Bringing the community together to the rhythm of jazz

On Tuesday, May 3, 2022, at noon, a duo of musicians inaugurated the first edition of Saint-Henri Jazz Week with an outdoor concert at Place du Bonheur-d'Occasion. A few amateurs are there, and the curious stop, enjoying the sun and the music. Jason Magellan, who is 18, was passing by to get to the optometrist. He has lived in the neighboring neighborhood, Little Burgundy, since he was five years old. “It's my passion,” he says about music.

Jason is a self-taught pianist. “I only play at home,” he says. COVID is making it difficult. “It's just a hobby, but I would like to take it more seriously,” adds the young musician who likes Stride, ragtime and blues. He also enjoys classical music and, in high school, he learned to play the trombone.

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“I learned to play the piano and to read music by myself. I practiced and practiced, and that's how it came about,” Jason says. His love of jazz was transmitted to him in the community, in the neighborhood that is the cradle of this music in Montreal.

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“I was not aware; lucky I was there! ” he exclaims about the music festival. “I think it's really cool that they're doing this here; last time I was really small,” Jason continues, recalling the last time he heard an outdoor concert in the area.

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Making music accessible to everyone

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“Little Burgundy is the gentrified name for this neighborhood,” explains Valérie Lacombe, musician and co-founder of the Saint-Henri Jazz Society, the non-profit organization that oversees the festival. In 1966, an urban renewal program gave the place its new name.

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Until then, the boundaries between the English-speaking working-class neighborhood, where the city's black population was concentrated, and the French-speaking working-class neighborhood that was Saint-Henri, were unclear. In 2019, Valérie and Sam Kirmayer founded SJSH with a community perspective. “The original idea was to offer a space other than universities to build a community, exchange, and practice an oral tradition,” explains Valérie. The musical couple has lived in the neighborhood for eight years. Upon arriving in Saint-Henri, who had just graduated in jazz guitar, and looking for a jazz community in the historic district, Sam frequented the neighborhood's establishments to play there.

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Les Jams weekly events, which take place in local bars and restaurants, are becoming popular events in the neighborhood.

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“People from different generations were coming, which doesn't happen often when it comes to jazz,” he says. Over the years, these Jams have built a community themselves. Anyone could participate. “It just proved to us that jazz is a music that can bring people together. It's powerful music that allows people to be themselves, and to be together,” says Valérie.

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Then, the pandemic hit, and the idea of creating a festival celebrating jazz and the community — in the very place where this music came from — germinated. In four months, after obtaining the necessary funding, the five members of the board of directors set to work with determination to organize the Saint-Henri Jazz Week. First, we had to make sure we had the financial resources before getting started. “We are tired of artists and musicians, like jazz musicians, not being paid decently,” says Sam. The organization, which is exclusively voluntary, sets everything up in a few weeks: around twenty events, including concerts, listening sessions, master classes and discussions, are planned over six days. The aim is to strengthen the community through jazz. The musicians are hired, everything is planned.

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Are people going to be there?

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An open invitation

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On Sunday, May 8 at 11 p.m., the festival comes to an end in a lively atmosphere. The five members of the board of directors — Valérie Lacombe, Sam Kirmayer, Sam Kirmayer, Carolina Guevara, Ariane Perreault, and Mark Dawson — are taking a moment to take stock. The team has just spent the previous six days wearing top hats in the field to ensure the smooth running of Saint-Henri Jazz Week, and several months planning activities.

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All the tickets for each of the events sold out, and the rooms were filled to capacity at each performance. “People came,” said Ariane Perreault, the communications manager. Nobody could have predicted that the concerts would finally take place at sold-out houses. The NPO could not count on the services of an advertising agent for the festival: the budget was tight, and the deadlines were even tighter. “We've been working for a long time and we couldn't see the results,” adds Ariane.

