Jazz icon Herbie Hancock carried out this week in Tangiers on the finish of a four-day jazz pageant he launched greater than a decade in the past, telling AFP the style is all about unity and variety.
“It’s all about teamwork and making joy and sharing that with the people who are listening,” Hancock mentioned in an interview within the Moroccan metropolis.
Tangiers hosted the most recent version of UNESCO’s International Jazz Day for 4 days from final Saturday, 12 years after the inaugural live performance held in Paris, New Orleans and New York.
Hancock recalled that he launched the concept for International Jazz Day at a time when he was a goodwill ambassador for the U.N.’s cultural company.
Back in 2011, he mentioned, “I was thinking about how jazz is played all over the world.”
Jazz, mentioned the musician, composer and bandleader, is “a story of your own life”.
“And when you have a band, that’s several people’s lives, that they’re expressing. And bringing it into a unit. You know, so that collective experience, kind of oneness, is built into the fabric of jazz,” mentioned Hancock.
Fans of jazz fill auditoriums “because they want to feel that experience”, mentioned the 84-year-old who through the years has amassed 14 Grammy awards for his work.
On Tuesday evening in Tangiers, Hancock carried out through the “All-Star Global Concert” which concluded the pageant’s newest version.
It featured different high artists together with bassist Marcus Miller and singer Dee Dee Bridgewater.
Tangiers has an extended historical past as a haven of inspiration for American jazz greats reminiscent of Randy Weston, Idrees Sulieman and Max Roach who crossed the Atlantic to play and file music within the North African port metropolis, perched on the sting of the Strait of Gibraltar.
This 12 months musicians from so far as Brazil and Japan travelled to Tangiers for the festivities which included talks and open-air performances.
Tuesday’s live performance was launched by musician and healer Abdellah El Gourd, 77, a grasp of Morocco’s centuries-old gnawa observe rooted in African rituals and Sufi traditions.
The historical gnawa artwork kind, which incorporates historical spiritual hymns and dance, could be traced again to the descendants of slaves and was inscribed in UNESCO’s checklist of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2019.
American jazz pianist and composer Randy Weston had joined forces with El Gourd to advertise gnawa and fuse it with jazz throughout a chronic keep in Tangier.
Weston, who lived in Tangiers for 5 years from 1967 after touring numerous African international locations, was amongst artists who turned the highlight on the Moroccan metropolis, turning it right into a jazz haven.
In 1973, years earlier than he died, Weston devoted his album “Tanjah” to Tangiers.
“Randy was an exceptional, kind, and respectful man. He gave a lot to the city and its musicians,” mentioned El Gourd mentioned of his pal and collaborator.
Hancock added to AFP that Weston introduced dwelling to the United States from Tangiers and different Moroccan cities an array of musical “flavours”, together with gnawa.
Hancock mentioned the rhythm of gnawa “brought tears” to his eyes.
“It has like a magical influence on your being,” added the jazz grasp.
When requested to elaborate on the which means of jazz, he mentioned: “It absolutely does function so people can recognize and promote diversity.”
© 2024 AFP