The Shake Keane riff: genius of Vincentian jazz musician
Riff: The Shake Keane Story by Philip Nanton -
Shake Keane is another musical genius, hardly known in his native Caribbean. He died in Norway in 1997, undeservedly unrecognised by most of us, because, like so many of our other impressive artists, musicians, writers and performers of the last century who strutted across the international stage, contributing to the new era of music and entertainment, he lived a life that was hard to keep track of.
I only knew his name because I came across the ground-breaking Joe Harriot Quintet music of the 1960s in a friend’s hot LP collection in London. If you were there almost anytime in the last 50 years and were interested in music, you would know about Harriott, the Jamaica-born alto saxophone player, composer and bandleader who pioneered free jazz with Shake Keane, the band’s virtuoso trumpeter and flugelhorn player whose adventurous improvisation contributed hugely to the waves m
The Shake Keane Story (Part 3)
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This may be a short book, but three enthralling stories are entwined in it. One involves the journey of a visionary modern jazz trumpeter who missed becoming a legend through happenstance, nostalgia for home, racism, and his own roving curiosity. A second vividly describes the eloquence of a rebelliously creative poet who heard the vernacular speech of his birthplace and improvisation in jazz as very similar languages; the third tracks the dreams of a reluctant but idealistic politician whose hopes for steering a cultural change evaporated in government faction-fights on his return to his homeland on the island of St Vincent.
The Shake Keane Story (Part 2) Social Share
The Shake Keane Story provides not only narrative but analyses his poetry, and jazz, paying particular attention to the link between his poetry and jazz. The author describes the political context which Shake seemed to have underestimated or misunderstood. He left St. Vincent one year after Adult Suffrage and was unfamiliar with the development of party politics. His fate as director of culture was sealed because of his relationship with Son Mitchell. Shake knew Mitchell at the Grammar School but they seemed not to have been close friends until they met in England, Mitchell having attended some of his jazz performances and hosted gatherings that linked him with students like John Compton, Oliver Jackman of Barbados who later became a diplomat and which was attended on occasions by CLR James whom the author says was a friend of Mitchell.
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