Young Man, There's No Need to Feel Down in San Sebastián
As my second stop in the Basque Country and my final stop on the travel portion of my practicum, San Sebastián did not fail to impress. A week or so prior to leaving for this trip, I met Enrique, originally from San Sebastián but now living in Madrid for school. He gave me some recommendations of places to go, and without knowing anything about my connection with jazz, happened to suggest Altxerri. Later, when I was researching live jazz, Altxerri was the first to come up. The only night I was able to go out for live jazz in San Sebastián was Saturday, the 15th, and it just so happened that the Luismi Segurado Trio was also playing there that night. Since I had just seen them two nights earlier in Bilbao, I wanted to switch things up, and Altxerri’s website showed two performances that night. So I decided to go to the other one, but it turned out to be just a DJ. As much as I was hoping to see more live music, Altxerri still had a great atmosphere and I ended up learning more about the San Sebastián jazz scene. In this cave-inspired underground bar, the walls were adorned with several posters of previous years’ lineups from the San Sebastián Jazz Festival. I had no idea just how notable this festival was in the jazz world until I saw familiar names like Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and many more. Jazz has become much less popular since the days when the San Sebastián Jazz Festival was in its prime, so I wondered what the festival might be like now. This year’s festival includes some well-known artists like Pat Metheny, a jazz guitarist, and Joss Stone, a singer who began her career in soul but has since branched out into R&B, pop, and even reggae. To my surprise, the Village People are also one of the headliners for the festival. They are well known for their 1978 pop hit, Y. M. C. A, and honestly I have no idea how they ended up on the lineup for a jazz festival. I have speculated that because San Sebastián relies economically on the tourism from this festival and because the fame of the jazz community has aged significantly in the past few decades, they likely supplement with well-known artists or bands, even if they don’t necessarily fit into the category of jazz, or even jazz-adjacent. The DJ that night also had quite the range of genres, with songs I would expect in a place like Altxerri such as Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles and Oye Como Va by Carlos Santana, but also infused with some unanticipated zingers like somewhat jazzy covers of I Like It by Cardi B and Tainted Love by Soft Cell.
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Basking in the Warmth of Jazz from the Basque Country
With all of my travel this semester, I have made my way around most of Spain, but this was my first trip into the Basque country. Spain has 17 separate autonomous communities, all with their distinct differences in culture, but the Basque country was by far the most distinct. From the moment my bus crossed over into the region, I could immediately tell it would not be as close to what I’ve become used to this semester than anywhere else I had been. Situated in the Pyrenees and along the Bay of Biscay, it is significantly greener and more mountainous than most of the rest of Spain, aside from some other regions along the northern coast. In addition to the natural landscapes, the cities are also much more modern than the rest of Spain, with architecture that looks nothing like the architecture in all of the other big cities. The Basque country was never conquered by the Moorish or Roman Empires. Euskera, the Basque Country’s unique language, predates Romance languages and is one of six total languages in Europe that do not come from the Indo-European language family. When I was in cities where Catalan or another language was spoken in addition to Spanish, I could generally translate a lot of the words I saw on signs and posters purely based on my knowledge of Spanish. But anything in Euskera was indecipherable for me, with barely any recognizable roots of words. I could go on and on about every detail I noticed that set the Basque Country apart from the majority of Spain, but to keep this focused on jazz, I’ll get into the details of what I saw at Bilbaina Jazz Club. To start off, this was probably the most formal venue I’ve been to in Spain. It had a large, well-lit foyer when I first walked in, similar to most concert halls and theaters I’ve been to. The performance venue itself was also more like a concert hall as well, with seats in straight rows and once the performance began, the only light apart from the stage lights was a faint glow from LED strips lighting up the walkway. The trio who played, led by Luismi Segurado, also walked up the aisle after we had all been seated (despite there being a backstage) after being introduced by who I assumed to be the owner of Bilbaina. The rest of the performance was also very formal, and at the end, the audience ended up synchronizing our applause, something I had never experienced before. After consulting with the man next to me, I learned that this means the same thing as chanting “Encore” (or in Spanish, “Otra”), but to me felt so much more stiff and austere. The trio came back out