“Why the hell have I never read the work of this Vincentian poet before?”
So asks Natasha Marks, a reviewer of Shake Keane’s work. I might well have asked that question myself, for until introduced to Keane by Philip Nanton, I, too, had never heard of the Vincentian poet and musician. In many respects, Shake Keane’s story is all too familiar. As Nanton crafts the life of this man, one senses that one is on a trail travelled many times, and yet, it is not quite known. The destination feels like an inevitability, but the byways and switchbacks are the real journey, the true story.
With its starting point in the 1920s in rural St. Vincent, Shake Keane’s story is in many respects familiar without being typical. Born into a family that lives on the edge of poverty but because his father is, at different times, a policeman and an overseer at a plantation, Shake lives in that liminal world of the privileged poor. Authority inheres in both positions his father enjoys, and with it would have come a certain deference from the villagers. Thus, early on, develops that sense of difference and privilege. This is compounded by the musicality of the family, a feature that also sets young Shake apart.
It is this sense of difference, of being apart from, that is so much a part of the Shake Keane story. It is not always for the better, but that sense of self, as much as his poetic and musical talents, separates him from the ordinary and justifies the biography. Nanton describes, but does not emphasize, how the young Shake had to work, as did each member of the family, to sustain the household. This early direction of a young child’s efforts to structured work, even while it sustains the family, can often lead to conflicting instincts in later life. One often sees both discipline and lassitude later displayed. This is certainly true of Keane.
The iron will of his father directs the boy’s efforts towards perfecting his skill with the trumpet, and this later leads to Shake pursuing the complicated “structures” of free form jazz. His father’s will also creates a man who seeks freedom from restraint, who lives the life of the charming vagabond. Again, free form jazz, with its tension between freedom and structure, becomes the perfect outlet for Shake, resolving the many tensions inherent in his contradictory impulses.
His scholarship, particularly the emphasis on the classics, is also familiar, as is the all but inevitable departure from the island for Great Britain. Keane arrives in England at a time of great change. The Second World War had been won seven years earlier, but the repercussions of that war were still very much present when Shake lands in London in 1952. The war had been the death knell of Edwardian England, and nothing symbolized that more than the presence of the black West Indians in the midst of white Englishmen.
Again, though, the familiar, the expected, is frustrated. At this point in the traditional West Indian story, the nostalgia of the home-leaving is replaced by the depiction of the virulent racism that consumes English society. This frequently culminates in the Notting Hill riots and some scathing comment about English society.
Shake’s story betrays that trope. He, too, is alienated, but it is not an alienation based on race. Rather, it proceeds from artistic difference. Later, in Brooklyn, Shake would comment on his friends in Tiffany’s Lounge, indicating that while friendly with them, there was a clear cultural separation. This is also not based on race but on a conflict of sensibilities. Race, surprisingly, plays no part in Shake’s evaluation of his circumstances. Interestingly, others ascribe racial causes to his lack of recognition, but he does not. Whether this is willful blindness or a rare honesty, it is difficult to tell.
For Nanton, the return of the emigre is the central moral of the story. This is possibly because Nanton is himself an emigre more than once. Like Shake, who was his friend, Nanton emigrates to England. The product of a creole, upper middle-class family, his pursuits in England are more conventional, university, white-collar jobs, and so on. What Nanton shares with Shake is the profound sense of alienation from the society that produced him, and this becomes eminently clear in the middle section of the book when Shake returns to St. Vincent at the invitation of the Premier.
This should have been the crowning glory, the triumphant return of the conquering hero, recognized for his triumph in the bigger ponds of England and Europe. By then, Shake, as a member of the Joe Harriott Quintet and, later, the Kurt Edelhagen Orchestra, had made a name for himself as both a preeminent exponent of free form jazz and a brilliant flugelhorn and trumpet soloist. The invitation to return home ought to have been the honor accorded to the hero returning from a conquering campaign.
Alas, this was not to be. Art loses to politics as he is shunted aside by a new government within two years of his return. Nanton clearly sees in this a betrayal of the man and the art, and one senses a barely suppressed anger in the writing at this point. The slow decay of Shake’s art raises more profound questions about the society itself. Shake had left for England with lots of hope and, to a limited extent, that hope had been justified. He had won. He returned to St. Vincent equally hopeful, but those hopes were to be dashed. A new, more permanent and destructive alienation would begin.
