Certainly not your regular jazz fare, but the menu sure sizzled last Friday night when the visiting jazz quartet, 'Mood Indigo', teamed up with local ace guitarist, Herbie Marshall, on the State House lawns to dish out some mouth-watering soul that left patrons craving for repeaters even as the curtains were about to come down.
Pity there weren't more people there to savour what the plate had to offer, but such was its effect on the aural senses that the President, Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, on whose premises the concert was being held, could not bear being just a casual by-stander.
He came over from 'the House', one might say, almost at a run, just as Joyce Davis, the group's lone vocalist - unless you want to call her husband David's mimicry of jazz legend, Louis Armstrong, singing - was belting out 'The Duke's' spicy 'It Don't Mean a Thing [if you ain't gat that swing]'.
This was followed by the legendary Billie Holiday's 'Lady Sings the Blues' (after which the title movie most Guyanese are familiar with was named), 'Moon Glow' and 'Stormy Weather' in that order.
They call this type of music Traditional American Jazz, or 'standards', according to band-leader, David Davis, whose forte is the trumpet.
A native Chicagoan, like his wife, and veteran broadcast journalist, David, who holds a degree in Music from his hometown's Northwestern University, said at a press conference on the eve of the concert:
"What we play... we call it 'standards'. In the 20s and 30s and 40s and even to today, for that matter, most of the music written and performed is awful. Some of it is really good; and they have survived - things like 'Summertime' and 'Stormy Weather' and 'Blue Skies'; you can name it.
'Kit' Nascimento, who co-hosted the press conference with wife, Gem, and at whose invitation 'Mood Indigo', which takes its name from the 38ft sloop the Davises now call home, made its debut here, made the point that the group's repertoire vastly differed from that which the average Guyanese was accustomed to hearing.
Base guitarist, Russell Durity, who hails from Trinidad and Tobago and who has played with just about every type of band there is imaginable in his 25-odd years in music, said it best when he said:
"This one is different; the music is almost kind of like very disciplined...a very patterned approach to the whole make-up of the music. I've spent 20 years in a band that studied pop music; and it's a different approach. You have two minutes, thirty seconds, to make your point. And if you don't; then it won't sell. This is different; you have a lot more time to express your passion. You even have some time to express your expertise and to be creative...but there is also this cloaking of discipline. So it is a learning experience and it continues to be a learning experience.
Drummer, Winston Matthews, who is also 'Trini', had this to say about Mood Indigo's rigid repertoire:
"At first it was a bit restrictive.... My first 'gig' with 'Mood Indigo' was like... not regular songs. I knew a number of the songs basically; it was the swing 'gig' which I was not really accustomed to playing, but technically I knew how to get around it. And, I had to take every cue from David.
So, for the entire night, playing some 30-odd songs, I had to, like, glue my eyes on David and wait for him to do this... or to stop or whatever. But, all in all, playing jazz is really a discipline. It's like interacting with everyone else on stage and really listening. You know when to play soft; when to play loud. It's easy for us now than it was before. As Russell rightly said, it's a learning process all the time...we keep on learning and we enjoy doing it."
True to Joyce's promise at the briefing, not only to blues her audience to death, but to add a little something from the 'swing' era, which, according to David was in the 40s, the night's programme also comprised such gems as 'Jelly Bean Blues', written some time in the early 20s and made popular by the famed Black American blues singer, Bessie Smith, who died tragically at the age of 43; George Gershwin's 'Summertime'; 'God Bless the Child [that's got it's own],' co-written and sung by Billie Holiday in 1953; the haunting 'St James Infirmary,' which has an air similar to 'House of the Rising Sun' made popular in the late 60s to early 70s by 'Blood, Sweat and Tears'; 'Blues in the Night' which saw our Herbie really 'get down'; 'Fats' Waller's 'Bye Bye Blackbird'; Glen Miller's delightful 'Tuxedo Junction' which we might not have heard but for Joyce's insistence; and the evergreen 'Georgia', written in 1923 by Billie Holiday and company but later made popular by 'the blind genius', Ray Charles.
Explaining the legend behind St. James Infirmary, Joyce, who kept her audience informed throughout the programme, said that in New Orleans, where this song originated, "when you pass away, it's not a sad time. It's a time that you rejoice because you know you're going to a better place. So the coffins are held high. They march through the streets proudly and they sing songs."
