[Dixielandjazz] April 30-- Declared International Jazz Day by UNESCO-- NYTimes 4-30-12

[Norman Vickers]

To:  DJML & Musicians and Jazzfans lists

From:  Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola

 

April was designated as Jazz Month by Smithsonian Institute about 15 years
ago.  Now UNESCO has designated April 30 as Jazz Day.

See NYTimes article below.

 

So, “Happy Jazz Day!”

 

 




  _____  

April 29, 2012


Where Nations Debate, Harmony of a Jazzy Kind


By LARRY ROHTER
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/larry_rohter/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> 


>From its earliest days, when the pianist Jelly Roll Morton spoke of a
“Spanish tinge,” jazz has been extraordinarily open to international
influences. Now it’s official. Last fall Unesco
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_
nations_educational_scientific_and_cultural_organization/index.html?inline=n
yt-org>  — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization — designated jazz a “universal music of freedom and creativity”
and decreed that henceforth every April 30 is to be celebrated around the
world as International Jazz Day. 

As part of the first year’s festivities — and also to show jazz’s global
reach — some of the genre’s biggest names will be performing on Monday night
at the United Nations
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_
nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  headquarters, in the same space where
world leaders gather each fall for the General Assembly
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/g/general
_assembly/index.html?inline=nyt-org> . In addition to American players like
Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Stevie Wonder, Wynton Marsalis and Esperanza
Spalding, musicians from Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia will also be
participating. 

On Sunday afternoon, after a custom-made stage had been installed directly
under the United Nations emblem in the assembly hall, the musicians began
arriving to rehearse the songs they plan to play. After one pick-up all-star
ensemble worked its way through a Latin jazz set, another, featuring Mr.
Wonder and Ms. Spalding on vocals, grappled with a lilting
bossa-nova-flavored version of the standard “Midnight Sun,” most closely
associated with Ella Fitzgerald. 

“Maybe you could go to a G7th chord there,” Mr. Wonder suggested to one of
the other musicians after the lead-in to his harmonica solo. “We need
something different there.” 

Observing off to the side was the actor Robert De Niro, one of the
presenters of the event along with Michael Douglas and Morgan Freeman. 

Out in the audience, tapping their feet as they waited their turn to
rehearse, were two African performers: the brass player Hugh Masekela of
South Africa and the guitarist Lionel Loueke of Benin. 

“Jazz is a great music that I feel has never been given its just due or
recognition for having affected so many lives in various cultures throughout
the world,” said Mr. Hancock, who was the driving force behind the
designation and is a special ambassador for the organization. “Unesco is
exactly the proper setting to do that. With these musicians from various
nations, we’re really showing a vision for globalization that’s a positive
one.” 

Monday night’s concert follows similar shows on Friday night in Paris, once
a home to expatriate American players like Dexter Gordon, Sidney Bechet, Bud
Powell and Archie Shepp; and at sunrise Monday morning in New Orleans,
considered the birthplace of jazz. Scheduled to attend all three events is
Irina Bokova, a former Bulgarian minister of foreign affairs, who is now
director general of Unesco. 

“I think there is a lot of symbolism around jazz and the multiculturalism
and diversity of which it speaks,” she said in a telephone interview from
Paris. “If you ask what jazz is for me, I’d say it’s freedom, human dignity
and boundless spirit, which makes it a very very powerful universal force.
We say around here that jazz was born in the United States, but is owned by
the world.” 

Several of the foreign-born musicians playing on Monday’s program echoed
those sentiments, saying that they were originally drawn to jazz by its
spontaneity, which they associate with personal freedom. The Japanese
pianist Hiromi Uehara <http://www.hiromimusic.com/>  said that she had
originally set out to be a classical pianist but changed course when she
heard records by Erroll Garner and Oscar Peterson in her piano teacher’s
collection. 

“I was 8 back then, and my teacher explained to me that it’s all improvised,
just like conversation, and that was my favorite part, that I felt this very
elastic quality that changed every day,” said Ms. Uehara, who is now 33 and
has recorded a duet CD with Chick Corea. “Because jazz is such an improvised
music, you can really show and expose yourself, and that is what I love most
about playing it even now.” 

Halfway around the world, in Panama, the pianist Danilo Pérez
<http://www.daniloperez.com/about.aspx> , a member of Mr. Shorter’s quartet
for more than a decade, had a similar reaction when first exposed to jazz.
Hearing improvised solos on records by Louis Armstrong, Freddie Hubbard and
George Benson “connected me to a sound of originality and freedom, of having
a personal voice,” he said. 

“What jazz brings to the table is collective improvisation and tolerance,
respect and freedom, and when you mix that up with every world musical
style, you are creating a cultural passport,” he added. “I really believe
that what jazz has given to the world is a window, a paradigm of how
countries should be interacting with each other.” 

The master Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain <http://www.zakirhussain.com/>
, who has played with John McLaughlin, Charles Lloyd and John Handy,
recalled first coming to the United States as a teenager around 1970 to
perform with Ravi Shankar. Before long, though, he was jamming with jazz
musicians, which made him realize jazz’s affinities to the classical Indian
tradition in which he had been schooled. 

“Jazz was immediately a comforting quilt to be under, because I felt I was
stepping into a brother music and running into people who embraced me as a
friend,” he said. “The jazz musicians of that time, like John Coltrane, were
already looking eastward and experimenting with modal music. So it was
almost like meeting halfway, which made it easy for me, as a rhythm player
who doesn’t have to think of voicings and chord progressions, to get
involved.” 

The formal recognition of jazz’s global influence comes at a moment when
relations between the United States and Unesco are less than ideal. Last
October Unesco accepted the Palestinians
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/palestinians
/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>  as its 195th member, in a vote the Obama
administration sought to block. That in turn triggered an automatic cutoff
of America’s annual contribution of about $70 million, or 22 percent of the
organization’s annual budget. 

That dispute and the subsequent honors accorded jazz “are not linked at
all,” said Ms. Bokova, who traveled to Washington to meet with Congressional
leaders and ask them to alter the law. “The United States is still active
with us, and we are working on many projects and issues I believe are in the
interest of the American public, so I hope this problem will be solved.” 

The musical director of Monday night’s concert, the keyboard player George
Duke, said he hopes the International Jazz Day designation and accompanying
shows can serve as an antidote to political squabbling. Early in his career,
which began in the 1960s, he worked with artists like the French violinist
Jean-Luc Ponty and the Brazilian singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento, and he
remains an advocate, he said, of “giving people another way to look at
things” through collaboration. 

“Musicians have always felt that if you can sing or play it doesn’t matter
if you’re black, white, yellow or brown,” Mr. Duke said. “It’s the other
folks who brought that other stuff into it. Jazz at its best is a microcosm
of what society should be, incorporating and absorbing what’s going on
around us and coming out with something that breaks down barriers and
connects people. Would that the rest of the world could do that.” 

The concert, at 7 p.m. Eastern Time Monday, will be streamed at
unmultimedia.org/tv/webcast.