[Dixielandjazz] Tabarka Jazz Festival - Tunisia

[Stephen Barbone]

> Ivor Jones, Good Time Jazz band wrote:
>
> We are still waiting to be invited to play in a jazzfest which will feature
> other trad bands. We are only a comparatively new and unknown band, and in
> all of the  International Jazz Festivals we have played in, in Spain,
> Portugal, and recently Cabo Verde we have been the ONLY OKOM band. I would
> love to hear other bands of our genre play, but in some respects it does
> have it's advantages, we do get some idea of the popularity of the various
> styles, and although we are newcomers we always seem to get the most
> enthuisiastic reaction from the audiences. This makes me wonder why
> organisers of some of these festivals don't employ more trad bands. Three
> years ago I watched a highly rated and highly expensive fusion band imported
> from the States virtually clear an audience after 3 very boring tunes
> (tunes?) all of which, after the first chorus sounded exactly the same, yet
> this year we are getting the same kind of expensive crap. It's a fashion
> thing I suppose.

Barbone Street experience is similar to Ivor Jones and The Good Time Jazz Band.
Our performances at Rehoboth, Berks, and Clifford Brown Jazz Festivals (all
modern but us) are such that we, as the only OKOM band, always get a tremendous
crowd reaction. At one festival which will remain nameless , we led off the
closing performances, 5 PM to Midnight on a Sunday. At 6 after our hour set,
when we said we were making way for a "smooth jazz" performer (well known in
the USA) and the others, we got a rousing ovation, cries of "Don't Leave, etc.
Then when the smooth jazzers started, they were roundly booed. Go figure why
OKOM is not more frequently represented at the "International Festivals.

The festivals where we perform are within 80 miles of home, and while not
"International", have featured performers that include; Maynard Ferguson, Clark
Terry, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Phil Woods, David Sandborn, Alicia Keyes,
Ike Turner, The "retro" Count Basie and Woody Herman Bands, Dick Hyman and many
others.

We continually book weddings as a result of our festival performances and the
couples say that after spending big dollars to see national acts that they did
not like, they were pleasantly surprised to see/hear such as "great, swinging
band like Barbone Street"
Their words, not mine.

Carpe Diem
Steve Barbone
Barbone Street Jazz Band