An award-winning movie produced more than four decades ago came to mind once more as the global community observes International Jazz Day on April 30.
“All that Jazz” is a semi-biographical flick that recounted the sordid life of a womanizing dancer, choreographer and director.
Because of the popularity of jazz, as the music and dance genre popular among the Boomers’ generation, the film drew queues in cinema houses for weeks.
The wide appeal of jazz was also evident in intermissions in programs of all kinds, from university auditoriums to convention halls and public plazas as they featured widely awaited and well-applauded performances danced to the tune of jazz music.
Ask the Boomers who their favorite musician is and, most likely, jazz singers and instrumentalists will be among those in their list.
When I began my media career, my collection of jazz music started to grow. I was always checking out downtown record bars for cassette tapes of jazz musicians, like Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Grover Washington Jr., Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin, The Crusaders, Tony Bennett and Al Jarreau, among others.
Louis Armstrong, dubbed “The King of Jazz” is among my all-genre and all-time favorites, especially with his best song, “What a Wonderful World”, among my Top Five ever.
The career of Armstrong, who was also a master of other genres, spanned five decades – from the so-called Roaring 20s to the James Bond music thrills of the late 60s.
His other hits, like “We Have All the Time in the World”, the Negro spiritual, “When All the Saints Go Marching In” and “Summertime”, which he sang with Fitzgerald, and “Hello Dolly!”’, which featured another music great, Barbra Streisand, demand my equal attention when they are played in airlanes, music lounges or elsewhere.
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Jazz, as a music genre, has long been there since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Records show it originated in African-American communities in New Orleans, Louisiana in the United States, its roots traced to blues and ragtime.
Jazz has been recognized as a major form of expression in both traditional and popular music since the 1920s, records further show. This means that jazz as part of humanity’s popular fare has been around for a century already.
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Indeed, through the scores and decades, jazz – as Nina Simone, a classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop musician put it – is more than just music as it is a way of life and of thinking.
UNESCO, which spearheads the IJD observance in about 190 countries, refers to its story as “written into the quest for human dignity, democracy and civil rights” as well as the struggle against discrimination and racism.
It is the wide appeal and social potentials of jazz that prompted the declaration by the United Nations of the observance after its proclamation by the UNESCO in 2011 for, among others “the contribution it can make to building more inclusive societies.”
UNESCO has reiterated the values derived from jazz: that it breaks down barriers and creates avenues for understanding, serves as a platform for freedom of expression and a symbol of unity and peace as well as reduces tensions between and among individuals, groups and communities.
It also fosters gender equality, encourages artistic innovation, improvisations and new forms of artistic expressions and promotes intercultural dialogue as well as empowers young people, particularly those from marginalized societies, UNESCO further said.
IJD Activities also include gatherings of communities, schools, historians, artists, academicians and jazz lovers to discuss its future and impact.
UNESCO, in its website, said that Negros Occidental is among the venues of global activities to celebrate the day.
The Negros event, “Jazz in Paradise” will be held at Kusinata in Don Salvador Benedicto with Gerry Grey as the coordinator. Performers will include GMT Band, Paul Chatman and Kristina Madrigal.
The website indicated that the Kusinata event is the one of the two IJD events in the country, the other, in Santa, Rosa City in Laguna.
A highlight of the celebration is a global concert on April 30 featuring simultaneous performances from Beijing, Beirut, Casablanca, Johannesburg, Marondera in Zimbabwe, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Vienna, and the American cities of Fairbanks, New York and San Francisco and Washington, DC, the U.S. capital.
Thanks to musicians, like Armstrong, and all that jazz for they have made, in Louis’ lyrics, ours “a wonderful world.”
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Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart. (Proverbs 25:20) – NWI