for another song, and afterwards the applause was back to what I’m used to. I’m currently taking a Spanish Culture through Films class at Comillas Pontifical University, and recently we have been learning more about Basque culture through analyzing the movie “Ocho Apellidos Vascos”. We have been learning about different stereotypes and personalities of people from the different regions of Spain, and in the words of my professor, people from the Basque country have the stereotypes of being stubborn, emotionally cold or detached, straightforward, blunt, rustic, and rough-mannered. I wouldn’t say that the audience at Bilbaina Jazz Club necessarily fit that stereotype because it seemed like the environment fostered more of a formal interaction with jazz, but it could be that the culture influenced the designers of the jazz club. The Luismi Segurado Trio was from Pamplona which is a large city southeast of Bilbao, also in the Basque Country. Jazz is an inherently “loose” genre compared to some others like classical, so I wouldn’t say that I necessarily saw the rigidness of the Basque stereotype bleed over into the performance. This might be a phenomenon that speaks to the very nature of jazz– like the untethered structure of improvisation and the acceptance of crunchy chords and accidentals as a musician sees fit– that if it were to lose this freedom and be confined to a strict form, it likely would no longer even be considered jazz. Jazz Musicians Will Play Just About Anywhere
The Balearic Islands are part of Spain, off the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. The largest of these islands is Mallorca, a travel destination for many Spaniards and other Europeans. The first thing I noticed in The Jazz Lounge was that there was a very young crowd, which might be related to the fact that all of the band members were very young as well. At the beginning, there were three instruments being played– a flugelhorn, a classic Hammond organ, and a drum kit. Based on this, I was already expecting the show to be a bit more unconventional than a typical jazz performance. I was initially seated towards the back at a small table with another young woman, Josi, who was from Germany. We were enjoying watching the trio, but we both remarked that it felt a bit weird how far back we were while there were plenty of empty seats in front of us. At least an hour into the show, we consulted the employee who seated us and seemed to be in charge of the seating arrangements, and he explained to us that the area was reserved for a large group, but they had just canceled, so we were welcome to move up closer. We were the first to the front and many people who had been seated at the bar in the back also followed. The performance immediately felt much more intimate, and then not even two songs later, three more musicians showed up with their instruments– one on trumpet, one on trombone, and the third hopped on a piano that had already been on stage. The stage was not very large to begin with, and with the space that an entire drum kit, a Hammond keyboard, and an upright piano, there was barely any room left for the six bodies and space for them to play comfortably. So the trumpet and trombone players found spots to sit at the edge of the stage, right in front of us. Although the performance was formally advertised as a trio, it felt like it had become a jam session by the end of it, which was welcomed and embraced by the crowd at The Jazz Lounge. Between songs and during the band’s intermission, Josi and I chatted for a bit. She told me about a friend she would be meeting in Mallorca the next day who was a jazz drummer, and only a few weeks prior had gotten Josi hooked on jazz. She told me that he was moving to Mallorca to look for work as a jazz drummer, which I was a bit surprised about, so she explained that Palma supposedly has a relatively large jazz scene in addition to its overall music scene, and many musicians have decent luck finding work on the island. Another unconventional part of the show that I had never witnessed or heard of before was how the musicians traded solos during some of the improv sections. “Trading 4s” or “trading 8s” is a very common improv structure, where two musicians switch back and forth to solo for short sections. The number refers to how many bars a musician will solo for before letting the other musicians take over, and is flexible based on the key signature, tempo, and how long the musicians feel like soloing at a time. This is almost always determined before the solo begins. The musicians at The Jazz Lounge caught me by surprise when they had all three of the initial trio trading 4s for a song, and again when they had five out of the six trading 4s for another song later in the show. And there was a third song in which the flugelhorn, the Hammond, and the trombone traded taking short solos in a pattern I couldn’t pick up on– at first it seemed like the cycle was flugelhorn, Hammond, trombone, but then it went back to the Hammond for twice as long, and after that the order and number of bars taken in the solo was all over the place and impossible for me to follow. But the entire time, not a single person missed their entrance, and everything seemed to fall into place so neatly, as it did for the entire performance. All while it felt so casual with part of the band essentially sitting in the audience. The Only Three Things Americans Know
