Philip Nanton: Riff. The Shake Keane Story
157 pages / Papillote Press, 2021 / ISBN-13 : 978-1999776893
John Stevenson hat das Buch für AllAboutJazz rezensiert:
Nanton astutely traces his evolution from a child growing up in the early 20th Century post-slavery West Indian milieu of his day, to a budding and published poet-musician. We learn about Keane the freelance African-Caribbean BBC broadcaster and University of London student who fails to complete his studies. We glean an understanding of Keane the estranged husband and absent father. The reader also gets a firm grasp of an intellectual whose exploits in cultural leadership and local politics come to an abrupt end on his return to St Vincent after two decades in England.
Indeed, Nanton’s portrayal of Keane reveals an artist whose life is characterised by serially thwarted ambitions and misfortunes.
Jazz connoisseurs will doubtless appreciate the meticulous detail with which the author has explored Shake Keane’s jazz and poetic nous. Already an established poet when he arrived in London in 1952, the larger than life Keane authored L’Oubli, his first self-published collection of poems in 1950. This was followed by Ixion (1952), One a Week With Water and The Volcano Suite (1979) and Palm and Octopus (1994). Nanton’s chapters and appendices provide ample examples of Keane’s poetry, shining a bright light on his adept deployment of jazz meters, puckish wit and acute social observations, often counterbalanced by a wistful quality.
Klingt ziemlich gut!
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #151: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv – 09.04., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba