TIME by ANTHONY JOSEPH

Few contemporary poets teach creative writing at the University of London while, at the same time, bowling over large audiences at festivals around the world. Anthony Joseph has also published four volumes of poetry and a novel, and is currently working towards a doctorate. As if all this weren’t enough, he is releasing his fifth album, the result of a true meeting of artistic minds, with the New York based bassist and singer Meshell Ndegeocello.“Time will tell”, Bob Marley sang, convinced that time would in the end always deliver its impartial verdict. Like the Rasta prophet, Anthony Joseph sports the kindly smile of those to whom time has rendered justice. Born in Port of Spain, raised by his grandparents, he arrived in London in 1989 with a single suitcase. He has since become one of the most fascinating black authors of his generation. Few contemporary poets teach creative writing at the University of London while, at the same time, bowling over large audiences at festivals around the world. Anthony has also published four volumes of poetry and a novel, and is currently working towards a doctorate. He recently completed a biography of Lord Kitchener, an icon of 20th century Trinidadian calypso, which will become the basis for a BBC documentary in 2014. As if all this weren’t enough, he is releasing his fifth album, the result of a true meeting of artistic minds, with the New York based bassist and singer Meshell Ndegeocello, appropriately titled “Time”. Five days working together at the Question de Son studios in Paris was all it took to record the eleven tracks on a disc that spins like a richly coloured kaleidoscope. Meshell Ndegeocello’s arrangements at times hint at Jazz and psychedelia. At other times she produces an intense rock atmosphere, or even an irresistible funk flavour à la Sly Stone, for example on “Tamarind”. For “Kezi”, Anthony asked Meshell to draw inspiration from rapso, a mix of rap and calypso that is all the rage in Trinidad these days. In addition to Meshell herself on bass and Sylvester Earl Harvin on drums, listeners will appreciate the feeling and dexterity in Antillean percussionist Roger Raspail’s playing (who has performed with a number of giants in Caribbean Jazz and beyond), as well as the voicing of flautist Magic Malick, who shines on “Alice Of The River”, among other tracks. This acoustic galaxy revolves around Anthony Joseph’s radiant poetry. On his last album, he sang on a few tracks, such as “She is the Sea”, but here he prefers to let his words take centre stage. “Meshell told me, “Let’s make a real poetry album!” So, except for a couple tracks, I didn’t really adapt my poems the way I normally do, for example, by repeating some sentences to turn them into choruses. I just wrote poems”. A true hymn to joy (“Joy”) gives way to the sombre tale of an infamous Trinidadian hustler and self-styled black revolutionary, played out against a hypnotic drumbeat (“Michael X.”). His poems are filled with women: heroines, resistance fighters, mothers judged and shamed by crowds, suicidal wives, such as “Alice Of The River”. The most famous is of course Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani teenager attacked by the Taliban, whose story inspired Anthony to write “Girl With A Grenade”, long before she was nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. For this and many other reasons, the album seems very specific to this moment in time, while retaining a timeless quality. “Time” should go a long way towards engraving Anthony Joseph’s name in the history books of great black music. As Marley sang, “Time will tell.”