A festival of magical extremes

Published Mar 30, 2011

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Verdine White rocking the Cape Town Jazz Festival in a shiny bright yellow, fringed suit with black patterns, like a 1970s rock star… hang on, he is a 1970s rock star. Maybe not rock, more like funk, but you get the picture. He is, after all, the Earth, Wind and Fire bassist.

Put that against Esperanza Spalding in a subdued black little suit, tiny next to a double bass, head bowed as she plucks the strings and, then she lifts that amazing head of hair and starts scatting simultaneously.

This past Jazz Festival was one of extremes. Cindy Blackman bashing the heck out of her drum kit on the Moses Molelekwa stage at the same time as Youssou N’Dour comes back for two encores and just won’t leave the Kippies stage.

Everyone at the Bassline stage knew all the words to Liquideep’s songs, while the Wayne Shorter Quartet left many people without any words at all, some because they were just plain confused, others because they were gobsmacked by what they considered the festival’s most amazing performance.

Shorter does not play to the crowd. After almost 50 years at the forefront of defining what can be done with a saxophone, he is in his own zone. Watching them is like watching a dinner conversation among old friends. You have to concentrate and eventually get the hang of the context, marvelling at the intricacy and profundity, but it’s not your conversation.

Some of the shows started late and those stages just never caught up. Sound is always an issue at this festival, hence the delay at one point of more than 40 minutes on the Moses Molelekwa stage, as well as at Kippies, and of an hour at Rosies.

Old jazz festival hands know that the two stages upstairs are for serious connoisseurs, so some people just stay up there. While we’re familiar with the Nigerian guitarist Alhousseini Mohamed Anivolla, Mauritian Eric Triton was a revelation.

The lefty plays his guitar upside down and the way he incorporates swing and funk into his playing made the Guitarafrika trio a magical experience. Triton’s take on the blues was a sweaty, dirty affair, and Steve Newman gave back as good as he got. All three used intricate and non-standard fingering techniques and advance publicity around Triton would have been welcome.

Another place extremes were noticeable was the filtering of information. Without the SABC as a broadcast partner there were no screens in hallways broadcasting a live stream, so you simply had to leave one stage and hope the next was starting on time.

The jazz festival’s website is a mix of un-updated info and old stuff (probably because Facebook has overtaken standard websites in getting info out to the masses – you stood a better chance of finding out when the next performance was going to start by watching your Facebook wall than by relying on organisers).

The PR poppies didn’t even initially know who Shorter was or why so many of the journalists were climbing over themselves to get on to the Rosies stage or upset that he was proving “unavailable” for interviews.

Using Earth, Wind and Fire as the headline may have seemed a strange choice for jazz fundis, but Rashid Lombard’s instincts proved spot-on – their slickly choreographed funk performance had the crowd screaming for more.

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