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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