culture

Wayne Shorter (sax) and John Patitucci (bass) cast glances at pianist Danilo Pérez in the course of an extended and way out there improvisational piece. Photo by Eric Jackson

1. The Wayne Shorter Quartet

No doubt about it. This multi-Grammy-winning band got top billing for the festival and lived up to it. Every member of the quartet --- saxophonist Shorter, pianist Danilo Pérez, bass player John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade --- is a band leader in his own right, and since Shorter only played on Friday night we got to hear the rest of the band as a trio, and then with young Panamanian saxophonist Jahaziel Arrocha, on Saturday night. We have heard Pérez at all of the Panama Jazz Festivals, and Patitucci in previous years as well, and the bottom line is that when the rest of the guys play with Shorter, they don't play in their usual orbits --- they achieve escape velocity and blast off for another galaxy.

2. All the amazing bass players

Who was that guy playing bass with Chucho Valdés, who put on such a good show and wasn't recognized in the program notes? It was Lázaro Rivero, and the recognition that he didn't get could only possibly be explained by the presence of a half-dozen other world class bassmen at this year's festival.

How does anyone, let alone someone without any formal education in music, compare and rank these musicians against one another? Somebody does this sort of thing all the time, to decide who gets music awards, who gets top billing or on the stage at all, who gets into the prestigious music school. Fortunately for this reporter, that's not the purpose of this article.

Acknowledged by bandleader Marco Pignataro and everyone else with any expertise as a great master, Puerto Rican native and New York City schools-educated Eddie Gómez did not disappoint. But who could say that he was a greater master than John Patitucci? And then, is it fair to compare what these upright acoustic bass players do with the craft of Jimmy Haslip, who plays a six-string electric bass?

Rivero, Gómez, Patitucci and Haslip are the senior generation. Haggai Cohen Milo is but 23 years old and came here to play with a flamenco jazz act led by pianist Alex Conde, and notwithstanding the various professions of admiration and in some cases even idolatry backstage among the bassists, the younger generation of bassmen would not be unduly insufferable or even incorrect were they not to defer to their elders as their betters. Tal Gamlieli, a few years older than Cohen Milo and a fellow Israeli, came here with the New England Conservatory Jazz Quintet but just because he's still studying one should not deny him recognition as a talented professional. And the other student bassman, Japan's Shin Sakaino, was arguably the best of the lot at this year's festival.

3. Jahaziel Arrocha's progress

This young sax player electrified the 2007 festival, got a scholarship to Berklee College of Music, and has come back at the tender age of 19 as the leader of that school's jazz quartet. When you are playing with the likes of Shin Sakaino on bass, pianist Julian Shore and drummer Jonathan Pinson, that's a major accomplishment. At an improvisation seminar that Berklee gave for young musicians that came for the educational part of the festival, Arrocha also demonstrated a natural instinct to teach.

But you know what? One of Panama's senior jazz statesmen, Carlos Garnett, tutored Arrocha before he went away to Berklee, and he told The Panama News that his former student knows a lot of tricks that he didn't show the jazz festival audiences.

4. Those Cubans

There is a distinct Panamanian Spanish, but it's a lot like the way Cubans, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans talk, dropping the "s" at the end of syllables and so on. They call it "trade route Spanish" from colonial times.

The cultural affinity between Panama and Cuba is also long-standing and pronounced in music.

Chucho Valdés and his stellar band gave us a real treat, and surely his presence was the main reason for a number of our foreign visitors during the jazz festival.

It seems as if the Americans are getting over their weirdness about all things Cuban. But surely among the Sarah Palin in 2012 Committee there are people who hear the sounds that Chucho's band makes --- like this solo by drummer Juan Carlos Rojas --- and only hear lewd, pulsating jungle rhythms that provoke animal passions among the youth, even worse ones than rock and roll incites. The shrewder among us will be relieved that somebody is turning the kids on to good music.

Let us hope that in the years to come the Panama Jazz Festivals not only bring more of Cuba's musical treasures to the isthmus, but that Cuban musical educators and educational institutions take a greater role in the workshops, seminars and auditions that are as important or more so than the concerts in these projects.

While it may be true that in the long run, we're all dead, worthy cultures tend to long survive the individuals involved in them. And so it has been and will be with good music. The Panama Jazz Festivals are one of the reasons why. This year the student bands from both the New England Conservatory --- Michel Reis, Tal Gamlieli, Charles Burchell, Andrew Urbina and Julian Maliandi --- and the Berklee College of Music --- Julian Shore, Jonathan Pinson, Shinichiro Sakaino and Jahaziel Arrocha --- were astounding as usual. Berklee gave out 16 scholarships, and other youngsters successfully auditioned to get into the New England Conservatory and the Conservatorio de Musica de Puerto Rico. Artes y Oficios grad Danilo Pérez has not forgotten his roots, and he's putting something back to nurture the next generation.