Imershón

Vernon Chatlein is a composer, theatre maker and musician from Curaçao, an island in the region of the Caribbean that was colonised by the Dutch. Having grown up listening to tumba, the island’s Africa-derived, drum-accompanied blues-dance style, he took conga and batá lessons from a Cuban teacher, then learned jazz piano with the Curaçaoan jazz pianist Randal Corsen and eventually, ever curious, took a deep dive into muzik di zumbi, an ethereal Afro-Curaçaoan style played on instruments including flute, gogorobi (rattles) and the benta (bow harp) – which many ethnomusicology books erroneously list as extinct.

It’s the latter self-made instrument with which Chatlein is photographed on the cover of Imershón (Immersion), his third album, and the key that unlocked his academic research into the folklore of Curaçao, aided by knowledgeable elders and an audio archive of Lomax-style field recordings made in the 50s and 60s. Old songs, stories and legends harking back to slavery are given a platform here, presented in ways raw – ‘Heru (Agang)’ honours the musicality in a piece of iron plow via marimba and stomping bamboo – and cross-genre ambitious. The Netherlands-based Chatlein has long collaborated with musicians from the worlds of funk, jazz, Latin jazz and classical; the work song ‘Pakudo’ positions the thin but mesmerising vocals of archive performer Tjodó Juliana alongside the alto sax of New Yorker Godwin Louis, who guests on ‘Mi’n ta Pober’ (I Ain’t Poor), a colonial-era nursery rhyme lent further melodic gravitas by flute, children’s chorus and the powerful voice of beloved Curaçao diva Elia Isenia. An enthralling project.