Marino Jazz in Valéncia was probably my favorite jazz club/bar that I’ve been to in Spain so far. The venue was pretty far from downtown, but right near the beach in a quiet neighborhood. I could see Marino Jazz from at least two blocks away, with a massive neon sign reading “MARINO” in red letters. Upon entering, the same red glow from the sign outside illuminated the interior of the jazz club as well. Marino was hosting “JAM JAM”, an open jam session, and had a similar start to how Intruso hosts their jam sessions. A resident band started, and then other musicians swapped out with them after the first few songs. Unlike Intruso, however, it didn’t seem quite as “open”, with only a few very talented musicians taking over an instrument for multiple songs at a time. It seemed like they all knew each other and had played together before, apparent in the way they conversed with each other and also in the way that they played together, they played a few really short songs (<1 minute) without any solos, very atypical of the jam sessions I’m used to, where everyone plays the melody, then everyone takes an individual solo, then the band finishes with the melody again. A few songs into the show, I met the owner and we chatted for a bit. He didn’t speak any English so my Spanish-speaking abilities were challenged, but he spoke very clearly so we were able to communicate well. He told me that the guys playing come every week for “JAM JAM” and very rarely does anyone else join in. I was a bit surprised because of how different it was from Intruso, where lots of random people were welcomed on stage. The atmosphere inside Marino was very different, however, as it was less of a bar than Intruso and didn’t have any standing area. In general, it felt like the majority of people who came to Marino were there to listen, and that it was already predetermined who would be playing despite being advertised as open. The owner, Borja, was originally from Valencia and told me a bit about the culture regarding music here. Every neighborhood in Valencia has community bands, primarily to be showcased during Las Fallas, Valencia’s biggest festival, but play and practice year-round. Children growing up in Valencia are accustomed to learning an instrument and joining their neighborhood band, primarily consisting of brass, woodwinds, and drums, similar to marching bands you might see in the US. After mentioning that I played the trumpet, Borja told me that there have been many successful jazz musicians out of Valencia, like David Pastor and Voro Garcia, because of how many people grew up in their municipal bands learning and playing brass and woodwind instruments often compared to most other cities around the world. The musicians wrapped up their second-to-last song and Borja went on stage to thank the musicians for playing and the audience for listening. He spoke a bit about his love for jazz and why he started Marino, and gave a shout-out to American musicians and the culture for sharing and developing jazz to be what it is now for our enjoyment. He pointed out the Americans in the crowd and gave us a (somewhat backhanded) compliment– he said that the only three things Americans do well are jazz, cocktails, and skyscrapers. It got a good laugh, especially from myself, but this comment put into perspective for me just how much jazz is perceived to be an “American thing” by Spaniards. I have noticed this around many of the jazz venues I’ve been to, especially with different posters and decorations on the walls, but also in places like vintage clothing stores where jazz is lumped into a larger, retro, American aesthetic. This was especially apparent in Granada at the Bohemia Jazz Cafe but it didn’t quite hit me until now, where there were posters from old jazz festivals in Spain among images of American celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Audrey Hepburn. Jazz of course has its roots in the United States, but my experience at Marino truly emphasized how much jazz scenes around the world have to owe to jazz musicians from the American South, especially in Spain, where decades of censorship and isolation prevented jazz from developing as much on its own as it was free to in other countries. Jazz and its Descendants: A Musical Family Tree
The Harlem Jazz Club in Barcelona was one of the first in Spain that I heard about after I began my research and planning for practicum. In the 1930s, several jazz clubs opened around Europe with the label “Hot Club”. The only one of these that ever opened in Spain was in Barcelona, but at an unfortunate time for Spain’s politics. It opened in 1934 while jazz was very new to Spain but quickly on the rise, but the Spanish Civil War began in 1936 and ended in 1939 when Francisco Franco assumed power. For the first few decades under Franco, any non-Spanish art and culture was suppressed so as jazz kept growing around the world, it came to a staggering halt in Spain. These “Hot Clubs” flourished elsewhere throughout Europe, while the one in Barcelona was never able to live up to its full potential. Despite this, however, since Franco’s regime, jazz in Barcelona has still been able to