Is it possible to define what jazz is, let alone determine what its canon ought to contain?

My handy little dictionary defines the genre as "music originating in New Orleans around 1900, characterized by syncopation and novel and acrobatic musical effects." That seems awfully narrow to me.

My desk encyclopedia gives the subject four inches, going earlier and later into the idiom's history and naming some of the prominent names. There was nothing about Latin jazz, however --- not even the slightest mention of its exponents outside of the United States --- nor anything about its instrumentation.

I can remember how the purpose of it all was expressed in my daddy's old record --- "Blow your top for bop until you can't stop and you drop, mop" --- but in my maturity I now know that was a very narrow statement too.

Ah, but like the Supreme Court justice said about pornography, if you get the concept you may have trouble defining it but you'll recognize jazz when confronted with it. And the very existence of the term "jazz standards" implies a canon.

We could still argue around the edges of jazz, and how far toward those limits the canon extends. But nobody who was upstairs at the Casa Gongora on the evening of November 22 could reasonably argue that the Carlos Ubarte Jazz Trio --- Ubarte on saxes and flute, drummer Aníbal De León and bassist Papín Florez, with a few guests standing in during the course of the evening --- was playing outside the canon.

In fact, this was almost as much a lecture as a concert, and an intergenerational experience with members of Panamanian jazz's older generation gathered at one end of the room and a bunch of conservatory students seated at the other, with a multi-generational adult crowd with a slight female majority taking up the rest of the seats. The proverbial torch has been and was being passed, and Ubarte, who easily has a couple of decades to go until the gray starts setting in, didn't fumble it.

And the rustic, high-ceilinged colonial-era loft rang with sounds ranging from bossa nova to the blues, passing through bebop, cool jazz and other permutations in between.

Was it Panamanian music? Strictly speaking, maybe. "All Latin countries are now cooking with their own jazz sounds," Ubarte explained, noting in passing that "Latin Jazz" started with a combination of Cuban and US influences, established distinctive bases in Brazil and Argentina, and spread into different directions in each Latin American country. He paid homage to Panamanian jazzmen Billy Cobham, Danilo Pérez, Carlos Garrett, Mauricio Smith and Luis Russell, all of whom made their marks in the States as well as here. Jazz is international, and whatever the narrow-minded cultural nationalist ignoramuses may claim that "real Panamanian music" is, Panama is a part of the jazz world and has been so for a long time. Is bossa nova not Brazilian because Stan Getz, an American, played a key role in popularizing it? Or is it not American because it's an improvisation on a Samba beat? And is it not Panamanian when three Panamanian professionals play "The Girl from Ipanema," as the Carlos Ubarte Jazz Trio did?

Let us not quibble over angels and pinheads, or give undeserved credit to Mireya's odd theory about how the music that Rubén Blades composes and plays really isn't Panamanian. We're the Crossroads of the World, and it sounded that way at the Casa Gongora.

It sounded cool, as in some Charlie Mingus stuff. It sounded blue, as in Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue." It went out to bop with the Jazz Crusaders. So What? Yeah, that too.

Jazz has its trends and currents, flows and eddies. It has its canon, but none of the arguments about just what's included have degenerated to the level of the arguments frequently played out in US university English departments about the literary canon. Ubarte didn't get out to the wilder ornithology, let alone pay a visit to Sun Ra's Outer Space Employment Agency. He didn't make the case for Pat Metheny's or Frank Zappa's inclusion. Might American greats Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie or Thelonious Monk --- or Panamanians Dino Nugent, Fidel Morales or Barbara Wilson --- have been slighted? No matter. You can only give so much of a sampling in one night's work. Carlo Ubarte and friends gave us enough to reassure the elders that today's Panamanian jazz scene is in competent hands, and to show the youngsters what it's all about.

If you care to know for yourself, the trio has a CD that's coming out, and like virtually all of Panama's performing artists is looking for more paying work. Contact Carlos Ubarte about these matters by email at carlosubarte@hotmail.com or by phone at (507) 656-3893.