Shake Keane

Ellsworth McGranahan " Shake" Keane ' (* May 30, 1927 in Kingstown, St Vincent, † November 11, 1997 in Oslo ) was a vince genetic jazz musician (trumpet, flugelhorn), poet and minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Life and work

Keane attended Methodist School and the St Vincent Grammar School in Kingstown and dealt with early literature and theater in school plays, as Shakespeare adaptations. Of which soon became his nickname ' Shake' derived. He then published in St. Vincent two volumes of poems, L' Oubili (1950) and Ixion ( 1952).

In 1952, Keane moved to Britain, where he first found employment at the BBC Radio broadcast in the Caribbean Voices. He read poems and interviewed befriended writers and musicians; next he studied literature. During this time he also began to act as a trumpet player in a London nightclub; while he played the different styles of cabaret music, highlife, soca, mento, calypso and jazz. From 1959 he turned to all the modern jazz and has been for six years a member of the band of alto saxophonist Joe Harriott. Whose group was the first to play an independent free jazz in Europe; Keane was also at Harriotts epochal album Free Form (1960 ) involved. Meanwhile, Keane also worked frequently with jazz pianist Michael Garrick together, even in jazz and poetry projects. He also took some albums under his own name, stylistically unlike his work with Harriott and Garrick, however, were more likely to be assigned to the light jazz.

1965 Keane left the UK and moved to Germany, where he was a soloist in the big band of Kurt Edelhagen and remained until 1971 member of the orchestra. He also played with Charly Antolini ( Soul Beat ), in the Kenny Clarke / Francy Boland Big Band ( Sax No End, 1967) and with Peter Trunk ( Sincerely PT, 1972).

After he left the band in late 1971 Edelhagen he interrupted temporarily his musical career in 1972 and returned back to St. Vincent to accept a government post in his home; to 1972, he served as Executive Director of Culture. After that, he worked primarily as a teacher and continued his literary activity. His main work, the poetry collection One a Week with Water ( 1979 ) won the Cuban poetry Price Casa de las Américas.

In the early 1980s drew Keane to New York and lived in the Brooklyn neighborhood Bedford -Stuyvesant. In 1989, he put his musical career and are reunited with Michael Garrick together, and for a tour in honor of Joe Harriott with old bandmates from the band Harriott, as Coleridge Goode and Bobby Orr. In 1991 he made ​​an appearance in the BBC documentary about the poet Linton Kwesi Johnson Jamaican.

During the 1990s he lived mostly in Brooklyn, but then found a second home in Norway, where he performed frequently, including in various music programs of the Norwegian television. On a tour, he fell ill and died at the age of seventy years in Oslo from stomach cancer.

In 2003, Shake Keane was honored in his home country with a life-size bust, which is located in the Peace Memorial Hall in Kingstown.

Disco Graphical Notes

  • In My Condition (Columbia, 1961)
  • Bossa Negra (Columbia, 1962)
  • That's The Noise ( Decca, 1965)
  • With The Keating Sound ( Decca, 1966)
  • The Big Fat Horn Of Shake Keane ( Decca, 1966)
  • Dig It ( Phase 4, 1968)

Publications

  • L' Oubili (1950)
  • Ixion (1952 )
  • One a Week with Water ( 1979)
  • The Volcano Suite ( 1979)
  • Palm and Octopus ( 1994)

Links / sources

  • Shake Keane at the British Bebop website ( with detailed discography )

Swell

  • Alan Robertson Joe Harriott: Fire in his Soul. Northway Publications, 2003. ISBN 0-9537040-3-3
  • Ekkehard Jost, Europe Jazz 1960-1980. Q.s. Frankfurt, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987
  • Jazz trumpeter
  • Politicians (St. Vincent and the Grenadines)
  • Vincenter
  • Born 1927
  • Died in 1997
  • Man
William Shakespeare Soca music Calypso music Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band
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