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Music, The Panama Jazz Festival

Andrea Tierra

Women and children first

by Eric Jackson

How does someone without formal musical education write a review of an entire jazz festival? Many will say incompetently or at least not well, and they will have their point. And were I to cop that plea, would it be a cop out to say that I was by no means alone?

I think someone recognized the dilemma, as at the January 17 press conference I was invited to a workshop with a top notch international jazz reporter later that afternoon, for Panamanian journalists covering the jazz festival about how to cover musical events. I had another commitment and couldn't make it and it's a shame. The truth of it is that the standard Panamanian journalism education leaves a person without a formal education in music or much of anything else, and my problem is not that sort of malformation at the University of Panama but schooling in different fields that don't include music. I have, however, been listening to jazz all of my life and do know what I like, even if I often can't say why in the language of that discipline. So bear with me if you will....

I love the work that the great masters of Panamanian jazz do, and by any measure they deserved to be the headline act. Danilo Pérez has the most Grammies to boast of and Billy Cobham is universally recognized as brilliant. Carlos Garnett is one of the best examples of why it's a shame that US-based multinational recording corporations get to determine which Panamanian musicians get their work marketed abroad.

And so it was that, before the last act of three nights of indoor concerts, it appeared to me that the women and children had stolen the show in this year's Panama Jazz Festival. But then Danilo Pérez, Billy Cobham, Carlos Garnett, Santi DeBriano, Jorge Sylvester and Renato Thoms, every one of them well qualified as a band leader in his own right, took the stage and showed how it's done. These are the grand masters and nothing detracts from them.

However, at the following day's free concert in Parque Catedral, the women and children rose to the great masters' challenge.

From the way I saw and heard it, the most brilliant act of the entire festival was the Edmar Castañeda Trio, which, however, shone brightest when it was a quartet featuring singer Andrea Tierra, who happens to be married to Castañeda. This, too, is a band composed of great young musicians who each have it in them to earn worldwide acclaim on their own. Castañeda's jazz influenced by traditional Colombian music on the harp is like nothing I'd ever heard before and it's wonderful --- but really, no more so than Marshall Gilkes's trombone playing or Tierra's vocals, and if drummer Dave Silliman was in the background that's more a comment on the organization the band and the numbers they played than on his skills relative to the other members. Make room at the top for Castañeda, Tierra, Gilkes and Silliman, whichever directions they take from here.

Marshall Gilkes

Edmar Castañeda

This was a festival dedicated to a female vocalist, the late great Barbara Wilson. Every night they showed a moving video about Barbara, in Spanish but also in the universal language of music with some English lyrics here and there, which Danilo Perez told me will be uploaded onto the Internet. Even if you're one of those totally unilingual gringos you'll want to catch this if you're a jazz fan.

With such a dedication it should be no surprise that this festival would have more than the usual number of talented female vocalists, and that it did. The one that got the top billing for the festival as a whole was Nnenna Freelon, and she did not disappoint. She was great at the park and even better at ATLAPA, where her last number in particular brought the house down. Five Grammy nominations? Surely she's going to actually win some of those awards in years to come.

Nnenna Freelon

Let me not, however, rave about Tierra and Freelon and not place their elder Mili Bermejo, a grand maestra however you want to define that term, at the same altitude. The Mexican singer, who's a professor at the Berklee College of Music, sang on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday and she, just like the Panamanian masters who got top billing, also showed how it's done.

Mili Bermejo

Tierra, Freelon and Bermejo did different things in different styles, and this reporter who can't read music won't insult you by trying to compare their qualities. Suffice to say that their performances did great honor to a festival dedicated to Barbara Wilson.

The vocalists, by the way, were not the only women onstage. In the homage to Chile in which Bermejo sang, the one who did the speaking for the all-around excellent band was saxophone player Patricia Zárate, and on percussion for the equally superb band behind Freelon was Beverly Botsford.

On the concert's second night Patricia Vlieg was one of the special invitees who performed a few numbes with the Panamerican Big Band, a collection of students from three universities that apart from Vlieg also has several women playing in it. At the Teatro Nacional and Parque Catedral we heard the Jazz Effects, which whom Barbara Wilson played for many years, and with that combination we heard Idania Dowman sing.

All in all, a case could be made for female superiority in this year's jazz festival.

But then, who got the best reception from the muscians themselves, male and female? It was the kids.

Do you like the way that John Coltrane blew his horn? Then teenage saxophonist Jahaziel Arrocha will do your heart proud, and he just now got an instrument of his own on which to practice, along with a summer school scholarship to Berklee.

Daniel Pérez is still a fairly young man, but are you concerned about who will pick up the torch for piano jazz after he departs the scene? Well, the very existence of Tony Machuca, a pre-adolescent Cuban boy from Miami, should help you sleep better at night.

And will Panama produce any great jazz drummers after Billy Cobham? It already has, and Milagros Blades is only 12 years old.

So much of what the jazz festival is about is for the kids. The concerts began on January 17, but the workshops for students began a couple of days earlier. New England Conservatory professor Ken Schaphorst told me that a number of talented youngsters, some of whom just appeared off the streets at these sessions, demonstrated sufficient musical talent and knowledge to be admitted to his prestigious school. The unfortunate thing, he pointed out, is that most of them don't have enough of a command of English to pass the TOEFL exam, which is a requirement at the conservatory.

In order to pull these festivals off, Pérez has to be diplomatic with Panama's powers that be. This need not to offend does not, however, prevent him from being dismissive about Panama's educational system. Backstage at ATLAPA I heard tales of reciprocal disdain for the people whom Pérez brought in to teach coming from certain University of Panama professors. And you know what? My instinct is to discount any such complaints coming from a university whose rector has a fake doctorate.

Nobody stood up at the press conference to disagree with Danilo Pérez's opinion. Mayor Navarro didn't walk out in disgust, and agencies of the national government like INAC and IPAT didn't pull their endorsements, and businesses like Ricardo Perez SA and Telefonica/Movistar didn't discontinue their financial backing. Everyone who knows anything about it, with the exception of a few who have pecuniary or political interests in pretending that they know nothing, admits that Panamanian education is dysfunctional. But this is not to say that there are no teachers and no students who rise above the abyss and Pérez and his backers are here to lend them a hand rather than to sneer at them.

If at least half of the Panama Jazz Festivals' mission is educational, that doesn't mean that Pérez is patronizing in the condescending sense when he puts children onstage. Those kids who get places up there are very good, they deserve their share of the spotlight and the audience --- both the seasoned professionals and the fans who may not know very much --- is lucky to get to hear them.

So all hail Danilo Pérez, Billy Cobham and the great masters, but know ye that the women and children stole the show this year.