front page

Something else...

Leave it to Danilo Pérez to treat Panamanian jazz fans with something that we never heard before and never expected, along with the more or less known quantities. This year it was Edmar Castañeda, who plays jazz influenced by Colombian traditional music on his harp, accompanied by trombonist Marshall Gilkes, drummer Dave Silliman and vocalist Andrea Tierra. Billed number three behind a Panamanian all-star selection led by Pérez and drummer Billy Cobham and singer Nnenna Freelon's tight band, Castañeda's act grabbed the fans' attention and applause as much for the performances by Tierra and Gilkes as for the novel and wonderful sounds coming out of that harp.

In a Panama Jazz Festival dedicated to the late Panamanian jazz singer Barbara Wilson it was fitting that Andrea Tierra, Nnenna Freelon, Mili Bermejo, Patricia Vlieg and Idania Dowman came through with vocal performances ranging from solid to amazing. Until Friday night's last performance it seemed that the women and children had clearly stolen the show.

Children? As in pianist Tony Machuca from Miami and percussionist Milagros Blades from Panama, both so brilliant and both still looking ahead to their 13th birthdays. As in Panamanian teenager Jahaziel Arrocha, so talented at playing other people's saxophones but too poor to have one of his own, whose performances were so compelling that he came away from the festival with both a new instrument and a summer school scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music.

Then Panama's masters showed how it's done --- and the next day at the free concert in Plaza Catedral, the rest of the musicians rose to the occasion and reopened the questions about who was the most wonderful of all.

Leave that to the folks who pass out the Grammies and other awards. Comparing the creative efforts of people who, though arguably playing in the same genre, are so different from one another, can quickly become a futile exercise. Just let it be said that on Wednesday at the Teatro Nacional, Thursday and Friday at ATLAPA and then in Saturday's free concert in Plaza Catedral we were treated to some beautiful sounds.

(And because this reporter was at those events, which coincided with a production weekend for The Panama News, this issue is getting uploaded later than its usual lateness. Sorry about that, but I can only be in one place at one time and I can't pull all nighters like when I was 20 years old anymore.)

The jazz fest is not the only factor that makes this issue go heavy on the arts. San Carlos had a modest kickoff for an impressive arts center project. Boquete is about to have a jazz festival of its own. If you are going to be in Panama City on St. Valentine's Day, none of the TV stations will be playing gangster movies but stars from the combos nacionales of yesteryear and the younger keepers of the flame Shorty & Slim will be playing the Paradise Banquet Hall in Plaza Obarrio. 

There's so much going on these days that it's sometimes hard to get a taxi. During the jazz festival that was the case because across town at Rommel Fernandez Stadium the national under-20 soccer team was playing the United States, Guatemala and Haiti for one of two available berths in the world championships to be held in Canada. They did it the ugly way, but with a little help from the Haitians Panama did get one of those tickets, and the cabbies figured that there were more soccer fans looking for rides home from the stadium than music fans in search of transportation from the concert venues.

Our public transportation system simmers as a political issue, especially now that former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares has seized upon President Torrijos's plan to replace our present owner-operated bus system with corporate "articulated" buses as an object of criticism in the fight for the 2009 nomination to get his old job back.

Our travel section deals with a little bit of progress --- which is nevertheless a very big deal to some people --- on a smaller scale transportation problem. Panamanian culture is relatively inconsiderate to people with disabilities, but we see a breeze of change in the capital, where curb cuts are being made to allow access to city sidewalks for people in wheelchairs.

Meanwhile, I am told of a popular restaurant in town denying access to a blind woman because of her guide dog. It's easy to say that this sort of ignorant discrimination ought to be illegal, but what's needed a lot more than the writing of tickets is a greater public awareness of how wasteful it is to Panama as a society to impose extra limits on the economic and social contributions of people who can't see, can't hear, can't walk or have other special limitations. The United States is wealthier because it didn't consign Stevie Wonder to sitting on a sidewalk with a cup. If Hitler's massacre of those with handicaps was one of the lowest points for Germany's culture, one of that nation's towering achievements, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, was the work of a man who was stone deaf. Those great legends of the ancient Greeks, the Iliad and the Odyssey, come to us thanks to Homer, a man who most probably could neither read nor write because he was blind thousands of years before Braille writing was invented. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the man who led Americans out of the Great Depression and most of the way to victory in World War II, did so from a wheelchair.

And about the specific issue of guide dogs? Especially because the maleantes are allowed to create death traps for the blind by stealing sewer caps and storm drain grates, this country's blind people need guide dogs as a matter of basic personal safety. It's long overdue for Panama to start to train dogs for this purpose. You see, development is about the widespread applications of appropriate technologies to increase a nation's productive capacity and improve the lives of its ordinary people, not about displays of expensive luxury gizmos by the wealthiest fringe of society. The rarity of guide dogs for the blind, and restaurant managers' ignorance about the valuable services that these loyal animals provide, are indicia of Panama's underdevelopment.

Let's give our frequently dysfunctional government due credit when it does the right thing by installing curb cuts on the sidewalks, and hope that some public or private entity will move part of Panamanian life into the modern age by establishing a guide dog training program.

The big item in the news is the special legislative session that will consider a new Penal Code, changes to the rules of criminal procedure and a plan to pack the Supreme Court with Torrijos appointees. Women's groups have already pointed out how the "get tough on crime" posture doesn't apply to domestic violence or statutory rape, and now anti-corruption organizations are pointing out that the new code and procedures would make it even harder to investigate or prosecute politicians or judges for corruption. Maybe the most alarming criticism comes from the nation's lawyers, who point out that even to the extent that many of the proposed procedural changes are desirable, they imply the retraining of all of our lawyers and substantial time and money to implement and it seems like the Aggie frat boys who dominate our government didn't do their homework about those issues either.

Some of the other economic stories we look at herein include the campaign to convince the public that the as yet unpublished free trade agreement with the United States is a good thing, and a Brazilian contractor's formal assumption of the long-stalled Colon - Panama autopista project.

Finally, we have a contributor who sent us some photos of Panama City's wildlife. A lot of people undervalue our capital's urban park system, but really, we are blessed in comparison to other world capitals.

Enjoy.

Eric Jackson

the editor