North Sea Jazz 2022 and the Language that Transcends Language.
The beginning of July is always important to me. That is when I travel the small distance between my town and Rotterdam to attend the North Sea Jazz festival. I remember back in the 80s and 90s when NSJ was still in The Hague. Pure magic because it was right next door to where I lived as a piano student at the Royal Conservatory.
Though I’ve long since abandoned a career in music, I still disliked the move to Rotterdam purely for nostalgic reasons. Recently, it occurred to me that the move was genius. It’s not just that the new venue has more capacity. Moving the jazz festival to Rotterdam has made the event an event of the people and no longer the elite as it felt it was when it was still in The Hague.
Jazz is the Music From the Street
Of course, jazz has always been music from the street, of the common people, of the oppressed blacks who used music as an outlet for their hope and passion. Interestingly, as soon as something that belongs to a marginalized culture turns out to be great, it gets co-opted by the majority culture. Especially when it can be a money-making machine.
The 2020 movie _ Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom_, adapted from the 1982 play by the same name, illustrates this well. One of Ma Rainey’s musicians wants to sell his sheet music to the owner of the studio that is recording Ma’s music. The owner appears not interested and finally buys the music for a small cash amount. The last scene shows a Benny Goodman type orchestra (all white guys) recording the very tunes the black musician sold for pocket money. White people getting rich with the music the black people created.
When jazz was first introduced in the Netherlands, it was primarily popular among the rich and famous. No wonder that impresario Paul Acket began the North Sea Jazz festival in 1976 in The Congress Center of The Hague, the city of the cultured elite.
A Rich and Diverse Programming at NSJ
Moving the festival to Rotterdam in 2006 has allowed the organization to welcome greater crowds and offer more stages (15). A rich and diverse programming seeks a balance between the bigger names in pop and artists that belong to jazz proper. Bigger names such as Diana Ross, Gregory Porter, or Erykah Badu hardly fit in the jazz genre, but they have the benefit of drawing bigger crowds and thus more money, which allows for lesser known artist to be booked. While H.E.R. and Alicia Keys are great on stage, I primarily thank them for making Gonzalo Rubalcaba & Aymée Nuviola, Joe Lovano, and Eliane Elias possible. Because I’m the jazz nerd.
Just this weekend, during the festival, I realized: By moving to Rotterdam, the city of the working class, the North Sea Jazz Festival has become a festival for everyone. And that is a beautiful thing. Of course, it can be annoying to sit in a concert hall next to people who don’t know how to behave during a jazz concert (‘Do we have to applaud after every solo?’) or, worse, who keep yapping away during Liz Wright’s beautiful ballads. But I’d rather have that, than speaking in hot potato English (but then the Dutch version of course: _Wassenaars_ of _Goois_) over a glass of champaign.
Oh wait, I did have champaign to kick-start the festival (for a whopping €11,- per glass!).
Jazz as the Language that Transcends Language
Jazz being the music of the people, of the common man and woman, you and me, North Sea Jazz has accomplished an important mission: it has given jazz to the people. Who would have thought that jazz would be marketable across the Atlantic pond on such a scale as we see happening in Rotterdam? That certainly wasn’t the vision way back in 1976 simply because it wasn’t considered possible.
For me, jazz fan, former piano student, and copywriter, there is something special about all this. As jazz moves mainstream, thanks to the North Sea Jazz Festival, it fulfills another important task. Music is the universal language that transcends all languages. Without words but with a grammar and syntax of its own, it speaks directly to the heart of each and everyone.
For a few brief moments, the North Sea Jazz Festival becomes a place where hope and imagination blend into a new song. As participants both on and off-stage are swept up in harmony, rhythm, and melody, a vision emerges of what humanity can and should be.
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