In November 2011, during the General Conference of UNESCO, the community of nations declared April 30 as International Jazz Day, that wonderful music that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century among Afro-descendant populations in the southern United States. This event aims to raise awareness among the general public about the virtues of jazz music as an educational tool and as a driving force for peace, unity, dialogue and the strengthening of cooperation between peoples. There is something in jazz, a cadence, a sense of freedom and integration that cuts across all cultures. That is why today, after more than 100 years of evolution, we find that jazz is still valid, both in its original musical forms and through fusions with local music from around the world.
As an element of general culture, jazz has been characterized by not only contributing great creators to the universe of Western popular music, but it has also built bridges and communicating vessels with practically all corners of the planet, transcending political conflicts, wars, differences of creed and gender, among many other obstacles "that separate brother from brother", paraphrasing our great Afro-Peruvian folklorist Nicomedes Santa Cruz.
One of the most surprising things about jazz as a musical genre is that it combines the expressive freedom of the instrumentalists with a very demanding interpretive skill. Jazz is always talked about as a broad and malleable artistic form, in which elements from other latitudes can be permanently incorporated.
But this flexibility does not go hand in hand with carelessness or lack of rigor. The jazz instrumentalist is as meticulous and academically prepared as the classical music instrumentalist. And it is that preparation, that education, that allows him to experiment and give coherent form to a composition that can include from the elemental base of jazz that was played in the 20s, 30s or 40s, with sounds of Creole, Andean, black music , Asian, African, electronic, etc. That is why his integrative and educational capacity. Because the sounds go hand in hand with a deep knowledge of the history of the peoples, their idiosyncrasies, their own ideas regarding what folklore is.
In jazz there is a clear difference between “improvisation” and “improvisation”, a line that many opportunists try to disappear, under the premise that if they do jazz, they can do anything. Improvisation in jazz is born from the possibility of letting go of a creative idea, with a solid ground in which the history of music, the mastery of the instrument, the civilizations that are summoned through each phrasing, musical education converge. The improvised is born from a purely commercial and gimmicky desire, capable of mixing things without any capacity for synthesis, only with the intention of doing something “modern”, that becomes known and sells a lot in a short time. Unfortunately, this second category is the one that the general public sometimes rewards with its preferences, due to the immense lack of information that exists about the fascinating world of jazz.
This year, the city of Istanbul (Turkey's capital) is the official venue for the 2013 edition of International Jazz Day. Turkey is characterized by a tradition in the historical development of jazz. Munir Ertegun, the first Turkish ambassador to Washington in the 1930s, opened the doors of the diplomatic headquarters to the most important Afro-American jazz musicians of the time so that they could play freely in their rooms, since the society of the time was marked by racial segregation. Inspired by this legacy, the ambassador's sons, Ahmet and Nesuhi, continued the path started by their father and created the first jazz and gospel record label in the United States (Atlantic Records, 1947), a company that played a fundamental role in the dissemination of jazz in the world.