Report from the 2nd DoJ 2002 International Jazz Festival in Donetsk

LOCAL COLOR

The first thing I noticed in Donetsk was a sinister dark building with the peremptory signboard Light Movie Theater and all the local girls sporting the platinum blonde style. It was as though the Marilyn Monroe boom of the 1950s-1960s had finally reached the Ukrainian miners’ capital.

A trolley car jammed with little old ladies huffed past our media minibus, bearing a huge sign in blue print: “Six Times a Week,” meaning perhaps that the local grannies were in that kind of state every day except Sunday. The sign was explained on the other side of the car: the logo of the local newspaper Segodnia [Today]. Imagine how advertising can tally with reality at times!

There was a Yushchenko poster hanging from a post and beside it a stone miner was about to hurl a huge chunk of coal. Who at, I wondered, for the fellow was obviously relishing the moment.

The form I was to fill in at the Shakhtar [Miner] Hotel lobby gladdened my heart with the column “DoJ#2002”: “Date of birth: ______ 200 _” Obviously a convention of infants was to take place alongside DoJ#2002 (i.e., Donetsk Jazz Festival ’2002, organized by the LEVEL Media Group).

In the corridor on the tenth floor I noticed that the beige carpet with brown patterns was rolled out only part of the way, ending precisely where the tenants walked to and fro most of the time. Proletarian aristocratic luxury and lower-middle-class economy went hand in hand. The implication was clear. The carpet is there, but don’t tread on it. Look but don’t touch.

But the most fascinating experience was the local landscape. Boldly, I walked across the carpet to a window and saw black and red refuse dumps dominating the city panorama, looking like extinct volcanoes. The windowsill was packed with boxed rubber plants and palms, so with a conscious effort one could picture oneself somewhere in Hawaii.

The press conference began at eleven a.m. Oleksandr Siery, president of the festival, noted, among other things, that children raised in the spirit of this festival and Donetsk jazz tradition will never have to play with “vocal-instrumental ensembles” [the surviving Soviet definition of a of rock group]. And good riddance! Somewhat surprised at such a rigid stand, I asked him what was wrong with groups like the Beatles or Pink Floyd. The president replied that he was opposed only to Soviet versions like Fire, Udder, and stuff like that.

Clear on that point and on the current Grand Prix worth UAH 4,000, we, a team of Kyiv journalists, decided to walk the streets of the capital of the Donbas [Donets Coal Basis] before the concert.

Downtown we saw Soviet memorial signs covered by billboards. One showed a muscled male torso embraced by slender female arms with the fingers displaying a collection of silver rings. The legend underneath read, “Glory to the Veterans!” I thought a quotation from Zhvanetsky [a popular Odesa stand-up comedian] would read even better: “Glory to the Veterans of Big-time Sex.” The billboard had its own legend in a very small print: “A New Collection.” Meaning the silver rings, no doubt, and implying that a girl sporting them will be extremely popular with bodybuilders.

Another billboard was gorgeous, without any Soviet admixtures. A pretty girl seductively suspended in midair against a pink background, and a paraphrased line from Makarevych [soloist with the popular Moscow rock group Time Machine]: “Let the world bend under you!” However, we could not figure out what that billboard was supposed to advertise. Maybe just to keep up the macho spirit. Indeed, a male passerby, engrossed in his own worries and spotting such a sensual picture, would feel instantly better. The reverse side of the billboard apparently addressed the fair sex: a man proudly soaring, wearing nothing but swimming trunks.

We also noticed an interesting trait in the local drivers; they preferred sidewalks to the traffic area, riding them without lowering the speed, especially those driving foreign cars. Was it because they didn’t find enough room in the street? No, there was plenty of room. I watched as a shark-silver Volvo turned from an empty street onto a sidewalk and raced ahead until it vanished in the maze of malls.

Kyiv drivers also use sidewalks, but stealing rather than driving along. In Donetsk, the stealing mode is the pedestrian’s prerogative.

COWBOY SHOOT-OUTS AND BRAZILIAN FESTIVALS

By six p.m., the Yunist Youth House was packed just like that trolley car with little old ladies (the tickets sold at from five to sixty hryvnias). The Donetsk public obviously liked jazz more than Kyiv.

The first to appear on stage was Igor Bryl, Moscow virtuoso pianist and chairman of the jury, with the New Generation group. The generation in question was sired by Bryl, as it originally consisted of his sons Aleksandr and Dmitry (both playing sax).

The jazz veteran started with his own composition, powerful and temperamental blues, then smoothly merging into country. It was as though Bryl and his boys were in a saloon during a cowboy shoot- out. Then the Western betrayed traces of Russian romance. Moscow background showed. “Attaboy,” someone in the audience shouted. Bryl then concentrated on the piano, striking up classic rock and roll. Express trains seemed to thunder past, girls whirling, hips swaying. Fifty or so couples were caught up in the head-spinning rhythm of the fifties and sixties.

