Cool......Soul, Steelpan, Reggae, Ambient, Rock 'n' Roll, Dance, Pop, Funk, Afrobeat, Celtic, Baroque, DnB, Rapso, Salsa, Filmi, Soca, Epic, Folk, Surrealist, Gospel, Blues, Jazz, Lyric, Capoeira Angola, MPB, Country, Kaiso, Romantic, Samba....Hop

5 MP3 Songs in this album (16:43) !
Related styles: Pop: Ambient Pop, Jazz: Jazz Vocals, Type: Lo-Fi

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Details:
DAYDREAM

Chanzo Greenidge (Twylight Seven): Vocals, Keyboards and Acoustic Guitar

Delesse Francis: Tubass (Steelpan)
Chris Castagne: Box Bass
Tinika Davis: Congas
Oba Kiteme: Agogô, Pandeiro, Ambient Percussion
Farisai Isi: Vocals
Roger TI: Vocals


Executive Producer: Chanzo Greenidge
Producer/Sound Engineer: Lamar âBeeboâ Pollard
Producer: Oba Kiteme


The Seven Lives of Twylight Seven (Toronto-Trinidad-Manila-Lyon-Rouyn-Noranda-Haiti-Kuwait)

La vie n'est pas simple. Neither is Twylight Seven. My music is me, so here's a bit of my story:

Life 1: Born in Toronto, Canada in late January 1978. My parents returned to their native Trinidad and Tobago with me, their only son, when I was almost 5 years old. They re-settled in the village of Curepe, a place with strong African and Indian influences. Curepe was part village, part metropolis, a frontier between two rich cultures and a large number of religions: Baptist, Hindu, Presbyterian, Catholic, Orisha, Muslim...all with their own musical approaches and aesthetic power.

Life 2: My consciousness growing up was always between North America and the Caribbean. My parents liked Soul and Rhythm and Blues: Roberta Flack, Temptations, Smokey Robinson and Calypso & Soca from around the Caribbean: Brigo, Kitchener, Stalin, Beckett, Gabby, Superblue, David Rudder ... that's what I heard most at home. I was always seeing the great artistes of Calypso, Extempo (freestyle lyrical wars) & Soca at Carnival in Trinidad. This inspired me, and a visit to occupied Grenada around 1984-5, made me political. I started writing in the Calypso format at the age of 10 and my first hard lesson was the value of humorous lyrics if you want to get a serious point across. I grew up in the Catholic Church and at Catholic schools at the time, the foundation of the school day was church music. In Curepe, there was always music in the street - reggae, dancehall, parranda, drumming, Indian classical and filmi music.

There was Mr. Thomas' steelpan factory on the corner. You could basically hear music and interesting sound all day. And at night too. People walked around singing.... Even now, I identify more with Curepe than with the rest of Trinidad. Later, I discovered the city of Port of Spain where I went to a very traditional but also very musical secondary school. Lots of hymns and operettas. During this period, my aunt Miriam started sending me subscription music from Toronto...I was all over the catalogue: Celtic, Motown, Dance, Disco, Rock, Pop, Alternative Hip Hop, Reggae, Classical. Music and dance were an important part of my life but after went to 'town' for school, I stopped singing Calypso, and it became very personal. I wasn't going to music lessons anymore... I just spent hours and hours alone listening, writing and dancing, creating movements and rhythms, improvising. I was also more aware now of the fine art of instrumental arrangement with Jit Samaroo, Clive Bradley, Robert Greenidge (no direct relation), Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, Ken Philmore and Leon "Smooth" Edwards reworking works by master melody makers like Lord Kitchener and David Rudder for 100-member orchestras.

Life 3: In 1994, I returned to Canada to finish high school. Before leaving, my dad give me a lesson I never forgot. We were in the car, and a song by Prince was on the radio. Out of the blue, my Dad said: "People will look at him and criticize his way of dressing etc. .... Chanzo, just forget that and listen to his music ... pay attention to what he's doing."

