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FROM UMBRIA
JAZZ SOLIDARITY WITH NEW ORLEANS, AN ACT OF LOVE
TOWARDS THE VICTIMS OF KATRINA
UMBRIA JAZZ LOVES NEW ORLEANS. This is the
phrase that will appear on two thousand special
sweatshirts on sale in Orvieto during Umbria
Jazz Winter. They will be priced at 40 euros
each, and the manufacturing costs have been met
by Orvieto Town Council. There will be no
complementary sweatshirts, apart from the ones
that will be presented to the 48 musicians from
the Crescent City who are guests at this year’s
festival.
Proceeds from the sale of the sweatshirts will
go towards rebuilding or helping those in
difficulty following hurricane Katrina. If all
the sweatshirts are sold, it is hoped that
eighty thousand Euros will be raised. The
Associazione Umbria Jazz is running this
fund-raising venture with the Lincoln Centre in
New York.
UMBRIA JAZZ LOVES NEW ORLEANS is neither an
empty slogan nor, even worse, a media-influenced
PR exercise designed to profit from the tragedy.
The link between our festival and the birthplace
of jazz is very strong. Many artists from what
was – and will once again become - the most
fascinating and mysterious of America’s cities
have appeared on stage at Umbria Jazz. They
range from the Marsalis family to Fats Domino
(who was reported missing for several days after
the hurricane), from Doctor John to the Neville
Brothers, from Terence Blanchard to the Olympia
Brass Band. And of course there have been many
gospel choirs, foremost of whom are the Zion
Harmonizers led by Sherman Washington, who
opened the 1988 edition of Umbria Jazz with a
performance in the Upper Basilica of St. Francis
in Assisi, beneath the frescoes of Giotto and
Cimabue.
As well as the big names from New Orleans, each
year at Umbria Jazz there are also popular
musicians representing the city’s many different
types of music (blues, soul, zydeco, r&b,
marching bands). They mostly perform outdoors,
and their music makes up the joyous festival
soundtrack to be heard every summer in Perugia’s
gardens and squares. Every year the history and
culture of New Orleans are brought to Umbria,
together with the music’s profoundly human
dimension, which is something that everyone can
hear and love because it is immediate and
communicative. Because it is the pulsing rhythm
of daily life. And because it is the original
DNA from which the popular music of an entire
century was born, a music that is familiar even
to non-specialists.
UMBRIA JAZZ LOVES NEW ORLEANS is also a small
sign of our love and affection for that part of
America that is neither rich nor powerful and
which was hit by Katerina. It was in this
America, neither rich nor powerful, that jazz
was born, and in this way we hope to repay some
of the debt that we owe to it. |
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