Organising a music festival is an act of curation, conscious or not. Ideally, acts are selected to represent the best of a genre, however defined. They are combined to complement one another. Overall structure provides context and allows listeners some active choices. Just as pathways, display cases and explanatory texts help us to better understand and appreciate museum exhibits, so should the frames of sequencing or staging help us do the same for festival music.
Judging by last year’s Moshito Music Conference, festival curation in this country is too often unconscious — the representative of the South African Music Promoters’ Association declared trenchantly that “we are simply in this business to make money”. But Carel Hoffman, who runs Oppikoppi, gave a wholly different perspective: “A festival is not an event; it talks to its audience in a different way because it has a history and a future.”
The Standard Bank Joy of Jazz festival (its programme has just been released) has an interesting history. When it started life at the Pretoria State Theatre in 2000, it was a small event — a few evenings of largely local acts, with the selection often informed by the distinctively edgy musical tastes of the Mamelodi jazz clubs, so adventurous artists such as Zim Ngqawana were showcased.
It moved to Jo’burg, initially (although organisationally distinct) running end-on with Arts Alive’s Sunday Jazz on the Lake concert. When that proved unhelpful to audience numbers for either event, they moved apart. Over the years Joy of Jazz has stretched over more, and then less, of the Newtown Cultural Precinct, finally settling on its current shape of two tented stages at Mary Fitzgerald Square, as well as the Bassline, the Market Theatre and two or three fringe venues for free development concerts. The event runs for three evenings: a single big opening concert on August 26, then a choice of three- or four-act bills on the August 27 and 28.
The geography of the venues doesn’t always help intelligent curation. Apart from the two tents, the stages are slightly too far apart for rapid commuting — the walks can be bleak on cold spring nights.
Ticketing policy in the past reinforced separation. Many jazz festivals internationally charge a single admission fee allowing listeners to mix and match their own selections, sometimes with supplementary fees for tiny venues or very hot acts. Joy of Jazz in previous years insisted on separate ticketing. Last year organisers made a combined ticket available for the two tented stages; this year they’ll offer day passes that combine one of the tented stages with the Market Theatre or with the Bassline. That change indicates an effort to build a more coherent festival vibe, but whether it works will depend on clockwork timing of the acts and perfect synchronisation between the different stages.
As for the acts themselves, they include some attractive jazz names: saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, clarinettist Anat Cohen and pianist Kyle Shepherd among them. They will feature on the Bassline stage, which, over the years, has offered the most consistent curation — that’s where to find original and improvised music, new names and stimulating musical ideas.
But it remains hard to define the character of the other stages so clearly. Joy of Jazz used to be South Africa’s smooth and fusion festival; although that’s no longer entirely true, presentation and grouping do not help us to see it.
The tented Dinaledi stage offers fusion veterans Fourplay and jazz-classical crossover trumpeter Chris Botti, all superb instrumentalists. They are teamed with the jazzy R&B of Lalah Hathaway and Rahsaan and the Afro-soul vocalese of either Putuma or Wanda Baloyi — who speak most strongly to a rather different audience.
The Mbira stage next door has the loose character of a world jazz platform: Japanese reedman Sadao Watanabe, Thsepo Tshola or Sipho Mabuse, dazzling Latin percussionist Poncho Sanchez and Malian singer Oumou Sangare. Inexplicably, Classic-FM favourite, flautist Wouter Kellerman, who’d certainly appeal more strongly to Botti’s audience, is stranded there too. Swap Kellerman for Baloyi and you’d have a far more consistent vision on both stages.
The Market Theatre is acoustically the best venue for vocalists and has been used as such. Melanie Scholtz, Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz, and Stacey Kent, a British visitor and BBC Jazz award-winner, appear there, as does smooth exponent, American saxophonist Kim Waters. Although Scholtz and Kent will provide sounds to please the same ears on August 27, one wonders whether the very different approaches of Kent and former Mafikizolo lead singer Nhlanhla Nciza will work so well in sequence on the 28th.
There is still a nanny element to Joy of Jazz curation: on single tickets you pay for combinations you may not like. But if some of them jar, it is always worth the walk to the free gigs at Nikki’s Oasis or Sophiatown. Thanks to a partnership with Gauteng’s Puisanyo Live Performance Development Programme, a circuit for emerging bands, those venues consistently showcase some of the province’s most interesting young players. More context — profiles and line-ups, rather than a list of largely unknown band names — would help, but here is where you’ll see South African music growing.
Gwen Ansell teaches an arts journalism programme for Gauteng-based women writers as part of the Joy of Jazz Festival