In Toronto, I began to develop as a writer. I also began to listen to more Hip Hop music, and I was very interested in how the lyrics came together.... I got paired with a classical violinist at St. Michael's College...and what I remember from him and his friends wasn't so much the music, as their attitude, the seriousness of it. It hadn't quite taken me over, but it was right there... I was at the University of Toronto, doing International Relations, but I was also a student of languages. Doing a minor in Spanish, I was reading Spanish Golden Age literature, poetry in Spanish, French, Portuguese ... getting to know people like Ivo, Almeida Garrett, Forjaz Trigueiros, Brel, Alarcón, Neruda. My aunt Joyce had a huge jazz collection and I would be there listening sometimes or in Toronto Metropolitan or some library in Scarborough or Hart House Listening Room at UofT. She would tell me about seeing jazz greats come through when she lived in London... and on my first visit there with her in 1996, I bought my first album of MPB... I paid 20 pounds for a cassette (for me it was a lot of money). I remember most that wet winter cold and that cassette... Digable Planets and Tribe Called Quest were bringing me closer to jazz than ever at this point...and soon after I was also learning about singing with the Gospel Choir of the University of Toronto.

My music moment from that period- I went looking for a friend and he wasn't in his room, but he had the Fugees on.... "Ready or Not" came on as I walked in. I had been listening to Enya as a kid, so when I heard her voice I was intrigued. But when the little effects and then Lauryn's voice came in....I just stood there...for a long while.... I think it was because of that moment that I was at the Virgin store in New York the morning that Lauryn Hill's "Miseducation" album came out. I've never run after an album on its release, before or since. On that same trip, my uncle Erskine gave me a old Gibson folk-acoustic guitar which I now call 'Orange Queen' (it was 'Black Star' then, but the decal came off). No, not all my instruments have names! :)

Life 4: In 1998, with scholarships from University of Toronto, the Ontario government and the African and Caribbean community in Canada, I left Toronto to spend a few months as an intern in the north of Québec and then went to study international relations at Sciences Po in Lyon, France. In Rouyn-Noranda, I had the time to discover myself as a poet, musician. I heard Daniel Bélanger for the first time through a friend: "Folie en Quatre"....

Arriving in France, I began studies in Capoeira Angola, which would be my musical and movement university. In Lyon, I would go to the orchestra by myself. Suisse Romande. I think that is where I realised there was something extraordinary between me and music. I really didn't understand how much I loved it. Sometimes when the orchestra played, and I felt almost possessed by the sound. I literally couldn't move sometimes. It was scary. In Lyon, I made my first real composition, Twilight, for a friend that I had fallen hopelessly in love with (without her knowing, of course). I also went to a Taizé gathering in Italy which was really powerful...the collective chanting was surreal at times. And then I got terribly sick and spent New Year's in serious pain. We were staying with a really nice family, the Vacca. One day, they had the TV or radio on, and the sound of this Italian orator's voice just enveloped me... I think being so ill, I just surrendered to it. The other big thing that year was being introduced to African music, especially Soukous...Papa Wemba etc..., through some of the Congolese and Ivoirian students I was friends with there. That started me on a good path. Spending time with African and Arab youths in France, it led me towards not trying to fit in or be understood as a Canadian anymore. "To thine own self be cool."

Returning to Canada in 1999, I focused on work (at UNICEF Canada), evening courses to finish my degree, Capoeira, starting a business (I registered my translation company BRAVO in June 2000) and sport (besides being a serious capoeira and footballer, I also play basketball, tennis, squash and table tennis).
I was reading mainly Harlem Renaissance stuff at this point, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay....and everything by Maya Angelou. This is when my all-night poetry-writing sessions (always to music) began.

