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To the Eyes of Creation
Courtney Pine
Island through Phonogram
Available on CD and cassette

Hush and Listen
London Community Gospel Choir
Permanent Records through Festival
Available on CD and cassette
Reviewed by Norm Dixon

Britain is experiencing a powerful black youth radicalisation in response to racism, police harassment, unemployment and urban decay. Black youth are rediscovering and exploring their heritage and history, and demanding their rights.

An important expression of this black pride and consciousness is the many young musicians striving to create a cultural identity that draws from both the African Caribbean and Asian heritages of the black community and their British (or Scottish) nationality.

Last June, I was lucky enough to encounter this inspiring mood among black youth first-hand when I attended the African National Congress' 80th anniversary celebration in Brixton. Thousands of black youth were there not just to see and hear their favourite performers but to support the South African people's struggle for freedom.

The locals on the bill included the feminist rappers Cookie Crew; Apache Indian — born in Handsworth, Birmingham, of Sikh Punjabi parents — who performed "bhangra", a mix of Asian dance music and Caribbean reggae and ragga; Haji-Mike, a multilingual ragga-influenced rapper from Cyprus via London; and dub poet veteran and Brixton legend Linton Kwesi Johnson.

But the biggest cheer, other than for ANC deputy president Walter Sisulu and Tracy Chapman, went to jazz saxophone whiz-kid Courtney Pine.

Born in Westbourne Grove, West London, in March 1964 to parents recently arrived from Kingston, Jamaica, Pine discovered jazz only when he was 16 while playing saxophone in reggae and funk bands. It was not the watered down museum "jazz" of the English

scene that he discovered but real jazz, black jazz. It was a revelation.

"I'd been brought up with calypso, ska, reggae ...", Pine told Down Beat magazine, "but I wanted to get into jazz". So he bought the best looking jazz album cover he could find — African American sax genius Sonny Rollins decked out like a cowboy on Way Out West!

It blew him away. "If I'd heard Charlie Parker first, I might have felt alienated. But Sonny Rollins was playing something I could understand: calypso! That sucked me into the music completely."

Pine began a crusade to reintroduce this jazz to black Britain. It was an uphill battle. Second generation African Caribbean youth saw jazz as the music of washed-out old white men wearing straw hats and striped waistcoats playing dixieland. "I decided I'd break that stereotype — we had to educate black people about jazz, and tell people where it's from", he told Britain's Jazz Express.

He set out to forge a "black British style" of jazz and to explain that it wasn't what the English jazz establishment had reduced it to. Jazz "takes eight hours a day for years to learn ... and has a tradition way back into Africa", he told the British Guardian newspaper.

In the early '80s, he formed Abibi Jazz Arts, a London workshop designed to develop that "black British style". Young reggae and funk players attracted to Pine's vision found their way to his door. Soon the Jazz Warriors, a big cooperative all-black band, emerged and an excellent album was released.

Since 1986, with six albums — beginning with Journey to the Urge Within and culminating with To the Eyes of Creation — Pine and a generation of black artists have rediscovered the black roots of jazz and enriched it with contributions from their own varied cultural heritages. His music has reflected also the broader search for identity and pride of black British youth.

Brilliant new artists have followed in Pine's wake:

vibraphone player Orphy Robinson, pianists Julian Joseph and South African exile Bheki Mseleku, drummer Mark Mondesir, tenor saxophonist Jean Toussaint and guitarist Ronny Jordan. The new black presence in, and pride for, jazz quickly influenced other music styles, setting the stage for the "acid jazz" dance music phenomenon.

Pine describes the music that he and his contemporaries have evolved as a "a fusion ... of African, West Indian, European styles, with a book cover of American jazz — Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter and Coltrane". He told Down Beat that the music of Jamaica, Africa and India crowds his thoughts because "we're exposed to all kinds of music in England at a very early age".

Courtney Pine's latest album, To the Eyes of Creation, is a passionate and intelligent climax to his work so far. It pays homage to black Britain's debt to the African diaspora. It gives his restless young fans directions in their search for black pride and identity.

The album is such a powerful statement due to tragic circumstances. Just prior to recording in 1991, Pine's daughter died. "I dedicated the album to my daughter, not 'my daughter who died'. I didn't want it to be about death but about life — and to me that means a positive image of my culture. That focused the album. I knew I wanted people to hear what it means to be an African West Indian European."

The album is also dedicated to many other people and ideas, including Marcus Garvey; the African presence in early Asia; Charlie Parker; the religions of Africa; John Coltrane; the history of the Yorubas; Afrocentricity and knowledge; Bob Marley; Africa, mother of Western civilisation; and, most significantly, Joe Harriot, the Jamaican-born jazz genius who lived and performed in Britain until his premature death in 1973, only to be ignored and forgotten by Britain's jazz establishment. He is now revered by the British jazz's young lions.

Creation's 13 tracks deftly weave together be bop, free jazz, reggae and ska, African and Eastern influences. Pine's soprano lines are brilliant. His

tenor playing, though, is at times a little syrupy. Top track is a wondrous rendition of Marley's "Redemption Song", and there are some spine-

tinglingly free passages a la Coltrane on a couple of tracks. Pine tries his hand, on two tracks, at writing pop songs, both of which fail.

But if you're looking for great pop music — or more accurately soul music — look no further than the London Community Gospel Choir's new album, Hush and Listen. The LCGC also reflects the search for a black British identity, this time in the area of gospel music. The choir began in 1982, drawn from London's black churches.

The aim of the choir is to "project a positive image of black youth in Britain", says choir founder Reverend Bazil Meade, and to develop a black distinctively British gospel sound. "We're a mixture of West Indian, Caribbean and African cultures where the styles of music are reggae, soca and calypso rather than blues, jazz and soul. But we've all listened endlessly to our American brothers, so we've taken much from their style."

Hush and Listen combines a mixture of soul and gospel standards and original numbers. The album blends the power and beauty of choral gospel with fabulous dance and soul grooves.

Included are delicious versions of the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion", Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and Sly Stone's "You Can Make It If You Try". Highlight is a fabulous rendition of the Staple Singers' black pride anthem, "Respect Yourself".