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artsAlso in this section: Tribute to Barbara Wilson at the Take Five by Eric Jackson What does a real jazz purist think? Is the proper venue a club, or a concert hall? Now I am a lifelong jazz fan, but a person with virtually no musical education. I know what I like, and I think I know a bit about the economics of the music business. The club scene is where jazz is at, of economic necessity. But if the truth is to be told, I’m not partial to hanging out in crowds of people who are drinking, my days as a young politician were not spent in rooms where the cigarette smoke burned my eyes, and I am neither adept at nor impressed by the pick-me-up games that are played in bars. I’ve caught Danilo Pérez’s act in concert halls, and now I’ve heard him in a club. I prefer the former sort of venue. But on this June 2, Danilo’s trio was playing to cover the cost of late jazz singer Barbara Wilson’s funeral. He was playing in a bar, just as Barbara played in bars all of her life. If it wasn’t for the bar scene nobody would have heard Barbara at all, and that would have been the greatest tragedy of her hard life. At the start of the night’s show, which took place in a city and country beset by the political strife of an essentially economic dispute, Danilo Pérez put it into context. He said he was somebody who grew up in poverty and managed to escape from it, paying tribute to a worthy colleague who never did manage to make a decent living off of her music. “I’m here to recognize a human value, and an artist,” he said. Understanding that many Panamanians were conducting a paro (strike, or stoppage), he opined that “in Panama we really need a paro for people like Barbara.” And then the jazz began. And it was great. My preferences having been stated, let me not dis the Take Five Wine Bar. Yes, we were seated at a table in a grotto in the back, from which we couldn’t see the musicians. But the sound was very good, even back there. And I realize that this was, after all, Danilo Pérez, an act that would and did naturally pack the place with both devoted jazz fans who turned out in great numbers and people who were there mainly to be seen. On an ordinary night the place doesn’t draw such a mob, and were it not for ordinary nights at this and a few other venues, Panama City would have no jazz scene. Mine is the level of jazz scholarship --- a low one --- that I own several Danilo Pérez CDs and I could recognize several of the tunes he and his trio played, but couldn’t name them. And was that some Brubeck that he played in the fourth or fifth number? (Dave Brubeck I heard long ago in an outdoor venue, and still occasionally hear when I get connected via Internet radio to WEMU-FM, my old college radio station.) But even when I know not what I hear, I know if I like it and I liked the music that the Danilo Pérez Trio played for Barbara that night. This was the good stuff, and if purists say that a club is the proper place to catch a jazz act, their case was reasonably enough made on this particular night. And I thank Barbara Wilson for being such a good singer that such talented colleagues and so many people felt moved to do this for her, and Danilo Pérez for being so brilliant on this night as usual, and the Take Five Wine Bar for its very existence. Panama is so much more civilized a place because of what these people and institutions have given us.
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