Six months ago in Paris, a band of music legends led by Herbie Hancock streamed a concert around the world to help 196 countries celebrate International Jazz Day – and with it, both the French capital’s long history as a jazz haven, and what Hancock saluted as the music’s disregard for borders, languages or creeds. Many jazz lovers heard the news from Paris during Friday’s launch of the 10-day, city-wide EFG London jazz festival – some just discovering, as I was, young London world-jazz band Vula Viel’s jubilant union of African, American and European music at Ronnie Scott’s. Even devout faith in jazz as a symbol of openness and change can be shaken at such a time, but if the festival has a message, it can only be to hang on tight to the preciousness of that idea.
Earlier, the US super-quartet James Farm played one of the launch night’s highlights. If sceptics claim jazz is all about avoiding tunes you can sing, they’re the antidote. The audience were singing their tunes long after the encore at Cadogan Hall, after witnessing the work of a band who know half a century’s worth of modern jazz inside out, then pour it into shapes that sound like songs.
Bassist Matt Penman’s Two Steps had something of the whimsical determination of The Bad Plus, and the brilliant saxophonist Joshua Redman (who improvises with a kind of impassive vehemence) was mournfully voice-like on his original If By Air, casually romantic on the melodically inspired pianist Aaron Parks’s bluesy Unknown, manic in his falsetto finale to drummer Eric Harland’s punchy North Star. It was a show that thrillingly balanced storytelling, space, virtuosic intricacy and controlled power.
Fine British jazz-rock band Partisans, opening for the Americans, had plenty of the last two, though their stories were a bit too implacably rugged and staccato to sing on the way out.
Vula Viel, led by xylophonist Bex Burch brought together the minimalism of Steve Reich, free jazz, electronica and Ghana’s ancient Dagaare traditions of social and religious music, fuelling it with an ecstatic dancefloor drive. They were the unexpected stars of a glitzy show that also featured US soul singer Jarrod Lawson, Norwegian ambient trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, and the melodious duo of Benin guitarist Lionel Loueke and bassist Alan Hampton.
A sharply contrasting Saturday gig at Rich Mix, Shoreditch, saw a group of local heroes including saxophonist Jason Yarde, singer Cleveland Watkiss, South African drum star Louis Moholo-Moholo and a workshop group of keen amateurs join a celebration of the 50th birthday of the radical Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the influential Chicago collective. It was a tightrope-walking and sometimes rambling large-group improv, but in its fitfully harmonious energy and experimental fusion of jazz, poetry, spoken word and video, the gig was a fitting tribute to the AACM.
• The London jazz festival runs until 22 November.