The next to perform was Pёtr Nazaretov’s quartet from Rostov on the Don with Donetsk trumpeter Valery Kolesnikov. At first their music sounded a bit jerky, but then they struck up Gershwin and the atmosphere was instantly serene; someone rocking in a chaise lounge, watching light cumulus (not cirrus because they are discomforting with strong gusts of wind). No earthquakes or no social cataclysms.

The last on the repertoires was Brazil All Stars (no, not the soccer team). The rock group included two Russian musicians — Andrei Kondakov (keyboard) and Igor Timofeyev (saxophone) — and New York soloist Napua Davoi.

The latter gracefully stepped onstage, turned away from the audience and swayed her hips provocatively, instantly charging everybody with utmost enthusiasm. With her figure she didn’t really have to sing. But her voice turned out an extremely charming low key akin to the British singer Sade. She wore a white blouse and a pair of brown pants girded with a coffee-colored shawl. She cut a great figure on the huge screen mounted onstage. She sang a piece by the celebrated Latin American composer Antonio Jabimbo.

The women in the audience were thunderstruck by the B lack percussion musician. And he really was something! Africa incarnate genetically. A real shaman, sweaty, black and shining, eyes shut in ecstasy, sporting a little black hat, listening to his tom-tom, getting its own inner rhythm, pulse of nature, the rhythm of the trees. His performance brought the audience to the verge of a nervous breakdown

A gray-haired musician wearing round glasses played his guitar beautifully, handling the instrument with special loving care. He looked like Eric Clapton, and so did his style: a ringing cobweb slowly enveloping your soul.

Small hummingbirds seemed to flit round the Brazil All Stars, like harbingers of lasting joy, flying from one flower to the next.

Kondakov gave a cascade of fairy chords on his piano and suddenly the carnival was over, replaced by a clear and tender melody rising like the sun on a summer morning. Ingratiating persistence, the way a man tries to insinuate himself into a strange woman’s confidence, half-expecting a rebuff but hoping that his skilled maneuvering will ultimately be appreciated.

The saxophone lent the Brazilian throbbing rhythm a touch of anguish — bitter drop in the nectar, lest the music cocktail get too saccharine.

Many in the audience left their seats and congregated by the stage, joining in the song. Several encores later, they had to let the Brazilian group go.

ABOUT THE HORN, THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, AND F SHARP MAJOR

The next day’s round was started by trumpeter Arkady Shilkloper. Surrounded by boys dressed as pages or dwarves, he played his first composition. All would have been well but for the decibel level. Every scream of the trumpet pierced you like an electric charge.

Of course, he is an established virtuoso, but I was not able to single him out as a composer and on that particular occasion his Wood group and their modern interpretation simply got on my nerves. Everything was so nervous and vague.

The emcee said that Shilkloper had been awarded a Swiss government diploma for playing the alpenhorn, reading “For the popularization of the Swiss folk instrument.” And the instrument looked like an eight-meter smoking pipe.

The first composition he played on the alpenhorn had a lot of sobbing and screeching sounds and I was reminded of Grebenshchikov’s “We’re from the City of the Screeching Statues.” After that its sounds became quite sinister, as when heralding the hound of the Baskervilles in one of those many movies. Ivanushkin made his double bass gurgle and it also added to the setting: the great Grimpen Mire.

Followed the ceremony of awarding young performers in the DoJ Junior 2002 standing, I must say that the jury turned out quite civilized, even generous. A host of contestants received diplomas in various nominations, the most enigmatic formulated For a Sense of Jazz.

There were several awards for the third, second, and first place. The Grand Prix went to pianist Konstantin Gorbatenko (Moscow). He performed sometime after the Kyiv singer Yuliya Roma, but I was not destined to listen to her number undisturbed.

A man sitting in the next row started singing with her, presumably in English. Others in the audience told him to please shut up. In response he shouted, “Where is her F sharp major?” thus showing a degree of musical knowledge. I thought I’d had enough and turned. He was tall, looking manly, a bit like Clint Eastwood, with vertical wrinkles, but with a head more on the square side.

I grabbed his elbow and said, “Now look here, you’re acting like an idiot.”

Trying to focus his bleary eyes on me, he asked in turn, “Who the hell are you?”

I didn’t bother to identify myself and turned away. From then on I could sense hostile biocurrents with my back, but he had stopped singing. After a while I felt his heavy hand, “Hey, how about the two of us stepping outside?” Oh, I had it coming, I thought and then heard the man specify, “What d’you like? Vodka or cognac?” I said cognac.

