MUSIC

Not content with playing sax with Zen Hussies and Trio Bartoune, Charlotte Ostafew’s latest project, Dakhla, ventures into thumping ‘drum & brass’ territory. Tony Benjamin gets heavy.

Fun-loving baritone sax player Charlotte Ostafew has been a hussy for seven years but it’s something she’s comfortable with. Becoming a (Zen) Hussy launched her as a professional musician and introduced her to the collaborators that would later form Trio Bartoune and Dakhla. Seeing the slightly built Ms Ostafew harnessed to so mighty a piece of kit looks incongruous, but once she’s playing you realise the pair belong together. In her hands the baritone rises far above honking basslines, and hearing her tripping through gypsy jazz classic ‘Dark Eyes’, it’s hard to believe the delicacy she achieves.

Always headed for a musical career, her enthusiasm was nearly extinguished by a good education. Growing up in Glastonbury, she learned classical piano and recorder and in her teens (mainly for the social value) she bought an alto sax and joined the school jazz band. Moving on to the Royal College of Music in 1998, she left all that behind, but despite her success it was not a happy time: “Socially it was awful – so many egos. 90% of them came from public schools.” And after graduation she was glad to resettle in Bath: “London’s great but I needed to see trees and stuff, so I started teaching piano but I didn’t know what else to do musically.” She recalls. “After six months I was missing playing – it had always been my life. I hadn’t touched a sax for four years but I didn’t want to play recorder. I had a terrible alto, a really bad soprano and a reasonable clarinet, and none of them motivated me. Then I remembered taking turns on the baritone in the school jazz band, so I traded all my other instruments for Bart – that’s what I call him – and started to practise. I sounded terrible but I knew it was right.”

After a brief stint in a covers combo (“A great way to learn how to be in a band”), she was invited to replace her trombonist boyfriend who was leaving the Zen Hussies for Babyhead. The band’s blend of light-hearted theatricality and serious musicianship was another good fit for Charlotte, who writes lyrics and sings as well as playing Bart in the six-piece line-up.

The baritone sat comfortably in the Hussies’ pre-war dancehall sound, but when Charlotte joined bass player Tom Allen and guitarist Seb Gutiez to form the acoustic gypsy swing spin-off Trio Bartoune, her distinctive sound began to develop in earnest. “It’s an odd line-up, especially for that manouche (gypsy) music, so it was a challenge. I began by emulating that guitar chuff-chuff thing to play behind Seb and free him up. We don’t do intricately thought-out arrangements – everyone does that, it’s boring – so we just amuse ourselves with the tunes.” That may be haphazard, but the results, as recorded for their eponymous debut CD, sound incredibly organised and smart, and it’s only when you check the credits you realise these classic-sounding European swing tunes are mostly self-composed.

Their latest project allows Charlotte and Bart to really show off. Dakhla is a ‘drum & brass’ quartet inspired by outfits like The Youngblood Brass Band and La Fanfare du Belgistan. The idea evolved from Zen Hussies soundchecks when drummer Matt Brown would hammer out heavy dance beats while Charlotte improvised basslines to suit. Enlisting Zen trumpeter Ben Ransom and alto saxophonist Sophie Stockham last April, the four set out to discover their music. “It’s been very organic – everyone had a different idea, so it’s evolving. We don’t want it to be just musicians’ music – you know doing things with time signatures so people say ‘aren’t they clever’ – but we do like to confuse people, too, if only because we’re confused ourselves. I’m really pleased with the results – so much more than I expected. It makes me really excited!” Early gigs have shown that Dakhla’s massive beatiness and rich brass-blasting melodies have that effect on an audience, too. It’s exhilarating and original – but what kind of music is it? “Well, it’s not just a jazz band – it’s a fusion, but I’m not sure what with. It’s funky but not a funk thing. ‘Heavy’ I like. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

FOR REVIEWS OF ZEN HUSSIES CLICK HERE, HERE AND HERE AND FOR REVIEW OF DAKHLA CLICK HERE
 

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