The song tells about a woman going to the infirmary to see her man who is ill and not liking at all what she saw. 'So cold! So clean! So bare!' she lamented. His doctor couldn't agree with her more, so back she went to see her 'baby' again, only this time, she found him 'lying there dead.'
In her quest for consolation, she found herself at Old Joe's Barroom 'down on the corner by the square' where the guys 'were having drinks as usual'. Surprisingly, it was Old Joe Mc Kenny, his 'eyes bloodshot red', who gave her the comfort she sought.
'Let him go!' he said. 'Let him go! God bless him wherever he may be! He can search this whole world over, but he'll never find a gal like she.'
Giving a background during the press conference as to how 'Mood Indigo' evolved, Joyce, who has been 'singing the blues' since she was 12 and whose favourite artiste is the troubled but immensely talented Billie Holiday, said it all began with the passion she and David - who, at 76, is 22 years her senior - share for both music and adventure.
Living at the time in New York City and playing with an 18-piece 'swing' band called 'the Fairfield Counts' in neighbouring Connecticut, they just upped and left one day and have never looked back since.
"When we left," Joyce said, "we thought we were going to sail straight to Panama and around the world. We gave up our titles; our homes and everything; set sail; but found out we weren't very good sailors."
It took them all of ten years of traversing the Caribbean to really master the art of sailing, she said, but what a joy it was to have their music to turn to, not only to take the edge off the many close shaves they've had over the years, but to also while away the time as they move from island to island.
That's how they met Herbie a while back, during a hop-over to Barbados with friends on board a catamaran. "We were just there having a nice meal, and this fine gentleman came in. We just did a little 'jam'; I did a little 'Summertime' and he did a little 'blues'. And we said thank you, see you later...exchanged cards and thought we'll never see each other again."
In Trinidad and Tobago alone, where they go every year come hurricane season, she said, they have over 18 musicians they can call upon whenever they happen to be in port. "And we've always added another dimension. We've had a German ambassador play with us who plays the trombone...and this year we had Mungo Kempesar who plays sitar. And all of this is saying that music is international, and it can be shared on one stage and that if we can come together this way, then we will see the sun tomorrow."
The first concert they held, she recalled, was in Grenada. "And we gave it a title...it was called the 'Yachtie Jazz Concert' because when we arrived, we were all cruisers carrying international flags. And we found that most of us who had finished our careers...finished raising our families and set out on our adventure ...had put on our boats things that we never ever felt we have time to do. And the things most people put on their boats were musical instruments, either to learn how to play, or continue to play ....everything from the harmonica to the musical saw."
Since then, Joyce, who like her husband gave up her job as a senior executive to follow her dream, said, they have held concerts on every island they've set foot on as their way of showing their gratitude, on behalf of all cruisers, for having them and opened the stage to locals who are fellow musicians to join them. Thus far they have visited and held concerts in Trinidad and Tobago, their regular stomping ground; Grenada; Barbados; St Lucia; St Vincent and the Grenadines; Saint Maarten/Saint Martin and Curacao.
Now, according to 'Kit', with whom David goes a long way back since the days they were both active members of the International Institute of Communications, the Davises have their sights set on bringing their boat to Guyana and perhaps spending a month or so, preferably up the Essequibo River, since Trinidad and Tobago is not the safe haven it was once felt it was from hurricanes.
They might even bring a yachtie or two with them, 'Kit' said.
Said he: "There is an interest in a number of the yachts people, who are in Trinidad and Tobago, in finding a South American haven to sail their yachts down, particularly during the hurricane season, which is more and more threatening Trinidad and Tobago. Though it hasn't arrived there as yet, there are distinct signs that it will."
But, he said, he and Gem just couldn't wait until the Davises made up their mind about coming to Guyana to wait out the hurricane season before local jazz fans could experience 'Mood Indigo', which is also the name of a hit number that was written back in the 30s by the legendary Duke Ellington.
"We couldn't wait for that; we felt that the music lovers of Guyana deserved to hear 'Mood Indigo'", Kit said.
The proceeds of that concert will go towards hosting the under-18 North American and Caribbean championship finals, billed to run off here early next month.
It will be the first time Guyana has ever hosted a national US sports team, he said.