In the 1960s, jazz experienced a revolution by opening up to modal music from India and the Orient, to the rhythms of Africa, the Caribbean, bossa nova… The Sons d’Hiver festival, in Val-de-Marne and Paris, uses all these routes.
To begin this weekend, with a creation on Saturday January 29 born from the encounter of jazz and the rhythms, songs and traditional dances of Haiti, then the new jazz scene made in South Africa, Sunday 30 at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.
Saturday in Fontenay-sous-Bois, drummer-percussionist Ches Smith and guitarist Marc Ribot will mix their sounds with those of the island of Haiti. “This evening started with discussions with Ches Smith, representative of the new guard of New York jazzmen, and Marc Ribot, who accompanied Tom Waits, John Zorn and even Bashung, and who has his own career”confides to AFP Fabien Simon, director of Sons d’Hiver, which is living its 31st edition.
“They have a pretty strong connection with Haiti. It turns out that in New York, there is a large community of Haitian musicians who have emigrated to the United States, so it’s the meeting between New York’s avant-garde jazz and the traditional Haitian voodoo culture, embodied by a Haitian collective from New York, Paris and Port-au-Prince, and American musicians”continues Fabien Simon.
Marc Ribot, who was a pupil of Frantz Casseus, Haitian composer and guitarist of the 20th century, will play his role of free electron, bring his grain of sand, his dissonant chords and his distortions, in the pure tradition of a ceremony Haitian voodoo.
It’s the turn of the new South African jazz scene on Sunday January 30 to express themselves. “Jazz is a world music that is inspired by other aesthetics and other cultures, in contact with which it is enriched to sometimes become new music”emphasizes Fabien Simon.
The Brother moves on is an avatar of this new generation of South African musicians, who bring to their jazz sounds from various parts of the country but also pop, electronic music and hip-hop.
Other examples of syncretism between jazz and music from other worlds, a recurring theme of the festival: the master musicians of Jajouka in the Moroccan rif inviting African-American free jazz musicians (closing on February 19 in Créteil), or the Itiberê Orquestra Familia (February 5 in Cachan).
Under the direction of Itebere Zwarg, former bass player of the great renovator of Brazilian popular music Hermeto Pascoal, some twenty French musicians will interpret baroque and luxuriant Brazilian music, with a free and natural approach, where the richness of timbres and the improvisation.