BY RICHARD JOHNSON

Observer senior reporter

BAJAN saxophonist Arturo Tappin was fresh from the stage, delivering a masterful performance at A Starry Night one week ago, when he granted the Sunday Observer a quick interview.

Dripping with sweat — his white cotton shirt a second skin — he sits down for the interview, gently placing his calf-length ponytail in his lap and puts his instrument into its case.

Before the interview can even get going we are interrupted not once, but twice by the Jamaican fans, mostly females, who wish to congratulate and take photographs with the celebrated Caribbean hornsman.

“Do you remember performing on the harbour in Canada?” one female fan questions Tappin, as she hugs him for a photo. “That was 10 years ago,” she giggles.

Interruptions out of the way, he apologises, mops beads of sweat from his brow, adjusts his cap, curls what seems to have become his signature moustache and gets set to field our questions.

So what has Arturo Tappin, who has worked with the likes of renowned singer Roberta Flack, Luther Vandross and Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander, been up to?

“I’ve been doing a bit of this and that,” he says, his thick accent comes through strongly. “Touring, the festival circuit. I’m still working with Roberta (Flack) and just completed my latest album, Inside Out.”

Tappin states that the music on his latest project, and his performances in general, represents a mixture of his musical influences. He shies away from calling it jazz, which he claims scares people away. So he prefers to say it is all styles — everything an audience can like sewn together in a specific way.

“It can be music from the 1940s that a grandparent listened to mixed and matched with hip hop, jazz, R&B, soca, and reggae,” he explains.

Always one to pay homage to reggae, Tappin includes heavy doses of the Jamaican sound in his music. He recalls coming to Jamaica in the 1990s in order to get his career going.

“When I started recording music I just knew I had to come to Jamaica. It’s where all the people are, it is the centre of everything and it was then I met Cedella Marley who really helped me get going.”

And has the phenomenal success of his fellow Bajan, pop princess Rihanna done anything for his career?

“It has certainly put Barbados on the map. When I am in Japan and present my passport at the airport, they no longer look at me, like ‘where are you from?’ Instead there is the immediate nod of approval and follow-up question — ‘Do you know Rihanna?'”

Well… does he know her?

“I knew her before she became huge and I am pleased to say, today she is still the same humble, special and polite young girl I first met years ago. Plus we are Combermerians (graduates of Combermere High School in Barbados), so we have lots in common.”

While he is into old school reggae with Beres Hammond being atop his list of favourites, Tappin admits he likes the sound of deejay Mavado. “He has such a rich, soulful voice. You don’t hear that baritone in many current-day acts,” he said.