TO SET the seal on Jamaica’s 50th anniversary celebrations, the Jazz Jamaica band swung into town after a long train ride north for a timely J-Night appearance.

Now into its 20th year, the band is renowned for purveying good-time music, and so it proved. Using the tension from the rails to good effect, the nine musicians slipped easily into a well-worn groove that was nailed to the floor by Gary Crosby’s double bass and Rod Youngs’ drums and stage-managed by the laid back Harry Brown.

While as a master of ceremonies Crosby was mostly hopeless, where it mattered he excelled; supplying simple yet winning bass-lines to underpin all the improvisation around him.

The music is a combo of jazz, reggae and ska – so enough musicality to keep things interesting but without getting overly cerebral.

Despite the talents of the horn players, including Denys Baptiste, Jazz Jamaica group lack an extrovert performer – someone like Dennis Rollins – to really work the crowd – so they stayed sitting until the eleventh hour. Indeed, it was the simpler numbers like the improvised Studio One which were the most memorable – with Robin Banerjee (once in Amy Winehouse’s band) the stylishly understated star.

Myrna Hague lived up to her reputation as the first lady of Jamaican jazz and shone in her closing vocal numbers that combined the blues with skilful band backing and it was this – plus some coercion from Crosby that finally got the audience dancing and set the seal on an enjoyable evening.