Harry Belafonte typically gets the credit for introducing Americans to calypso, the West Indian style of music that swept the continent in the late 1950s and later morphed into reggae. But the first North American to champion the irresistible rhythms of Jamaica and Trinidad was the rhythm and blues star Louis Jordan in such numbers as “Run Joe” and “Stone Cold Dead in the Market.” Jordan took the sound a step further in his 1949 “Push-Ka-Pee She Pie (The Saga of Saga Boy),” in which he proclaimed to the world that he had invented a music he called “the new calypso bebop.” Not to be outdone, the Trinidadian star Lord Kitchener, then living in England, quickly recorded an homage to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker called “Kitch’s Bebop Calypso.”

If anyone is equipped to perfect the New Calypso Bebop, it is the pianist Monty Alexander, who immigrated to America from his native Kingston as a 17-year-old veteran of the Jamaican music scene in 1960. He was already equally versed in island music and North American jazz, and during the next few decades he became one of the most sought-after pianists on the contemporary jazz scene, working as the keyboardist of choice for such bop pioneers as Milt Jackson and Ray Brown. He was also a protégé of sorts of Frank Sinatra: He served as the house pianist at Jilly’s, the Chairman’s favorite hangout.

But Mr. Alexander, now 63, has always remained true to his West Indian roots. In the last decade or so, nearly all of his albums have focused on combining various elements of jazz with West Indian music, most impressively on two entire albums interpreting the Bob Marley songbook.

This weekend at the Allen Room, Mr. Alexander played four sets of his ambitious program “Lords of the West Indies,” employing a wide cast of Jamaican, Trinidadian, and North American musicians. During a very tight 90-minute set, Mr. Alexander spanned the islands and the different approaches he’s used to experiment with West Indian jazz fusions throughout his career, from a bop piano trio (with Hassan Shakur on bass and Herlin Riley on drums) with nods to Caribbean rhythms, to full-scale calypsos mixed with jazz harmony and improvisation.

With a minimum of patter, Mr. Alexander presented a program equally enlightening and entertaining. He showed us, rather than merely told us, how mento (the original Jamaican folk music form), calypso, ska, and reggae are as different from one another as bossa nova, salsa, and tango are in other parts of the Pan-American world. He used different ensembles to illustrate the various forms. The calypso segment presented the contemporary vocalist Designer evoking Lord Kitchener and the Mighty Sparrow on “Calypso of Bebop” and “Love in the Cemetery,” while bassist Happy Williams sang a topical calypso that was seemingly inspired by the 2008 primaries and the Iraq war.

Mr. Alexander then brought out three veteran mento instrumentalist-singers — Albert Morgan (rhumba box), Carlton “Blackie” James (banjo), and “Powda” Bennett (shakers). The ensemble’s big number was “Nobody’s Business,” the mento incarnation of a folk tune that is all over the map of early jazz and blues, showing up, fascinatingly, in different interpretations by Mississippi John Hurt and Bessie Smith, not to mention Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald.

Particularly impressive were two Jamaican saxophonists, Dean Fraser (alto) and Cedric “Im” Brooks (tenor), the latter of whom played with a big, compelling sound drawn from the same wellspring of inspiration that launched Sonny Rollins’s ongoing calypso. The show hit its peak with a surprisingly intimate moment, when Mr. Alexander and the saxophones played a reverential, prayer-like treatment of two canonical Bob Marley ballads, “Redemption Song” and “No Woman, No Cry.” Even at a slow tempo, Mr. Alexander extracted the essential kernel of island rhythm, showing that this music has its own equivalent of the Cuban clave. It was then time to close with a carnival climax, and the leader included such familiar tunes as “Sly Mongoose” (a calypso favored by Charlie Parker) and the Belafonte hit “Banana Boat Song.” The crowd roared as “Powda” Bennett spontaneously launched into an eccentric rubber-legged dance.

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Mr. Alexander’s brilliant performance not only inspired me to listen to all my calypso and reggae records, but it put me in the mood to hear more great pianists. So I was in the right place at the 92nd St. Y this weekend to sample five keyboard masters as they gathered around the Y’s long-standing piano master, Dick Hyman, for the latest in his Jazz Piano series. It was a varied presentation in which everything came in pairs; and consistently, every other number worked beautifully. For instance, Mr. Hyman opened with Ray Kennedy in a rather tepid and tinkly two-piano treatment of “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby,” followed by an ingeniously boppish four-handed attack on “Idaho.” Ted Rosenthal swung harder than I’ve ever heard him on “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” using Ira Gershwin’s “either-eye-ther” verbal scheme as the basis for a call-and-response with bassist Jay Leonhart. The Turkish pianist Meral Guneyman explored Duke Ellington’s classical side with the amazing “Clothed Woman” and “Come Sunday.” And Norman Simmons challenged drummer Eddie Locke with a vigorous “Speak Low” that actually spoke rather loudly.

Whenever things seemed on the verge of getting dull, Houston Person, the only horn player on the bill, unleashed his tenor sax and woke us up with two additional slices of Ellingtonia. For a finale, Mr. Person played “Mack the Knife” as all five pianists sliced and diced the familiar Kurt Weill melody like the knife-bearing sharks of Bertolt Brecht’s equally famous lyric.

wfriedwald@nysun.com