THE EFFORT DEVELOPED BY THE NATIONAL CENTER OF POPULAR MUSIC AND ITS DIRECTORS DESERVES THE MOST SINCERE COMPLIMENTS.
While attending the XXX Jazz Plaza Festival inevitably came to my mind memories of previous editions. Thanks to my mother, fervent lover of the genre --- and who was every night at the courtyard of the Casa de la Cultura in Plaza---, since I was a child I was in contact with recordings that constitute the first major sound language of the twentieth century.
Because of my own personal story, I have had the privilege of attending both under the status of mere lover of the genre and the journalist, to each of the thirty editions of this jazz meeting, opened in the distant 1980 and organized by Armando Rojas and Bobby Carcasses. Such seniority allows me to establish contact points between what happened in the past and today.
The first thing is the fact that the 30th edition of the Jazz Plaza demonstrated the good moment this genre is having among Cuban musicians. The offer was so wide and varied in each of the sites and subsites, as well as the dissimilar proposals with regard to genres and styles, that it was literally impossible to see everything that was presented during the festival. The quality of the participants --- with visitors from abroad as Arturo O'Farrill, Justo Almario, Andrea Brachfeld and The Norwegian Big Energian Assembly group --- demonstrated once again that intervention endorsed figures by a large media recognition is not essential, because the talent is not alone among those who constantly appear in the mainstream media.
The theoretical reflection was also present at the Jazz Plaza. Again a colloquium organized and directed by the academic Neris González Bello had placed, in which prestigious researchers, musicologists and specialists in the field intervened, when the tenth anniversary of its foundation was fulfilled.
So I think one of the most important events was the release during the event of a newspaper that covered what was happening, though it was of a minimum row, it also was of excellent workmanship, which is even more important. The newspaper was founded thanks to the idea of musicologist Brenda Besada, worker of the Popular Music National Centre, and it was great to include the best moments of the meeting, as well as to collect interviews and opinions, both from foreign musicians who visited us to intervene in the contest and outstanding Cuban jazz musicians.
Another important aspect was the decision that in the Pavellon Cuba plastic arts join the Cuban jazz festival. With the prestigious presence of Master Alberto Lescay from Santiago, to the making of a mural at the entrance to the facility in the capital artery of 23 and N, in Vedado, renowned representatives of the world of the visual arts joined in a beautiful display that no distinction should be established or segmented between artistic manifestations. The pleasant atmosphere generated in Pabellon Cuba, where also young and very valuable exponents of jazz performed, suggests that a similar experience should be repeated in future editions of the Festival.
An initiative why the new team of the organizing committee of the Jazz Plaza should be congratulated, chaired by Victor Rodriguez, current Director of the National Centre for Popular Music, was to create the distinction XXX Anniversary of Jazz Plaza, to honor a group of people and institutions that, since 1980, have been linked to various editions of the festival par excellence of Cuban jazz musicians. True that the delivery of acknowledgment during the last session of the symposium it was almost symbolic, but the intention of the organizers is worthy of praise.
Although thanks to the management of the new organizing committee was much better than in recent years, problems remain to be solved. It is unfortunate that mostly the sense of memory continues to be absent in this event, proof of which is that neither television films the concert, nor the presentations are recorded with a view not only to possible future edition of phonograph testimonies, but for the sake of saving for the future history examples of what occurred in these meetings.
That sense of memory has not been part of the action in the thirty-four years of the Jazz Plaza, so there is almost nothing of what happened in the life of the event: interventions were not recorded for posterity which, surely, can classified as peaks of musical moments in Cuba in the past decades. Those who have remained attending the festival regularly, I am sure they will agree with me.
Likewise, the instability that has characterized the composition and direction of the organizing committee of the festival, with frequent changes between each edition has to be avoided, because otherwise the project will ever move towards higher stages. While there was an acceptable gathering of tourists (over seven hundred) arrived in Havana, just to attend the Jazz Plaza still it has not been able to match the recorded in the early nineties, when a British associated company was involved, owner of the famous club Ronnie Scott from London and equally favored the occurrence of a large legion of international jazz musicians.
It's a shame that the fact that the Festival is not prepared from the instant that the edition concludes, but everything is organized at the last minute and no time to almost nothing (sadly a typical peculiarity of the Cuban context), key figures from local jazz musicians and those who today develop their careers elsewhere in the world come to Havana before or after the competition days, so the opportunity to make the necessary arrangements to match the instrumentalists travels with Festival dates is missed. That happened in December 2014, when in Havana we had visits, among others, of such renowned musicians as bassist Felipe Cabrera and pianist Aruán Ortiz.
It would not be bad that numerous jazz festivals that take place in the Caribbean and Central America, in places like Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama and Cuba, coordinate efforts to make something like a large chain of events, with exchange of musicians of our countries from one and another contest, as well as enhance the visit of tourists interested in the genre, which would be an estimable economic aid to finance meetings such as the Jazz Plaza and others taking place in the region.
You can ensure that the 30th edition of the Jazz Festival Plaza is among the squad of the best ones, besides the above remarks, some of which are beyond the scope of the organizing committee. The effort made by the National Centre for Popular Music and its leadership for the sake of this edition of Cuban jazz festival par excellence was at the recorded height, it deserves the most sincere compliments.
Now, as I write these lines, for a moment I go back long ago and I am in the courtyard of Calzada and 8, with my mother Elga Triana, surrounded by friends and colleagues as Humberto Manduley, Carlitos Lugo (disappeared in November 2014) , Leyma Hidalgo, the researcher Leonardo Acosta, photographers Elio Ojeda and Gonzalo Vidal, journalist José Dos Santos and guitarist Manuel Trujillo. I realize that despite that the ones of that time are no longer the same, the fact of having kept alive the Festival thick and thin since 1980 until today, was quite simply a feat that Cuban jazz lovers always appreciate. I say.