After the first round I learned that the name of the source of “English lyrics” was Petro. “I knew I was bothering you and your wife (actually referring to Iryna Karpynos, poetess and journalist, and I strongly suspect that her husband Anatoly Lemysh, also a journalist and poet, would not approve if he heard the assumption),” he confided in me.

“I don’t like when there is noise in the audience, I can’t hear what’s happening onstage, besides their audio equipment was too loud,” I explained.

“Yeah, I know how you feel,” Petro said to placate, “but I wanted to hear them play in F sharp major, the way Bryl does.”

“Well, you ought to have come last night.”

“I couldn’t. I was at work.” He was bitterly disappointed, then added philosophically, “Things aren’t that simple, are they? I keep telling my son Mykola (he is 14) that he must study. Yeah, study my foot. Dating is what he does. Can you imagine? I ask him if he knows about Lake Titicaca and he says daddy, I don’t care about that lake.”

Petro laughed, “And you know what, he has a point there. Who gives a damn about Lake Titicaca?”

We parted like real buddies and I returned to the audience where Grand Prix winner Gorbatenko was finishing his number successfully. It was demonstration, not the compulsory program.

The emcee, Vladimir Feiergart of Leningrad, was an intelligent and vivacious middle-aged gentleman (to me he looked and sounded very much like the popular Soviet television host Irakly Andronnikov). He was awarded the Man of the Epoch Prize and the second emcee, Petro Poltarev of Kyiv, was sincerely happy for his sake. With his dominating bulk, arrogant style, and shaved head he reminded me of David Burliuk, the futurist of Kherson and close and inspiring friend of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Both had an extravagant component of the costume; Burliuk used to wear a small pot of flowers in his buttonhole and Poltarev proudly sported a necktie depicting a saxophone.

I didn’t like Garanjan’s big band; their music was too schematic. His endless riffs, mechanically performed by the trumpeters, turned my soul into a ship racing for a head on collision with an atoll. That kind of music just did not make it. One good thing about the orchestra was a saxophone solo. Now there was a human being, not a robot.

A few words about the Donetsk audience. It was extremely perceptive and enthusiastic (the F sharp major exponent included). The blas О Kyiv public is noticeably more reserved. Meaning that the musicians performing in Donetsk could charge themselves with optimism until next year.

DINNER UNDER ARTILLERY FIRE

The festival ended with a jam session in the form of a private party at that same Youth House. Various musicians, including festival participants, were to attend and perform. Just imagine several people playing saxophones and being joined by other musicians stepping into the room. The party promised to be quite a sight.

Well, it did not quite work out that way. The invitation cards read 23:30, but the party began at 01:30 am, when most those present were not sure if everything happening around them was a reality or a dream. The only sober-minded individuals were the cleaning women, checking invitation cards at the entrance, before the stairs, and upstairs. It was like Marxists gathering for a secret meeting in the late nineteenth century, away from the autocratic eye, using jazz as a smart cover.

The instruments were tuned, producing the same sound effect as during the concert. They were deafening. The audio engineer had to have been deaf from birth. In fact, the decibel level made even the festively laid tables look uninviting. It was like trying to have dinner on a Kennedy runway. Instead of a cozy club atmosphere it was a field test for the eardrums. To say something to a person sitting next to you at the table, you had to yell into his ear.

I felt so forlorn, I scribbled Elton John at the bottom of my badge with The Day logo, but it failed to make me feel any better. The noise could challenge Cape Canaveral at takeoff. A journalist I knew (she was in a much better shape, having had more than a couple of shots at a cafe) described the situation very aptly: “I’m getting sober at sound speed.” Rather than enjoy a jam session, we found ourselves under artillery fire. A shame.

We were sorry to leave the tables laden with food and drinks, but it was either that or getting shell-shocked.

POSITIVE INFERENCES

Barring the audio equipment and decibel level characteristic of rock, not jazz festivals, the Second DoJ#2002 left me with pleasant memories. As I have said, the Donetsk audience (unlike local car drivers) deserves all possible praise.

I usually visit Donetsk in the summer, when rose bushes are the city’s greatest attraction. This time Donetsk looked like an archaeological excavation. Most of the women were platinum blondes and most men had shovels and spades. Donetsk was getting prepared to make Alla Pugachova’s dream about a million red roses come true.

Once again we passed the stone miner preparing to hurl a chunk of coal, but this time in the opposite direction. He seemed wave Godspeed (must be a good fellow, for he could have hurled that chunk of coal the way Cyclops Polyphemus does in Odyssey).

One thing is certain. Donetsk ranks first in Ukraine in terms of jazz. The organizing committee has to be given credit, but we all hope that the DoJ#2003 audio engineer will not be a sadist.