Spoleto Review: Jazz roared as festival played on

Spoleto's second week rolled out jazz lions Branford Marsalis and Etienne Charles

The 2025 Spoleto Festival USA’s jazz series may have breezed in like a lamb, but by week two, it was roaring on like a lion. New Orleans-born, multi award-winning saxophonist, composer and bandleader Branford Marsalis, along with his longstanding quartet, managed the only sold out performance of the series on Sun., June 1, at Charleston Gaillard Center, on the heels of the recent release of Belonging, their debut album on the Blue Note label.

By all accounts, it was a remarkable concert, what one can anticipate by jazz royalty and eager festival goers. The series only gained momentum with nightly and multiple, simultaneous not-to-be-missed offerings.

Etienne Charles and ‘Gullah Roots’

Anchoring week two of Spoleto Festival’s jazz series was the culmination of a project whose seeds were planted nearly two decades ago, and whose fruit has been lifetimes in the making. Trumpeter and percussionist Etienne Charles was slated to present the Charleston premiere of his Gullah Roots suite on Wednesday, June 4, at the Cistern Yard on the College of Charleston’s campus.

Image: Etienne Charles/Photo byLauren Desberg

Of the 10 performances scheduled at the iconic venue, Charles’s was the only one from the Wells Fargo Jazz Series planned for the live oak tree-framed venue. Dripping with Spanish moss and the abstruse history that makes Charleston heartbreakingly mystical, it was a perfectly poetic setting to bring such a work of art to life.

The weather gods and goddesses thought otherwise, and in a late afternoon decision, the concert was moved one block away to TD Arena. This most certainly could have been a devastating blow, yet Charles and his crew nimbly changed course. Nothing would mar the plan or the music. Etienne Charles and his band were the epochal force of nature.

The Trinidadian-born musician and composer is no stranger to Charleston, and Charleston no stranger to him. He has spent the better part of nearly two decades returning to a familiar place, people, and history, each time leaving his musical mark on the land, departing with another seed buried deep within his being.

Over time, an unwitting and visceral connection was growing between what he instinctively felt and what he studiously knew. This exploration took him beyond the bounds of written history, exposing stories and songs, language and traditions, food and fire that would give rise to the Gullah Geechee culture of the Sea Islands, while offering context for its broader connection throughout the world, especially in relation to his Caribbean homeland of Trinidad.

Charles expertly faced the seemingly impossible challenge of making a 5,100 seat capacity gymnasium feel like an unassuming praise house on a backwoods Lowcountry dirt road. The band sauntered on to the stage, each member in his own swagger and singular style. Bandleader Charles was the last, floating to center stage donning a bold-faced one-shoulder asymmetrical top, accessorized by his signature round frames and headpiece, this time an indigo colored African Igbo cap. What was lacking in ambiance off-stage, the ensemble more than endowed on stage.

The title track off of the album opened the performance. Charles danced his way between ambrosial center stage horn lines with saxophonist Godwin Louis, just as comfortably to the throne of his cajón behind his congas to provide an even more muscular lead to the 8-piece band of instrumentalists. The groove was sublime and Charles cleverly drew the audience in with a gentle, warm tone from his horn, followed by a well-tempered speaking voice between tunes. The thoughtful subtleties were appreciated, providing more intimacy as the material became more somber.

Tears from the heavens

The second selection, “Igbo Landing,” was a moving meditation on the tragic revolt of 73 people jumping en masse from a slave ship to their final resting place in the Atlantic Ocean, choosing their death over a brutal life in an unknown world. “Weeping Time” followed suit, dwindling down to a sextet, paying homage to the 603 captives sold in 1835, in what is known to be the single largest domestic slave auction, having transpired in Charleston. It was between Alex Wintz’s guitar wailing and Charles’s effortless high pitched trumpet screaming that a deluge of rain could be heard on the arena’s roof, falling like tears from the heavens for the separated families and loved ones never to be seen again.

The evening prominently featured venerated hometown hero and Gullah descendent Quentin E. Baxter, with his sweetgrass hat and trademark dreadlocks sprouting from atop. The multi Grammy-winning drummer and producer of another Gullah-inspired project called Ranky Tanky, was not behind his drum kit for this program. Rather, he implored the use of his big drum, tambourine, and other hand percussion. His innate Gullah groove was the interconnective tissue to keep such dense material from feeling stagnant.

Midway through the set, Charles incorporated the Islamic and Malawian influence of the equation into the set, introducing Gnawan musician, Moroccan-born Samir LanGuis, on “Bilal.” On his 3-stringed guembri, he and bassist Russell Hall began a dialogue that lulled the audience into a hypnotic, trance-like state, weaving connections between instruments and worlds. LanGuis added krakebs, a form of castanets, to the mix as well, enhancing the overall West African effect and tastefully filling the space with both Charles and Baxter between percussion and Harvel Nakundi holding court on drums.

The reality of striking the balance between gymnasium and concert hall set in from time to time, unfortunately, as speakers crackled and solos and other intended notable nuances, especially from the monstrously talented pianist Christian Sands, were sadly lost in the mix. What could be heard from the arena’s floor was impeccable and deserved better treatment.

Before the combined performance of the final selection “Watch Night,” Charles asked the crowd to close their eyes and imagine that freedom would come tomorrow. This tradition in the Gullah community falls on New Year’s Eve to commemorate that hopeful night, just before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declaring all enslaved people free.

The short-lived appearance of organist and choir conductor Damien Sneed, joined by Ranky Tanky’s mighty vocalist Quiana Parler, along with the 4-piece choir known as The Wives, filled the venue with a renewed energy. The full 14-piece band converted the TD Arena to a praise house, lifting a roused congregation to its feet. Between syncopated hand clapping and tambourine smacks, washboard scrapes and stage shaking stomps, Charles led the band home, breaking into call and response solos and uninhibited joy that reverberated a people’s resilience throughout the rafters. Freedom Day, indeed.

Immersion realized

If the 2017 commission by neighboring Savannah Music Festival of Charles’s Gullah Roots suite gave way to the birth of the encapsulation of a musical living history of the Gullah people and their unbreakable antecedents, the 49th edition of Spoleto Festival USA gifted the place where its seeds were planted with a fully realized cultural immersion, replete with a Watch Night ring shout.

With the eponymous album’s independent release set for June 20 on his own Culture Shock label, Etienne Charles has yet again left another musical mark on the Holy City, and now, undoubtedly, well beyond. This voyage deserves extensive contemplation and high praise for honoring not only what and who have come before, but who and what will inform what will come to be. Etienne Charles leaves the Lowcountry with the respect and blessing of a community and people who can lionize their rightful distinction, rooted in past, present, and future. May those seeds continue to bear fruit from these Gullah roots.