Life 5: Football is my lifelong passion. I returned to Trinidad and Tobago to train with the national Olympic squad (men's football) in late 1999. It didn't go well. I went back to work in Toronto for a while, and then entered the University of the West Indies in September to do my master's and then later a doctoral degree. In Canada, in France I was involved in church, social movements, community work. When I got to the Caribbean, the vibe was so different. The Church in Trinidad turned me off. It was all about colour and status, not about doing anything. With all this, I had to do a lot of soul-searching at that point. Meanwhile, I did my Master's Degree project on the globalization of the steelpan, Trinidad's native musical instrument. By 2001, things just took off... I was more aware of the history of my family and the situation of the African Diaspora in the Americas. I was also learning new languages: Japanese, Mandarin, Yoruba... My doctorate grew out of those interests and concerns, and my writing, especially my poetry, focused as I began to travel the entire continent: USA, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, Venezuela, Brazil, Martinique, Argentina, Jamaica. In this period I was mainly moving between Toronto, Trinidad and then Haiti, where I got married and divorced. It was an intense period. Thanks to RZA, Djavan, Björk and Sizzla for getting me through that time. Happily, my daughter, my "Isobel" about whose birth the track "Marte em Março" was written, was born in Pétionville in early 2004.

Life 6: In 2006, after the death of my father, I began to teach Capoeira, as a way to recover and keep myself going. I started to write and teach Capoeira music, so my understanding deepened. In March 2007, I was invited by a friend Avianne to be part of a group doing acoustic experimental music, which then took on the name Terrenaissance. I wanted to give more visibility to Capoeira and the berimbau, my instrument of choice, which was not very well known or respected. Terrenaissance put me back on the stage and our sound attracted a lot of talented people who helped us improve. Terrenaissance's goal was to create new sound using all of the acoustic music of the Caribbean, drawing on influences in Africa, Asia, Europe and forms that had been developed in the region. "Within this universe of sound, we needed lyrics. I had come on mainly to play the berimbau, but suddenly I had an avenue for all those poems I had been writing ... poems in English, Portuguese, Spanish, French ... it was all there. As a member of Terrenaissance, I started writing more and more. I also began composing on an old steelpan given to me by two of my uncles: David, who helped me plan my path in martial arts, and Gerald, a veteran of the Steelpan movement, one of the pillars of music in the Caribbean with Reggae and Cuban Son.

Life 7: In mid-2008, I finished my doctorate and met the love of my life. For me it was a time of transition and decision-making, and after visiting with my daughter in New York, I decided to go to the Philippines, Manila, where I worked as a visiting professor. I was teaching Capoeira as well and still with Terrenaissance, so I met excellent artistes like Carol Bello and Enrique de Dios who were attached to Miriam College. The social programmes I was involved with, and the great love that Filipinos in general have for music also inspired me. In 2009, I spent a few months with Vanessa in Mahboula, Kuwait where I started working on instruments outside of steelpan and capoeira and learning about Arabic music. She was in a garage band there, and I was a few days in the apartment with the bass, an amplifier and a microphone. I had left Orange Queen in Toronto and hadn't played guitar seriously since I was 9. Just playing around, I began to 'see' melodic forms, very simple relationships ...then to write my ideas ... then to study the theory, and listen even closely to the voices that had guided me since I was child. I debuted my solo act in late 2009 as "Daydream", a set performed at Limited Edition 7 in Trinidad, backed by the Terrenaissance group. Most of the track on this album grew out of the material from that first set. I had always been afraid to transport or even travel with my guitar by air, but it now was time to take a chance....

And there, after so many lives, Twylight Seven was born.

My style, Cool Hop, comes from these different lives and loves, from experiences and sounds in Arabia and Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, North America, from learning the traditions and religions that I was surrounded by as child and since, but it also comes from my constant, poetry, which has helped me understand myself and the worlds around me. And there's probably some football in there too, if you listen closely....

Feel free to visit and join the Twylight Cemya as the story continues: www.facebook.com/twylight7