make a comeback, even though it was scarce when jazz was at its peak through the 1940s. This was apparent to me at the Harlem Jazz Club in Barcelona, when it was packed before the show even started. I had reserved tickets prior so I knew I would have a spot, but trying to get close to the front was almost impossible. The band playing that night was called Virginia & the Woolfs and consisted of a female vocalist, backed by an electric guitarist, an electric bass, a drummer, and a keyboardist. It occurred to me that this was the first female musician I had seen at a jazz performance in all my time so far in Spain other than two or three who had joined in on the jam sessions at Intruso. This is consistent with the male-dominated genre of jazz in the US as well, but looking back on it I’m a bit surprised by how long it took with the number of performances I’ve been to; in the US, I would imagine there to be at least one female musician in every 5 jazz groups, not 1 in 10 like it has been during my experience in Spain. Virginia & the Woolfs were a little less jazz and a little more soul and R&B, primarily covering songs from female icons like Aretha Franklin and Amy Winehouse. Most of the songs were very well known, like “Chain of Fools” and “Valerie” and had most of the room singing along. Despite being considered a jazz club, I can’t say that I really heard much that was strictly jazz at the Harlem Jazz Club, but the jazz influences in R&B and soul are not to go unnoticed. The genres as a whole have many similarities, like the composition of musicians you typically see, the presence of improvised solos, and general chord progressions and motifs. Although jazz is frequently perceived as an outdated genre, it has provided solid foundations and influence for many of the most popular modern genres, like rap, hip-hop, rock, and R&B. So although my listening experience at Harlem Jazz Club wasn’t necessarily characterized by any sort of classic jazz, like a swung eighth-note pattern on the hi-hat, it was inherently jazz-infused through to its core. Bringing New Orleans to Spain
I arrived at Rock and Blues Café in Zaragoza shortly after the Jazz Hunters had already begun their show and walked into a venue full of people dancing and feeling the rhythm. It was far more advanced than just the typical groove in place; there were several pairs behind the rest of the crowd caught in the midst of entire swing dance numbers, the flow of which were so smooth they appeared to be choreographed. As I admired the dancers, my attention was quickly caught by the band on stage, much larger than any of the other jazz performances I have seen in my time here in Spain so far. Not only were there significantly more wind instruments than any of the other jazz groups (trumpet, trombone, sousaphone, tenor saxophone, and soprano saxophone) but there was also a banjo and my favorite, the percussionist– covered in various bells and whistles and his main instrument, the washboard, played by swiping his thimble-covered fingertips across it. The only other place I have ever seen the washboard played live is the Bull & Bush Brewery in Denver, Colorado. My dad was born in Denver and has lived there his entire life, and has been going to Bull & Bush for decades with his family before he met my mom. My mom and her side of the family who moved out to the Denver area ended up enjoying Bull & Bush just as much as my dad’s side of the family, so it became a family tradition to go a few times a year for family birthday parties, always on Sundays when they had live jazz. Occasionally they would have a neighborhood high school band play, but on almost every Sunday for as long as I can remember, they would host the same band which most memorably included a man playing the washboard. Seeing Jazz Hunters was a very nostalgic experience for me, and not only because of Bull & Bush. It also brought me back memories from a trip I took to New Orleans in 2019 with my family. In the French Quarter but also throughout most of New Orleans, we saw a plethora of street performers. Even just walking down Bourbon Street, we ran into countless solo buskers, including people on guitar, saxophone, trumpet, voice, and more. The most prominent, however, were the big brass bands you could hear from multiple blocks away. They generated the biggest and most energetic crowds, and consisted of instruments not too different from what I saw at the Rock and Blues Café. They would have saxophones and a rhythm section on occasion but primarily highlighted the brass instruments, which Jazz Hunters also did. The energy of the audience and how the band interacted with us also reminded me a lot of the New Orleans brass bands with how many people were dancing, but also when Jazz Hunters came off stage for their final song, When the Saints go Marching in (very fitting for New Orleans), and marched through the crowd. The Rock and Blues Café had a great stage for a bar-like venue but stages in general create a sort of barrier between the musicians and the audience that doesn’t exist for street performers. By coming off the stage, the Jazz Hunters broke down that barrier and brought the energy even higher like I experienced in New Orleans. Another part of New Orleans that the Jazz Hunters had me reminiscing about