Etienne Charles: Joy and sorrow

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The longest days of summer, a nationally acclaimed new album, a long-deferred homecoming and sudden, unexpected loss — Etienne Charles has a lot to celebrate and solemnize in his East Lansing Summer Solstice Jazz Festival set Friday.

But he’s up to it. For all its melody and dance appeal, his music rides the circle of life and death, through history and in the moment, for dear life.

“Carnival: Sound of a People,” Charles’ buoyant new CD, calls to life the colorful characters and harrowing history of the trumpeter’s native Trinidad and Tobago. The variegated, vibrant musical canvas has earned Charles major press coverage nationwide, but until now, the “Carnival” experience hasn’t been unleashed in East Lansing.

“It’s the first time I’m getting to bring my full traveling group to East Lansing, ever, and I’ve been here for 10 years,” Charles said. “It means a lot to me to come here and present this music, because it’s profound — the record took a lot out of me, in terms of time, research and resources.”

The band features Godwin Louis on alto sax, Brett Williams on piano, Alex Wintz on guitar, Barry Stephenson on bass and Savannah Harris on drums.

A 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship gave Charles the opportunity for a deep dive into the history, symbolism, feel and sound of the Trinidad & Tobago Carnival.

But “Carnival” is no academic museum piece.

A rich fuel feeds this fire. Torching the dry tinder of war, slavery and oppression into glowing, all-night embers of rhythm and song is what a lot of black music is all about, and may be what all music is about.

“The sound of the ancestors really comes through on the album,” Charles said. “There’s so many people, like 60 people, on the record. We just have fun paying this shit.”

The musicianship is so crisp, the grooves so strong, the energy so bright, it’s easy to lose sight of the dark impulses that drive many of the tunes. How do you tell the fighting from the dancing, the cry from the song? Is Charles trying to drown you in molasses?

“It’s got darkness, but it’s got a lot of light,” Charles said. “When we play it live, it breathes a lot of light into the stories.”

In a full-page story on Charles March 21, New York Times critic Giovanni Russonello called “Carnival” Charles’ “most invigorating record yet.” The record, and the live shows, have energized audiences across the country.

“We’ve been playing this ‘Carnival’ music since November, when we had our first gig in Toronto,” Charles said. “It evolves every night. It grows, it gets thicker you get more colors out of it.”

Some of the concerts, including a Lincoln Center gig, used costumed performers and videos of Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival, with its ritualized fights and re-creations of life before emancipation from slavery.

“Carnival was born out of conflict,” Charles said. “The British had problems with aspects of Carnival, the stick fights, and they sent the police to try to suppress it.”

When skin drums were banned, the musicians resorted to bamboo and steel pans, Charles called it “the audacity of the Creole imagination.”

At most gigs, the group throws a couple of calypsos into the set. “People get up and dance,” he said. “We get a conga line going by the end of the show. That’s what Carnival is all about.”

In the midst of all this “Carnival” chaos, Charles became the newest member of the foremost super-group in jazz, the SF Jazz Collective.

“Last year was completely insane,” he said. “I got thrown into the deep end of this crazy octet and I had to step up to the plate.”

The collective spent three weeks rehearsing original arrangements by each member. Charles contributed two arrangements of music by Antonio Carlos Jobim.

“It’s the first time they’ve celebrated a non-American composer,” Charles said.

The SF collective went on a tear through Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany, with a grand finale in Hamburg’s new “Elphi” (Elbphilharmonie), the most spectacular and advanced new concert hall in the world.

Back home, the collective honored Chucho Valdez at a gala in San Francisco.

“It was crazy, Nancy Pelosi was in the house,” Charles said. “It was right after the whole Trump thing.” (He didn’t say which Trump thing.) Next year, the collective will dive into the music of Sly Stone and Miles Davis.

Meanwhile, the “Carnival” ride isn’t showing signs of stopping.

For Charles, playing the Summer Solstice festival is a convergence of several joyful and sorrowful milestones.

Juneteenth, the celebration of emancipation from slavery, is very much on his mind.

“We have a song on the album called ‘Freedom’ which is directly about commemorating the emancipation from slavery,” Charles said. “Carnival is about the solemn remembrance, not only of African enslavement in the Caribbean, but also the emancipation from it. It’s the joy and the sorrow together.”

Charles plans to dedicate the performance to Lansing-born drummer Lawrence Leathers, who cut a deep swath in the jazz scene before he was killed in New York earlier this month at age 37.

“Every time we celebrate a year, a new season, a new carnival, a new holiday — like Christmas or whatever it might be — we also commemorate those who have passed,” Charles said. “When we play Friday, we’re going to be celebrating Lawrence and his life, and mourn the tragic circumstances of his death. It’s the same thing. It’s just a continuum.”

Charles is also thinking of two musicians very dear to him who are no longer around to see the longest days of 2019. Roy Hargrove, a former bandmate and friend of Rodney Whitaker’s, and a trumpeter much admired by Charles, died at 49 last November. The jazz world still feels the loss of composer and percussionist Ralph McDonald, whose spirit spanned the jazz, pop and calypso worlds.

“We’re going to celebrate Roy Hargrove. We’re going to celebrate Ralph McDonald. We’re going to celebrate all the ancestors,” Charles said. “For me, it’s a big circle.”

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