishing that goal may prove elusive, as Cayman culture is not nearly as identifiable as it once was. For one thing, population figures have more than doubled in the past 10 years, and it appears that immigrants are mainly from the United States, the United Kingdom and Jamaica.

"People have imported their cultural celebrations and superimposed them on Caymans," said Samuel Rose, a violin player with Swanky, a local kitchen band that performed at the festival.

"It's easy to go to Cayman and say there's not much culture here," agreed Paxton Baker, an executive vice president of BET Jazz, a co-producer of the Cayman and St. Lucia jazz festivals. "You just have to be open to it."

Baker likened the Cayman Islands music festival to St. Lucia's, which, he said, gained its following only after music clinics were established and musicians were supported with production deals.

If there is a model to this, it's that you have to have patience, Baker said. "We helped build that music scene [in St. Lucia]," he added, "and that's our goal with Cayman."