From its humble beginnings in 1979, The
Montreal International Jazz Festival (MIJF) has
evolved into not only one of the biggest but, in the opinion of
many, the most festive and comprehensive jazz festival in the
world. The reasons for this -- especially for festival organizers
looking to best the learning curve or decide on what template
is most likely to translate into festival success -- are just
as interesting as the music itself, since the major criticism
of the festival just happens to explain its success.
Every
year smug skeptics and naysayers gather like dutiful drosophilae
to excreta, and in full j’accuse mode pretend to
pose the question they have already answered: What do Jeff Beck,
Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Lionel
Ritchie, Boz Skaggs, The Doobie Brothers et al have to
do with jazz? Isn’t the MIJF, in point of fact, more of
a world music festival than anything else? All About Jazz’s
pointman, John
Kelman, observes that “it's a festival that
long ago deserted purity in favour of a trifecta of jazz, world
music and blues.”
Over
the course of a typical Montreal jazz festival that runs for the
better part of two Mardis Gras-like weeks, there are approximately
150 ticketed indoor and 400 free outdoor concerts. In the outdoor
concerts, most of the major genres of music are represented, including
jazz and its many subsets: manouche, gypsy, samba, the standards,
fusion, swing, bop, West Coast, smooth and freeform.
Militating
against the appreciation of jazz and its offshoots are the typical
listeners who are shamelessly trigger-fast and judgmental in forming
their musical opinions.
The radio
is on, a music we’re not familiar with is playing and in
a matter of seconds we will have already made a decision on it.
Genres that fail the test rarely get a second chance. Jazz,
in its interval and architecture, is more complex and less accessible
than folk, pop, rock and rap, which is why most of us decide we
don't like it. And yet we would never say we don’t like
Chinese, because our relationship with it is limited to the fact
that it’s a language we don’t understand, which precludes
either liking or disliking it.
Since
there’s no circumventing the time and hard work required
to learn any language, including the language of jazz, the challenge
from the get-go for MIJF founders André Ménard and
Alain Simard wasn’t whether or not to call their event a
jazz festival, but how to cajole the prejudiced ear to give jazz
a second and third chance, knowing that most listeners automatically
default to music they are already familiar with. What strategy
could be implemented that would best entice a by and large skeptical
jazz public to attend a jazz festival?
After
a strenuous negotiation with City Hall, Ménard and Simard
wrested permission to convert a section of the downtown area into
a pedestrian zone that would accommodate on-site alcohol consumption
and facilitate the setting up of food and beverage stalls, an
improvised art gallery, a street market for the sale of CDs and
festival paraphernalia, a kiddies’ corner with daycare and
concert stages offering free concerts from high noon until round
midnight. In short, they created a party atmosphere that few could
resist.
A DAY
IN THE LIFE OF A FESTIVAL GOER
The streets
are closed to traffic, the party and fun have already begun and
there’s an international vibe (and scent of sativa) in the
air. You’re feeling good, everybody’s looking good,
it’s summer in the city and you’re suddenly stopped
in your tracks by a strange and sizzling guitar solo fueled by
a thrashing, cymbal-driven rhythm section. A fusion band (long
since disbanded) called Uzeb is playing and you find yourself
actually enjoying a music to which you previously wouldn't give
the time of day. You move on (not necessarily in a straight line)
to another stage where velvet-voiced Susie Arioli and guitarist
Jordan Officer are playing the standards that your parents used
to play and you couldn’t stand, only this time Cole Porter’s
“Night and Day” has somehow gotten under your skin
and you decide to stay for another song -- and then another. Twilight
gives way to a booming moon with larger crowds and concerts on
every corner. You look at your watch and it’s half past
thirty but who cares because you’ve already decided that
you’re coming back the next day – but this time to
check out more of the free shows, some of which are actually related
to jazz. And without realizing it yet, the beginning has already
'beguine,' note by note, bar by bar, line by line (larghissimo),
for the uninitiated for whom jazz is a language that has to be
learned before it is liked.
Perhaps
more than its programming, the MIJF’s most noteworthy accomplishment
(and legacy) is pedagogical, a show-me-how lesson on how to systematically
break down the musically prejudiced mind. The Ménard-Simard
formula predicts that with repeated exposure, guaranteed by the
inducements (festivities and freebies), there will come a day
in the life of erstwhile jazz skeptics when they not only make
a point of attending free outdoor jazz but indoor concerts as
well -- perhaps to catch the lyrical guitar work of Pat Metheny,
or butter-smooth vocalese of Kurt Elling or serenities offered
by saxophonist David Binney.
Crowds
that in the early years of the MIJF measured in the tens of thousands
now number in the hundreds of thousands, the fact of which speaks
to the elasticity of the musical mind and the importance of laying
down the groundwork for that mind’s musical development,
and prior to that, the psychological prescience of André
Ménard and Alain Simard, who have double-handedly grown
the MIJF into the envy of all festivals.
It wasn’t
so long ago -- in the 1960s and 70s -- when local jazz musicians
were forced to pitch tent in Toronto and New York to get their
music heard. Well, that was then and now is now and the now has
never been better for Montreal jazz.
This
year’s 31st edition of the Montreal
International Jazz Festival runs from June 25th
to July 6th. In the spirit of discovering new music, I recommend
you hitch your wagon to these stars:
(1) Sylvain Luc -- guitarist
(2) Sophie Hunger – vocalist
(3) Christian Scott -- trumpeter.