was when I saw the Preservation All-Stars at Preservation Hall, right in the heart of the French Quarter. In a historic New Orleans venue, listening to musicians from a collective that works to maintain the traditional New Orleans style of jazz, it felt like probably the most traditional New Orleans-style jazz I could ever witness. And, as the Jazz Hunters explained they were hoping to do, I felt as though they succeeded in bringing the historical and iconic New Orleans sound almost 5000 miles away from where it began. With that being said, there weren’t any obvious Spanish influences that I could pick up on, but the majority of the band members appeared to be white. Spain has a much lower percentage of black inhabitants than the United States, especially compared to New Orleans, but I noticed that black musicians dominated the big brass band scene in New Orleans when I was there. And here in Spain, although I have seen very few jazz musicians of color in general, it is crucial to acknowledge the overwhelming influence that black musicians from the American South have had on the creation and development of jazz as a genre and its culture. A Trip to Andalucía Just Wouldn’t Be Complete Without Flamenco
Granada is a city in Southern Spain, in the region of Andalucía, which is well known around the world for being the home of flamenco. Just walking around town, I immediately noticed that music seemed to be much more integrated into the culture. There were street performers on every block in the more popular areas of town, and the flamenco influence was very apparent, as many of these performers were flamenco dancers and musicians themselves. On Saturday, I went to a flamenco show in a gorgeous and unique cave-style venue at El Templo del Flamenco. There were two female dancers, a singer, a guitarist, and a male dancer who doubled as a cajón drummer for the first part of the show. Although the focus at this show wasn’t jazz, I’ve been exploring the relationship between flamenco and jazz in Spain, and thought Granada would be a very appropriate place to see a traditional show, and make note of important aspects of flamenco that I might be able to see seep into jazz. First and foremost, flamenco guitar is always acoustic, and is frequently used as a percussion instrument as well. Although there is typically some organization and general outline for a song (this was apparent at El Templo de Flamenco because almost every song had a very coordinated ending), the guitar was, for the most part, completely improvised. The guitar part primarly consists of single-note melodies played quickly, with very few notes outside of the chord progression. A large part of the vocal performance is the emotion portrayed through it, from melodic strains that indicate that the singer is on the verge of tears or angry to the facial expressions they make while singing. Based on my research beforehand, there wasn’t much in the way of live jazz in the city of Málaga while I was there, but good thing there’s plenty of other towns close by, connected with stellar public transportation. I took a train down the Costa del Sol to get to Torremolinos, a smaller beach town on the outskirts of Málaga, where I found Clarence Jazz Club. This was the first place I’ve been that has been more of a true concert venue than just a bar. There was a large stage that fit an entire grand piano with the entire band playing on the other side of the stage, with plenty of room to spare. The night I went, Clarence hosted the Tete Leal Quartet, led by Tete Leal on the saxophone and flute, and joined by an electric guitarist, an upright bassist, and a drummer on kit. This show kept me on my toes the entire time, with experimental element after experimental element, constantly incorporating something new. All of the songs played were original pieces composed by Tete Leal with one composed by the drummer, but all very modern and trying new things. There were a couple songs with extremely complicated beats and rhythms, and multiple times I had trouble even just trying to keep track of the downbeats. The most experimental parts, however, were in the solos, primarily those done by Tete Leal. In one song, he threw some coins into the bell of his saxophone and shook it around as a percussion instrument, but not to the beat of the song, and the song itself had more of an ambient vibe to it as well. In that same song, I think he threw the entire audience off by blowing (or maybe sucking) into the bell of his saxophone and making a deafening screech. There were also multiple times throughout the performance where he would sit on the ground, without his saxophone up to the microphone, and play around with drastically different acoustic volumes, or not play at all and look like he was zoning out. He also did some other unique things with his solos on flute, where he would just blow air through the flute and slam the pads down loudly. In the last song, the spotlights also started flashing, for even more elements of surprise. After the show was over, I left feeling confident that I would never see a show like it again for a long time, as there were so many aspects of it that were exceptionally unique and unexpected, and I can’t imagine that there are many other people out there doing similar things.
