Katie Melua

I would like to tell you about the incredible night I spent at the North Sea Jazz festival in Rotterdam last night. A huge 3 day festival, actually the biggest jazz festival in Europe, with 15 stages featuring artists from the whole world. I was there only yesterday (not enough time nor… psychological preparation for the three days ;-) ), and saw Steps Ahead, Katie Melua, E.S.T. and many others… I guess you will say “Katie Melua? Is she singing jazz???”. Well, what is jazz?

I would like to know it. Jazz is what started in New Orleans at the beginning of last century, from traditional music such as spirituals or ragtime. But now, it has grown and diversified into so many sub-genres that it is impossible to give a single definition. Therefore, most people hearing some unconventional jazz music just say “this is not jazz”. Electronic music, pop music influenced by jazz, fusion… Like the Duke said: “It’s all music.” I agree. What I dislike is the snobbish arrogance of some jazz musicians. It’s like “jazz is something special, you need to have some jazz culture to hear it right…”. I even attended a course this year, which title was “listening to jazz”. It was quite interesting, but why do such courses exist?

This feeling of jazz performers as belonging to a musical élite often scares people off from jazz. Of course knowing some basics helps, but it is not necessary. Either you like it or not!

Nils Petter Molvær

You definitely needed to be prepared for anything in order to like Nils Petter Molvær, shown here, a crazy trumpet player that mixes his sounds with extreme electronic reverbs, continously shouting at his sound engineer “louder!” while the sound filled every corner of the concert hall… Remember the sounds from Ummagumma in Pink Floyd? 10 times farther from reality!

Anyway, my favourite group was E.S.T. Brilliant music!