Page 69 - Jazz
P. 69

HARRY TAVITIAN	 A frosting of Latin jazz

 	 Latin jazz is not exactly what I choose to listen to. But it sometimes
  happens that I come across a TV channel that broadcasts that kind of
   music and become curious. Or, as happened in Stockholm, that I go
   with a friend to the Stampen club and am completely caught up into the

    atmosphere of a band who because of the passage of time and the tricks
     of memory have become nameless for me but who were playing Latin
      jazz with passionate engagement and contagious ardour. That lively

       passionate outburst of instruments and voices into unmistakeable
        rhythms that I heard again, no less stormy and unstoppable, in
        another club or rather live music bar in Zurich – Cannella.
         	 And these memories have returned on account of the Cuban

          Omar Sosa.
           	 I found out about Omar Sosa entirely by chance on Mezzo
            as I was wandering, remote in hand, among the few channels I

            had left undeleted from the list of hundreds of opportunities to
             waste time, doped and swamped by the soup of consumerism
              and violated by the subculture of entertainment programmes

               in which everyone laughs inanely, shouts, contradicts each
                other, asks idiotic questions in an insinuating tone of voice and
                tries to appear intelligent. Luckily, all this offensive carnival
                 of stupidity can be got rid of by simply pressing the delete

                  button lots of times so that what is left is just the personal
                   archipelago where you know you can find the universe that
                    you have decided to live in, the one from which you can
                     nourish your mind and spirit with wholesome food.

                     	 I found out about Omar Sosa one after-midnight that
                      was sunk in the soft matter of insomnia blended with
                       reverie, as I was about to take the next day seriously and,

                        by turning off the television, to convince myself that it
                        was really time to end the one that had just closed. And
                         I stayed in that no man’s land of hours with a well-

                          defined purpose, and I stayed there and listened to
                           an entire concert, enjoying the fairyland colours of
                            the band and the auditory strangeness of an African

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