Trumpeter Arturo Sandoval performing on a Tribute to Tito Puente, part of a recent Jazz Roots series at the Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami. Photo courtesy Daniel Azoulay ©

A few years ago, discussing the beginnings of Jazz Roots, the jazz concert series at the Adrienne Arsht Center, in Miami,  the late musician, producer, record label owner and entrepreneur Larry Rosen, a co-founder of the event, estimated that the opening season had “about 650 subscriptions — of which about 200 were from our neighbors in Fisher Island. And in most cases, it was not because they were great jazz fans. They just thought ‘These are our neighbors and we want to support them.’ That’s why they did it.”  It was a modest beginning, especially for such a large hall, but Rosen was neither surprised nor intimidated.
He had moved to South Florida from New York in 2000 and in that conversation he shrugged as he noted how “anyone who’s in the jazz business knew that Miami was not a jazz market. […] I certainly knew what to expect. But you don’t really understand Miami unless you live here.”
Jazz remains a hard sell in South Florida. And yet, since its launching in 2008, Jazz Roots has not only found its audience but become one of the mainstays of Miami’s cultural landscape.

Jazz Roots opens its season on Friday with British Invasion – Latin Style, featuring singer and songwriter José Feliciano, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, pianist and arranger Shelly Berg, saxophonist Tim Ries, singers Lucy Woodward, Kate Reid, and Fantine and the University of Miami’s Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra.
The series continues with concerts by Mavis Staples and Charlie Musselwhite; pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro- Latin Jazz Orchestra; singer Kurt Elling; pianist, arranger, and composer Dave Grusin (who co-founded with Rosen the all-digital GRP record label), and saxophonist Branford Marsalis.

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Carmen París. Photo by José Aguilar courtesy Centro Cultural Español, Miami

While introducing a song, halfway through her concert at Miami Dade County Auditorium, Friday, Spanish singer and songwriter Carmen París grumbled about globalization and what she saw as the resulting loss of traditional cultures. It was a curious observation for an artist who has built her career on blurring musical borders and subverting the tradition. Friday, París spent much of her show offering fascinating (and successful) global reimaginations of the jota, a traditional dance originated in Aragon, a region in northeast Spain, where she grew up.
Perhaps globalization is in the ear of the beholder.

Smartly accompanied by pianist Diego Ebbeler and percussionist Jorge Tejerina, París presented a program titled “En Sintesis” (Summing Up), in which she looked back at her 30-year career. She has a powerful voice, a phrasing tinted by tinges of tango, Cuban, and Mediterranean music, and an engaging stage presence. As for the repertoire, she offered jotas in which she braided elements of tango, cha cha cha, and Middle Eastern music (“Guarani”); tango and Afro-Cuban music (“Mucho Ringo-Rango”), and Afro-Uruguayan candombe (“Cuerpo Triste”). She also included, for good measure, a jota in English and Spanish (“Just One?”) that she has recorded with a big band.
But the program also included a nod to son (the anti-globalization “Chufla Dragón”); a piece she wryly introduced as “a quantum bolero,” (“Distancia Espeluznante”) and a beautiful, a capella version of Federico Garcia Lorca’s “La Nana del Caballo Grande.” As if to personify the theme of global encounters, a couple of old friends, Cuban singers Danais Bautista and Gema Corredera, joined Paris for one song each.

The political and economic consequences of globalization is a discussion for another day. But blending traditions is as old as humanity, as natural as a person moving from one village to another, bringing along instruments and memories. In the hands of an artist who truly listens and is as talented as Carmen París, the mixing, the borrowing,  and the creative “stealing” offer unexpected possibilities for all involved.
This globalizing, we like.

October 2019