Following the sadness of a vigil and funeral for departed faithful friend Evaristus Jn Marie on Friday and Saturday and a multi-denominational ecumenical mass at the Minor Basilica on Sunday to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of Saint Lucians earning the Right to Vote in 1951 (when the Kweyol-speaking majority had to be literate in English and own land to qualify to cast a ballot), I ended the weekend with a pleasing outing at Bisee.
It was the 6th anniversary and 4th Awards Ceremony at Entertainment Sounds Productions (ESP), the island’s place-to-go for lovers of Jazz — and anyone wanting to discover just-how-much creative music talent has evolved in Saint Lucia since the start of the 21st Century.
It wasn’t my first time there, but like I said during the awards ceremony, every time is like the first time, as it’s always a totally-new experience listening to and watching Lucian musicians I either never heard of, or from.
This time, I was totally blown away by the number of young performers and how the older ones and the legendary musical elders have been able to coexist, mesh their talents and evolve from past to present – and showing how The Future Is Now.
I’ve been following the growth of Jazz in Saint Lucia from my teenage days, frequenting the home of the late classic pianist (and former Education Minister of the 1970s) Hunter J. Francois, halfway up Morne Du Don in Castries, through to the transition to Luther Francois leading ‘Rasputin & The Mad Monks’ at The Monastery (the former Gaiety Club on Laborie Street), to Emmerson Nurse branching from Morne Du Don to the ‘Night Train’ (resident band at Halcyon Days hotel in Vieux Fort) and production of ‘Night Nurse’ (the cassette and CD they produced).
The veritable music lab at Morne du Don was encapsulated in a cassette by the same name featuring Emmerson, Luther, his late brother Mervyn, their young brother Rickey and the likes of Tony Johnson and other players of instruments way back then.
The jazz bands moved on to Peppino’s Restaurant and other Castries locations, in the process churning out multi-talented musicians who also played with the likes of Boo Hinkson and The Tru Tones.
Back then, steel band music was a once-a-year feature of the annual carnival celebrations and players of the ‘pan’ were looked-down-upon as the society’s dregs.
Fast forward a few decades and the St. Lucia Jazz Festival arrived in the 1980s, starting-off as an exclusive international jazz event until it branched-off into what’s made it today the Caribbean’s notably-awarded best annual Caribbean platform for all types of music.
Then, fast-forward again to the 21st Century and the arrival of ESP in 2020.
Last Sunday featured the most complete mix of home-made music I’ve experienced in the over-five-decades from Morne Du Don to Bisee.
Among my shocks were:
- The multilingual National Combined Schools Choir that delivered 10 songs in English, Kweyol, French and Spanish, conducted by multitalented Robert Renee — the only Caribbean conductor at a recent national concert in Venezuela hosted by the Simon Bolivar National Choir
- Alexius ‘Bongo Light’ Compton, who started ‘playing pan’ with the legendary ‘Scrubb’ outfit in Conway at age 17 and never stopped, delivering several renditions (now aged 66) on two tenor pans at ESP’s ‘Gwen Anba Feuille’ annex
- The young acclaimed and multiple award-winning pannist Omar Gabriel, formerly of the St. Mary’s College (SMC) musical band
- The inimitable nine-year-old Rehani Chitolie, who started lightly pounding his steel pan two years earlier, already with loads of overseas bookings for 2027 in several Caribbean territories
- Mannaseth Edwards – another acclaimed pan-man whose quartet evolved into a quintet and a sextet before our very eyes, featuring his son Joel on a tenor pan accompanying his father after just eight days, playing Lord Kitchener’s ‘Pan in -Minor’ — and a young child-age and adult-minded performer named Isiah, who also played a legendary hit from John Coltrane.
The first award in the second part of that eight-hour night went to Denio Philip, a young multitalented contractor who’d quietly transformed ESP from a one-room space to the double-sided venue it now is — and already working on the soon-to-come ‘ESP Theatre’
The second award went to the B-9 Rock Band and the third to Manager of the Babonneau Steel Band Marilyn Mc Donald, who briefly gave her story, before introducing the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, panman-extraordinaire, Allison Marquis (also labelled as ‘Saint Lucia’s best steel-band arranger’.
Marilyn and Allison both belong to the outstanding Babonneau Steelband outfit that’s won nine national Panorama awards.
The evening concluded with an hours-long performance by a veritable potpourri of old, young and new players of instruments, including the resident Star Seeds family band, featuring Empress Ila and her sons and daughters.
One daughter actually sang alongside her mother, while another played the piano; and her two sons played piano and drums with exquisite demonstrations of resident talent their mother describes as emerging from the boiling volcano below Soufriere’s Sulphur Springs.
I therefore agree with drummer Ricky Francois that: ESP is where you’ll weekly find the true Saint Lucia Jazz unavailable at the annual festival – and his invitation to the festival’s organizers to, on any weekend, discover at ESP local Jazz they would never have imagined, or dreamt of.
But, like I also said that night, nothing we heard and saw was possible without the foundation stone laid by Linton Earl Valmont (with whom I shared the distinct pleasure of being a fellow DJ on the Page 7 Hi-Fi (by-far the island’s loudest and most-powerful of its time), while we together followed the development of Saint Lucia Jazz.
Or, the demonstrable efforts of Empress Ila, heading a family of musicians who are true stars of her seeds.
And the other highlight of the night was that it was Linton’s birthday…