Diluting the Brand

The 2002 Dutch Jazz Meeting—that usually biannual gathering of international presenters at the Bimhuis where various acts are showcased—featured Mengelberg and Bennink, Reijseger/Purves/Sylla, Delius, Braam, Bergin, Jannah, Snijders, Fondse and Van Kemenade, Available Jelly, SFeQ and New Cool Collective: a cross-section of diverse, distinctive jazz and improvised music. You didn’t have to dig them all to perceive they did credit to and reinforced the Dutch brand.

Since the Willem Breuker Kollektief ventured across the Atlantic in 1977, Dutch jazz/improvised music has been recognized for its originality, conceptual clarity and quality. It doesn’t all sound the same—no one mistakes WBK for Ab Baars—but you couldn’t find it anywhere else. Dutch cultural ambassadors abroad came to appreciate the music as a prestigious export. The brand has value.

I had attended the first few DJMs but missed recent ones. So the 2008 version came as a shock—like visiting a friend after a long interval, and discovering he’s given up housekeeping. One presenter who’s attended most every meeting said, this one hit rock bottom.

Among those showcased: Pierre Courbois, Michael Moore, Bert van den Brink, Starvinsky Orkestar. Goed zo. But also: a funk band with four singers; a trio playing Balkan music; another group claiming “African, Latin, funk and Balkan influences”; a Turkish band, and a quartet offering “American Heartland” music. (Quotes are from the program book. As long as I’m offending people: get a bilingual native English speaker to translate Dutch texts. Even excellent English-to-Dutch translators hit snags heading the other way.) Some of those bands were good, some not. But popster Wouter Hamel was plain awful; the program optimistically likened him to Anita O’Day, but he has all the jazz sense of Herman’s Hermits’ Peter Noone. As one foreign booker put it: every country has one of these Sinatra wannabes. Why send to Holland for one? (Or for a Balkan trio.)

It was as if programming had been turned over to witless bureaucrats, but some people involved were among those I’d’ve picked myself. From the outside, it appears the Meeting’s priorities have shifted from presenting music foreign presenters might actually want to book, to appeasing various domestic constituencies. But a blah set or two undermines a whole evening. Scenario played out again and again: bored presenter drifts from the hall to the bar, gets into a conversation with a peer, and they both miss a set or two that might have knocked them out.

As listener I wouldn’t mind the hectic get-em-on-get-em-off 25 minute sets if they didn’t rattle the musicians. Starvinsky started strong and ended on a lull, lacking a big finish. Moore had just built up a head of steam with a bass clarinet blues when he was yanked before his 25 were even up (on the theory his next tune would run over). There were other curious choices. Courbois’s trombonist Ilja Reijngoud made announcements entirely in Dutch, the gist of which was, we come from the provinces, and dislike Amsterdam: endearing themselves equally to those who could and couldn’t understand them. Wolfert Brederode belonged on the program, as he’s now on ECM, but did his set have to be quite so sleepy? (Jeroen van Vliet’s trio also aspires to Norwegian-dom, uses ECM’s studio and engineer.) Borstlap’s ’70s funk-fusion band: sorry Michiel, you’re no rock star. The best band I heard was the free-improvising Wilbert de Joode/Achim Kaufmann/Frank Gratkowski trio. Never mind Frank lives in Germany.

Ironically, what saved the Meeting from being a flop was a guerilla action staged by excluded musicians, which DJM sensibly decided to acknowledge: the Fringe festival on Saturday afternoon at improviser-friendly community center Zaal 100. DJM and the Fringefolk split the cost of a bus to ferry presenters across town—that meant Fringe musos had to kick in a little money themselves, which didn’t sit well with some participants. But the foreign guests turned out, because here was that creative music they’d been looking for: Janssen/Bennink duo; LOOS (finally, a swinging laptop player: Elvin DC); the Han Buhrs/Luc Ex quartet Rubatong; fourth-generation improvisers the Ambush Party; Tetzepi and RIO big bands; trio Boi Akih’s Dutch-Moluccan fusion; Michiel Braam, Wolter Wierbos, Raoul van der Weide and Corrie van Binsbergen all playing solo, and Eric Boeren’s two-guitar quintet.

Then the Fringers did the impossible: brought the afternoon’s logistically daunting program in on time, using two performance spaces, and keeping the music continuous whenever possible: one band’s last note might be ringing when the next’s pianist struck a chord. You didn’t even have a chance to go to the bar after a set—the following act already had your attention.

We’ll have to see which event pays off in more bookings. But let’s hope the Fringe encourages DJM to get back on course.