Panama Jazz Festival 2008: the educational mission

Rubén Blades meets the Milagros Blades Trio, the latter a traditional Panamanian percussion band led by the child prodigy Milagros Blades, of whose talents Danilo Pérez first learned at this festival's version of two years ago

An expanded educational mission was the big Jazz Festival story
photos and story by Eric Jackson

We can look at it by the numbers --- once there were two or arguably three, and then arguably four, and now there are five. But a simple head count of academic institutions participating in the Panama Jazz Festival understates the growth of the event's educational component.

It used to be that the festival, which from the start counted on the participation of the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory --- both of which to whom Danilo Pérez is linked both as a faculty member and as a former student --- were on board to teach advanced classes and search for young local talent. A lot of these classes took place at the University of Panama, which also had an official relationship with the festival for a time.

There were problems with the University of Panama, including complaints from some that foreigners shouldn't be allowed to teach here and claims that accomplished jazz masters giving seminars were teaching how to play this or that note "wrong." It's the same sort of phenomenon that has the university headed by the rector with the fake doctoral degree internationally isolated, and that at one point had a local musicians' union denouncing Rubén Blades for having Costa Ricans in a band with which he played here. Pseudo-nationalism --- the idea that one can go through the motions and get a piece of paper from the national university and that this is supposed to be a lifetime meal ticket --- is big business in the environment created by small-minded people there.

In any case, the relationship with the University of Panama did not work out and although there were some folks with ties to that institution participating in the festival the university was out of the picture as a sponsor or full-fledged participant this year.

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst had a Panamanian bassman, Santi DeBriano, on their jazz faculty and he came down here with that school's band to play and to participate in the workshops for a couple of years, but he has moved on to other things and the school wasn't part of this year's festival.

However, this year the Panama Jazz Festival picked up the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, a small elite graduate program based at Loyola University in New Orleans, the International Association for Jazz Education and the Conservatorio de Musica de Puerto Rico joined Berklee and the NEC to pitch in with the jazz education mission.

In the past Berklee sent their jazz band, but this year they sent nobody to perform on stage as a representative of the school --- unless you care to count faculty member and festival organizer Danilo Pérez --- but instead a team of professors to conduct auditions. Berklee people also taught workshops on music production and engineering.

The Monk Institute did send a band, which was very good, and whose members conducted various seminars. Representatives of the IAJE and the Puerto Rico Conservatory were also here.

The educational activities not only featured advanced classes in performance, composition and improvisation, but also workshops on the business of being a jazz musician and classes for children to inspire creativity and other critical skills for both the arts and living.

"Practice IS playing. When you practice, you choose music that will best help you improve your abilities," Stanley Jordan told the students at his seminar.

When discussing music, he added, "we have to learn to translate between two different languages. One language is the technical language of music. The other language is descriptions of the experience of the music. The experiential language is not well defined, and you can create that language as you speak."

Speaking of translations, in the background behind NEC student and guitarist André Matos we have one of the interpreters who rendered lessons given in English into a language that unilingual Spanish-speakers could understand. Like all specialized translation, this is difficult work.

Three young musicians, including Juan Pablo Vargas (center) and two others for whom others accepted on their behalf, were awarded summer school scholarships to Berklee in a ceremony at the Plaza Catedral free concert. In another ceremony at the same event, which this reporter was unable to photograph, musicians ranging from a youngster from Kuna Nega to a professional with the Orquesta Sinfonica National were awarded musical instruments.

Maybe her part in the jazz world is only going to be as a fan --- but she sure does

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