JAZZ BANJO? WELCOME TO BUENOS AIRES

I certainly can’t consider myself any kind of jazz expert, so the Buenos Aires Jazz Fest was as much of an educational experience as anything. The banjo was the first lesson. I was never really sure of how it was used before Earl Scruggs turned it into a picking machine. I assumed it was used in old-time pre-bluegrass ‘string bands’, but that’s about all. Being too lazy to Wiki the mother, I really had no idea that it was a jazz instrument. But sure enough there it was, live and in the flesh, in Buenos Aires’ Antigua Jazz Band a few nights ago. It seems back in the old days guitarists would frequently switch between guitar and banjo, playing both similarly, until Django Reinhardt began to change that, long before blues musicians and Earl Scruggs re-defined both completely. This became clear with my second lesson, a film retrospective on the career of Oscar Aleman, the genius Argentine indio moreno who was a contemporary of Reinhardt and in many ways his equal, some ways his superior. He was surely more of a showman, playing guitar behind his back long before Jimi and Stevie Ray. What do I know? I thought Emmett Ray of Sweet Lowdown was a real person until yesterday. That’s what I get for buying bootleg DVD’s in Thailand and not bothering to read reviews.

But I was afraid this festival was going to be too elementary even for me, as it was front heavy with swing and big bands, what we used to play in the high school ‘stage band.’ Of course I wasn’t paying or queuing for the big international acts like jazz stalwarts Randy Weston and Billy Harper, so had to be content with the local acts I could get for free. That’s why you travel anyway, right? to get the local stuff. Things finally kicked into a more modern gear Saturday afternoon with Escalandrum, a local band influenced by Monk and Miles, but with an unusual twist. I thought it seemed strange to see a drum trap set up on the front line with the other lead instruments, but chalked it up to the drummer’s primacy in the group’s creation. Then I saw drummer Daniel Pipi Piazzola take a solo. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard, an exclusively rhythm instrument totally transformed into something else, cut loose from its usual chores as the band’s internal time clock and given wings to fly. I can’t say it’s the best drum solo of its kind I’ve ever heard, simply because I’ve never heard anything like it. I’ve heard guitars reduced to percussion in some African bands, but never the opposite.

Roxana Amed played some good Joni Mitchell-style folk/jazz, covering ‘Amelia’ thoroughly in Spanish, and Ricardo Cavalli played some real nice saxy jazz, but the next real highlight was with the aptly named PWR3. While beloved Argentine classic rock bassist Machi Rufino may be the spiritual heart of this jazz/rock power trio, it serves mainly as a showcase for the speed-guitar work of Lito Epumer, of equally long renown in Argentine musical circles. He does not disappoint either, inviting comparisons to some of the great lead guitarists of the US/UK-based world of rock & roll. Drummer Christian Judurcha played drums with equal intensity, reminding one of the golden era of Cream/Hendrix-style power trios, albeit without the lyrics, all grown up and gone to jazz. Does that make it jazz? Surely many if not most of these musicians got their start in R & R, and I’m reminded of one of the reasons I like jazz in the first place. I get tired of hearing about who’s doing whom. I’m grown up now and this is an art-music alternative to classical, which leaves my butt without a twitch. It’ll keep you awake.

So the festival finally moved beyond its sleepy beginnings as one lost in its history. I was afraid the DNA of music had taken a turn somewhere and re-speciated, but not so. Interestingly, what there was not much of was Latin jazz, surprising coming from a Latin country, no? That means percussion, congas and the like. The next day rectified that a bit. I’m not sure exactly what they were fusing, but Buenos Aires Jazz Fusion featured percussion more prominently, though the real standout was the multi-instrumental pyrotechnics of Bernardo Baraj on saxes and flute. This band was slick, with Bucky Arcella adding smooth bass grooves while lip-synching like a ventriloquist, and Alejandro Kolinoski wailing on the piano. Next up, Daniel Maza continued the Latin edge to his jazz while converting it to his own style of ‘Uru-funk.’ An excellent big-guy bassist who’s played with some of the world’s great artists, he uses that bass line to ground his thumping funk in something solid, while adding some nice Spanish-language vocals as the dessert’s topping. Walter Malosetti finished the show with the guitarist’s old-master’s touch.

As nice as it is to get any authentic display of the local culture while traveling, it’s also interesting to see how culture is created and evolves, across decades and across continents. It’s interesting to see artists with Italian surnames playing American jazz in Argentina. It’s nice to sit in my room in South America and listen to Thailand’s Carabao. I like crossing borders; I just don’t like the paperwork. Sometimes these trails get lost and re-surface as something entirely different and original, the primal influences as long lost as the grunts and groans that eventually became language. I like making discoveries like this. That’s what brings me here. That’s what keeps me going, that and the desire to fly one of Virgin’s new almost-orbital flights once they get the price down.