Djabe at the Old Town square
Many years ago someone told me that there is a long process of maturation before you’ll start enjoying jazz music. For some time now, I thought about myself as a person whose musical taste had become mature enough to understand and appreciate some of the jazz performances. Couple of days ago I learned about a Jazz at the Old Town Square Festival and thought it might be interesting to see what is it all about, given that I’ve never been to any jazz gig before. Jazz at the Old Town Square Festival is an open air jazz festival taking place every summer here in Warsaw, Poland. It lasts for two months, presenting a different artist each Saturday evening. This year it started on July 4th and will continue till the August 29th.
The jazz festivities were initiated yesterday by a Hungarian fusion/world music band Djabe. The band was completely unknown to me–quite as every other name on the festival’s performers list–but after a visit to their website and hearing Doromb I became really excited about seeing them live and–oh boy–I was not leftdown. The band performance was absolutely amazing and Tamás Barabás quickly joined the ranks of my favorite bass players (and not only because of his excellent slapping). As for the other musicians, I think that many heavy metal drummers should be learning from Szilárd Banai’s fast and precise double bass drumming. Both Zoltán Kovács (keyboards) and Ferenc Kovács (violin, trumpet) gave a great performance as well and the only glitch was barely audible sound of Attila Égerházi’s guitar which emerged only occasionally.
Nonetheless, I can say that Djabe made a great impression on me and left me expecting much of the festival itself. I can’t wait for the next Saturday’s performance by a “living legend” of Polish fusion/jazz rock scene, String Connection.