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Now we can also see what it can become. What impressed her the most were all the curious people who came to experience jazz for the first time, says the one who already lived in Saint-Henri and works there. Her love of the neighborhood was one of the reasons that prompted her to join the project. “When I moved here, my dad told me about the history of the neighborhood, and about the black communities that came here; it's something I had never heard of,” she remembers.The last time Carolina Guevara, project coordinator at SJSH, went to the Montreal International Jazz Festival, she did not appreciate her experience. “Today's Jazz Festival is a matter of commercial interests, says the urban planner by trade, who is completing his master's degree in this field.

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It made me think about how the city invested in the transformation of Place des Arts, mainly for this event.” “Does that mean that the musicians in a city bring jazz to life, or does it mean that the places, or the lack of places, dictate where jazz is lived? ” Carolina asks. She takes the thinking even further. “How superficial is jazz etiquette? Why is it, even if there are fantastic musicians and schools, that we don't hear more jazz, or talk about jazz? ” The circumstances meant that, rather than writing an academic article on the subject, she joined the SJSH board of directors and, today, she is dedicated to organizing the festival with the rest of the team.

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According to her, this type of event is essential in a city. “It is necessary to have this kind of activity in order to create places and to associate these activities with a community of people who can contribute to them, and shape the collective imagination,” says the coordinator.

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Mark Dawson, artistic director of SJSH, was able to see these connections between music and social life up close. “It's not just about jazz, Saint-Henri, or community, but much more: all of these things at once, and where they come together,” he describes.

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Valérie Lacombe, the co-founder of the festival, believes above all that people have formed relationships first out of an interest in musical performance, then thanks to the power of music. “Music Live has the power to bring people together,” she says.

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The new club in town

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As part of Saint-Henri Jazz Week, three New York headliners — Jeremy Pelt, saxophonist Nicole Glover and drummer Billy Drummond — will share the stage every day starting at 7 p.m. In the jazz tradition, they will be accompanied by local and American musicians playing in groups together for a few concerts.

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These performances will be followed by a second concert presented by local musicians, then by a Jam, that kind of musical circle that anyone can join. “You're going to see me play! ” says Jason. In recent weeks, the new Basement establishment has been regularly transformed into a neighborhood jazz club. During the festival, the atmosphere is festive within its walls. You feel transported to another era when you are in the dimly lit room, with an attentive audience and musicians who nourish the atmosphere. The line for the free concerts is getting longer outside. The Jam Continue until the wee hours of the morning, as if nothing else mattered.

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At the opening night of Jazz Week, Jason is in the audience. The young musician will be one of the last to leave the festival that evening. He meets the musicians and the team. Au Jam, a musician from Ottawa gives him an impromptu theory class. “It was so much fun, I loved it, I'll be back tomorrow,” he says. “We created all this for him,” says Valérie Lacombe gratefully. If the young man happened to be there by chance, it will be necessary to redouble our efforts to bring young people from the neighborhood together, and for black communities to come together there.

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One of the goals of SJSH is to make a place available to everyone. “The aim is to create a space for people to meet, to have a creative space, but a place where they can also just come. I want people to feel that there is a space for them,” says Valérie.

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This invitation is especially aimed at young people in the area, especially those who are traditionally excluded from musical institutions. “I want them to know that they can come and that they can see the best musicians, and see people their age playing, that they can talk to them.”

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This is something to be developed in the future, to make everything really accessible to those they want to serve. There is work to be done! “And also, [we need] more black people in positions of power,” she says, bringing us back to the origins and history of this music, questions that, unfortunately, are often forgotten.

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A precious heritage

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On a daily basis, does Jason feel the spirit of jazz in his neighborhood? “People don't respect neighborhood idols enough, despite the murals,” believes the young man. “The park is called Oscar-Peterson, but people still call it Campbell. Sometimes people ask who is in the photo,” he says of the murals that adorn neighborhood walls. If the elders in the neighborhood know the story, Jason wants it to be passed on more to his generation. “I was introduced to jazz by Michael Farkas.