He returns to teaching, and while there is satisfaction in his work with children, one senses in Nanton’s narrative the great gulf between the man that could have been and the man that is. That gulf, between the material and the spiritual, is the bridge too far. Material success had not come in England or Europe, but recognition had. For the materialist, this may not be enough, but for the idealist, it is often more than enough. The ability to test the bounds of one’s artistic gifts becomes a goal in itself. No wonder so many musicians starve but live happy lives. As Nanton points out, musicians, the artists, have work as their play and play as their work. In small societies like St. Vincent, though it is hardly alone in this, every form of the artist’s aspirations is frustrated. He makes no money, creates little art and gains no recognition. It is so with Shake. Predictably, he leaves St. Vincent, seeking the indefinable in the United States.
There are few developed countries as cruel to the poor as the United States. With its Puritan notions of hard work and success going hand in hand with the blessings of a purportedly benign, but authoritarian, God, material failure is a sign of God’s disfavor. To fail in the United States is to be cast out, as Shake finds out.
And yet, with the gradual decline of his trumpet-playing skills, both as a result of playing less complicated music and having his teeth knocked out when he is mugged in the hard streets of Brooklyn, his poetry blooms. It is here that Nanton does some of his finest writing. If the commentary early in the book depends on other musicians or music critics’ commentary to locate Shake in the reader’s mind and in the musical pantheon, Nanton is clearly at ease in the analysis of the literary work. There is an almost tactile quality to the writing as he works his way through Shake’s thoughts, but more importantly, his words.
What emerges is a deep thinker whose abiding concern is with humans’ place in the universe. When Shake speaks in his own voice, whether in interviews or through his pen, one is almost surprised at the cogency and profundity of his thought. This is largely because the first sections of the book emphasize his music, not his philosophy. One is, therefore, transported to another realm of being when Nanton introduces Shake the thinker. Here is a man who had thought deeply about the human condition, and, in particular, the condition of men and women in the Caribbean. To that end, we discover that the young Caribbean regionalist has become, in his later years, a nationalist, although with a very small “n”. The traditional religionist becomes something of an animist, certainly in his belief in the power of nature to shape the human condition.
Shake dies in Europe after refusing to return to St. Vincent. The story ends in alienation, though his ashes, after he is cremated, are returned to his country of birth. He dies dependent on Erik Bye, a white Norwegian friend, far away from what one would ordinarily think of as loving surroundings. And yet, one senses that he dies loved.
At the ceremony in St. Vincent recognizing Shake, Nanton calls him a hero and is quickly, if discreetly, corrected by a government official, who points out that the designation is an official one, granted by the government. One can only marvel at the pettiness of that comment which would be ironic were it not tragic. But was Shake a hero? Nanton certainly wants him to be. Friends are often conflicted biographers because their sympathy to the friend’s faults can result in lopsided pictures of the one written about.
Nanton mentions, but does not elaborate on, Shake’s failings. Ultimately, Shake is not a financial or an artistic success, if by that one means critical recognition for his work. There are occasional references to Shake both as poet and musician, and those references are favourable, but there are too few to say that Shake triumphed. Similarly, Shake’s irresponsibility as father and husband are glossed over, passing reference being made to wives and children who function as simply adjuncts to Shake’s life.
Nanton’s silence is, I fear, almost a tacit acceptance, though not an endorsement, of Shake’s fecklessness. Perhaps it results from the latitude we grant the truly talented. Shake’s alcoholism and his violence to wife and children are hinted at but not explored. His inability to make life work, though he seemed to have had opportunities, is also handled rather tangentially. Ultimately, then, there is a more complicated figure hidden behind the character depicted in the biography.
This is Nanton’s most accessible book. His storytelling is impeccable here, unlike in earlier works where it is only hinted at. There is a through line to the narrative of RIFF that is unerring and true. Whatever the blind spots, Nanton weaves a compelling tale of an almost tragic figure. Shake is not tragic for one simple reason: neither he nor Nanton allow him to be. Even in the end, when skill and health had deserted him, Shake manages an ironic laugh, saying to Erik Bye, “When you’re dead, you’re famous.” How very true.