Friday, December 5: Terrence Howard Asks the Crowd to Marry Him
Yesterday I landed in the midst of the hysteria that is the Cayman Jazz Festival, which, like most Caribbean festivals with “jazz” in their titles, is a mild misnomer: there’s little actual jazz on the lineup, but plenty of blockbuster R&B and soul—all of which, with one or two exceptions, is imported from America. Such outsourcing instinctively irritates: Come all this way—to a region saturated in local talent—to see artists one can just as easily see back in the States?
Irritation dissipated, though, at sight of Terrence Howard onstage last night. He’d started his set with “Love Makes You Beautiful,” off his September debutShine Through It (Sony, 2008). He sat on a stool, gently strumming guitar, sporting a dapper suit and fedora. The track is likeable enough—an R&B-meets-jazz-meets-folk slow jam that, like the album as a whole, goes down smoothly, even a tad too smoothly—but in last night’s setting, it took on an otherworldly vibe. Context is everything, and this was anything but a smoky blues lounge.
The outdoor stage was erected on the grounds of a Caribbean castle of sorts—Pedro St. James, a 19th-century Caymanian landmark—and the waterfront scene had been decked out, from stage to seat, in fluid white fabric and silver beads. Waves lapped the shore. Adding music—let alone Howard’s falsetto-tinged vocals, easy listening in the best sense of the term—to that scene was like adding an aphrodisiac to Viagra.
His ensemble crowded the small stage: percussionists, double bassist, violinist, clarinetist, saxophonist and a backup singer he introduced as Elsie Juber, daughter of Wings guitarist Laurence Juber. “You didn’t pay to see her, but trust me—you paid to see her,” he said, passing her the mic. After Juber strummed a serenely sweet Norah Jones-esque number, she and Howard sang “Sanctuary,” a song they’d co-written about a couple that inspired him: Seal and Heidi Klum, who fell in love while Klum was pregnant with another man’s child.
Ever the actor, Howard plays the role of Blues Man to a tee. He mused on cue, doling out memories galore: A capable cover of Bill Withers’s “Grandma’s Hands” was introduced by stories of his grandmother, who told him, when he moved to New York City to live with her as a teenager, that she’d “whoop his ass” if he didn’t behave.
His teasing intro to “Will You Marry Me?” generated plenty of female sighs. “To that special woman I fell in love with long ago,” he reminisced, launching into praise for a Miss Bethea Christian, onetime Miss Cayman Islands. “Will you marry me?” he crooned, gazing out into the audience. “I said that right on the beach here, in West Bay,” explained the man whose on-again, off-again marriage to Lori McCommas has kept tabloids busy. “Will you say ‘yes’ for her?” “Yes!” came the crowd’s swooning reply.
The night spawned a desire to do one thing. Well, two: Late-night Googling revealed that Miss Bethea Christian was indeed Miss Cayman Islands in 1990 and 1991—but as to her ties with Howard, they couldn’t be verified. Let the Caymanian rumor mill begin.
Terrence Howard performing at the Cayman Island Jazz Fest
Saturday, December 6: Angie Stone's Grinds Slow on 'Theo'
Leave
it to Angie Stone to up the festival’s sexiness ante. This she did
halfway through her seamlessly sultry set last night, ardently
straddling a man onstage and leaving the audience hot, bothered and
hollering for more.
Before that, though, came foreplay. Performing at a
larger venue along Grand Cayman’s Pageant Beach, sporting second-skin
jeans and a glistening silver tunic, Stone kicked off the night with
funk: “Play Wit It,” from her 2007 set The Art of Love and War (Stax, 2007), and “I Wanna Thank Ya,” from 2004’s Stone Love (J
Records). She slowed it down and took it back for “Everyday,” inviting
all ladies to stand up for their “anthem,” before making herself more
comfortable—“what a relief that is,” she sighed, kicking off her
shoes—and dedicating “Makings of You” to the only name that garnered
more applause than hers: “Barack.”
Then the “Got Sexy?” routine began. Stone invited a
“fine brother” to join her onstage—Theo himself: Malcolm Jamal Warner,
who’s lately reinvented himself as a spoken-word artist—and played
along with his routine, which was part poetry, part verbal striptease.
All the moves were in effect: dropping-to-one-knee action, faux-tear
wiping, lyrics galore.
“The other guys are too fatigued/ Really I’m just
too intrigued/ By a life with you,” Warner recited. And then, “I love
for you to torture me”—screams—“with kisses.” More screams. By the time
Stone followed Warner’s command to “lie me down”—she straddled him
front- and backwards, looking plenty comfortable doing so—the rumor
mill was grinding again. “Just for the record—he’s not my boyfriend,”
the songstress insisted.
Post-climax, the show went on. Stone delivered
flawless renditions of “Baby,” her Grammy-nominated duet with Betty
Wright, and “Sometimes,” a movingly honest slow jam off the same album.
The she closed the show by asking “all the kings” to “rise up” for her
hit “Brotha,” and getting the ladies out of their seats for “Wish I
Didn’t Miss You Anymore.” All Stone didn’t provide was a cold shower,
but nature took care of that: Caribbean rain soaked us all.
Angie Stone performs at the Cayman Island Jazz Fest
Sunday, December 7: Robin Thicke's Sex and Romance
Robin Thicke is the kind of sex symbol parents can get behind; with all his seductive blue-eyed-soul swagger, he’s wholesome as a New Kid on the Block. The polished moves he delivers onstage seem manufactured for maximum-strength effect on female fans: gently gyrating hips, swoon-producing falsetto, seductive lifting of the fitted shirt. This last move proved particularly efficient during his set last night, raising the decibel level of female screams to proportions I haven’t heard since, well, the first incarnation of New Kids on the Block.
As a stampede of screaming Caymanians bum-rushed the stage area, Thicke emerged singing “Magic,” the first single off Something Else (Interscope,
2008), followed by “Wanna Love U Girl,” both amplified by a horn
section and a keyboardist doubling as hype man and occasional rapper.
“This is my first time in the Cayman Islands,” Thicke said, taking a
seat at the piano. “Never leave!” the girl behind me called out.
His renditions of “I Need Love” and “Can U Believe” proved that Thicke’s flawless falsetto is hardly studio-generated. When he told us it was “time to get a lil’ sexy” and kicked off “Teach U a Lesson” by breathing into the mic, he gave us sexy, indeed. But canned song intros and cheesy interlude chat—“We in paradise now!” “Put your hands in the sky!”—weren’t so sexy; they make it hard to spy the real person behind the Mister Suave routine.
Exceptional, though, was a passionate performance of the funk tune “Oh Shooter,” from Thicke’s brilliant 2003 debut, A Beautiful World(Interscope). Here he was at his best, because he had to be: Most fans aren’t familiar with the album. A smooth segue into Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry” was unexpectedly spontaneous; Thicke finally seemed genuinely absorbed by—and truly genuine about—what he was doing.
Crowd pleasers capped off the set. The first note of “Lost Without U” was all that was needed; the crowd took over from there. Covers of D’Angelo’s “Brown Sugar” and Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” were smoothly delivered, and the effect was complete: Romance was produced on demand, which is the currency of Caribbean jazz fests, after all.
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