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Thanks to him I met Oliver Jones”, he continues. The jazz legend, born in Little Burgundy, performed in the neighborhood several times throughout her childhood. In a park where a public piano was located, he shared the keyboard with the famous musician during a summer camp. He was nine. He played with him again a few years later. Jason's face lights up even more when he learns that the 87-year-old jazz legend is one of the honored guests at the round table held as part of the festival. Another legend, Ethel Bruneau, the queen of tap dance, is now 86 years old.

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At the Georges-Vanier Cultural Center, a stone's throw from where Mr. Jones grew up, and in the neighborhood where Ms. Bruneau lived when she arrived in Montreal, veterans tell an attentive audience their story, punctuated by original anecdotes, and that of the communities that lived in the neighborhood. Panelists Michael Farkas, who has run Youth in Motion for 15 years, an organization dedicated to young people in Little Burgundy, and jazz musician Modibo Keita, a resident of Saint-Henri, share their views in an intergenerational conversation.

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At the very end Jason wanted to ask a question. On the microphone, he explains who he is. “Mr. Jones, in the past I played with you twice. You may not recognize me, but I am a big fan. I was wondering if there was a way to keep the jazz heritage alive here.” As he approached, Oliver Jones recognized the young musician, who had changed a lot since they met.

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He shakes her hand to applause. “Congratulations! You must not give up.— Never! Jason replies. — It's such an important thing. I always told my students to never stop. There is no bad music. And I am sure you will get there.”

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Learning in community

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For New York saxophonist Nicole Glover, something is being confirmed. “The community is really integrated, whether in concerts, master classes, listening sessions, outdoor events. I feel like I've really seen the community over the last two days, and that's what I appreciate,” says the 30-year-old musician. In this respect, the atmosphere is different from that you sometimes see elsewhere. “I feel like the festival really understands what's important, which is good music and a sense of community. In some festivals, the priorities are sometimes different,” notes the musician, who has performed abroad.

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Although she was interested in jazz at an early age, it was thanks to community programs that she was able to improve herself as a teenager, before taking over the management of the university. “I was able to meet people who are interested in music like me; which was very formative.

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Before, I always saw the music I played as an outdated thing that no longer existed,” says Ms. Glover, who discovered a lively scene. “It reinforced my desire to continue playing music.”

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She adds that in the United States, where she grew up, the vast majority of these programs, some local, some national, are not funded by the government. “They are most often a private or non-profit business. These are people who are ready to teach and organize, and students who are ready to come,” she says.

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However, there is a very present jazz culture, probably because this music was born on American soil. Pianist Taurey Butler has lived in Montreal for 12 years. He accompanied Nicole Butler on the piano during these performances. “They are visionaries,” he says about the organization. “There are two things: community integration, but also they bring musicians together. I feel that this is something that was missing in my field”, says the musician at the time of Jam. There is no place for musicians to hang out. In New Jersey, where he grew up, Mr. Butler studied piano in high school.

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“Some of us used to get together to play,” he recalls. “Otherwise, I learned by myself, by playing jams,” says the musician, who studied engineering and language at university. “I am proof that there is no need to study music at university. It can help, but if you have the passion, you can develop it yourself,” he adds. He recommends having teachers or some form of Coaching to be well guided.

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Traditionally, this is how musicians learned to play jazz: novices learned from their elders. “Before, people learned by joining a band and doing an apprenticeship,” explains Sam Kirmayer, co-founder of the Société de Jazz de Saint-Henri. Everything changed in the 1990s with the arrival of jazz programs in universities. “People learned by going to school, and schools weren't very proactive in breaking down barriers,” he said. Valérie Lacombe agrees.

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This is why she favors mentoring and community practice, rather than the school environment. “We imported the European way of doing things: the programs are based on classical music, while jazz is more of an oral, transmitted translation, where you receive knowledge orally, for example in a jazz club,” she explains. “Institutions are these institutions of white men, and the programs are not designed to show the black culture in which Jazz has evolved,” laments the drummer, who studied at McGill.

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It is in this perspective that the SJSH wishes to progress.

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Consult the programming of the Société Jazz de Saint-Henri: sainthenrijazz.com