I went to Café Málaga last night, and maybe because it wasn’t the weekend yet, the town of Córdoba in the evening seemed a bit dead. But not Café Málaga. It was by far the most crowded bar or gathering space that I saw on my way through town, and it’s fairly close to the center, so I was surprised to not see many people out and about, other than at Café Málaga. But the energy on the inside helped me make perfect sense of it. I walked in a bit after the show had started and I could hardly find any standing room. The crowd was on the older side, but very energetic and while there were some side conversations, most of the audience had their attention glued to the stage. The band consisted of a very entertaining singer who also played a kazoo and a whistle on occasion, backed up by an acoustic guitar, an upright bass, and a fiddle. This performance had much more of a folky essence to it than most of the other jazz performances I’ve seen, but it definitely made up for it in improvisation. One of the fiddle solos lasted at least five minutes, which is insanely long for a solo, regardless of genre, but the musician definitely kept the audience engaged with humorous references to songs we all knew like Jingle Bells and Mary Had a Little Lamb. The upright bass was given plenty of time to solo as well, which doesn’t always happen in a lot of bands. The most notable instrument for me, however, after researching flamenco and jazz and the crossovers between them for part of my Before assignment, was the acoustic guitar. I can’t remember the last time I saw, if I’ve ever seen, a fully acoustic guitar being played in a jazz performance. But here it was in Córdoba, in the region of Andalucía, known around the world for being home to flamenco, and I thought it couldn’t be a coincidence. And not only the fact that he was playing acoustic guitar, but that his solos tended to have characteristics similar to that of toque, the guitar element of a flamenco performance. Rapid, single note melodies, but much less isolated than flamenco guitar solos typically are, with both the fiddle and bass comping for the vast majority of each solo. Andalucía is full of flamenco musicians, but similar to the United States, being a musician isn’t the steadiest of incomes. It would not surprise me if the guitarist at Café Malaga had an extensive background in flamenco.
It Doesn’t Get Much Cozier Than This
A stark contrast from my experiences at Intruso, Bohemia Jazz Café was much less focused around the live music being the highlight of the venue. It was just one guy on piano and the environment made it much more like background music than a performance. Everyone was seated, and most of the tables weren’t even in the line of sight of the piano. It was quiet enough that each of the tables were amid their own conversations and didn’t seem to be paying much attention to music. We were lucky to be seated a bit closer to the piano so we could hear it better, as there were definitely a couple tables in the back that wouldn’t be able to hear at all over other tables’ conversations. Although it had a bar, it felt much more like a café as the name suggests. The walls were completely covered with posters, hanging instruments, and shelves overflowing with books. The piano was tucked away in a corner, and the best way to describe the genre would probably be “elevator music”. It was quite enjoyable and added to the overall coziness of the place. I didn’t recognize any of the songs played, and I didn’t really notice anything exceptionally Spanish about the music. The decorations in the café, however, stood out to me a lot. Jazz everywhere has a huge amount of American influence, but it was especially obvious at Bohemia Jazz Café, where many of the framed pictures and posters were of Americans, like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, and Marilyn Monroe. The aesthetic of the café seemed to be centered around American jazz in the mid-20th century, and the music that we listened to was there to match it. Also very notable in contrast to Intruso, it was much less modern and strictly stuck to more basic jazz, with little experimentation. |