Africa-Press – Angola. Jazz critic Jerónimo Belo publishes this month his fifth book dedicated to Jazz and music, with the generic title “Feijazzoada”, inserted in the festivities of the 30th of April, International Jazz Day.
Jerónimo Belo, who has on the market the books “Jazz- Variable Geometry” (1992), “Feijoada” (1998), “Blues and Poetics against Indifference” (2005) and “Jazz- Me-mória e Gratidão” (2021) ), mentions in the introductory text that after the publication of his last brochure I think it could be of some use, for people who like music and want to get involved in the world of jazz and in the biography of its main social actors – the musicians -, organize a set of texts alluding to this musical genre.
“Here they are, therefore, gathered in this ‘Feijazzoada’, to accompany ‘the Jazz’ throughout the year, through the times; times of drought, with few or almost no concerts of this style with an African-American background, so lacking in support of various kinds, forgotten and cornered”, writes the critic, adding that “it cannot be overstated that, in Angola, professions linked to art are viewed with discreet haughtiness and jazz is often the poor relative of the so-called Culture”.
He writes that a civil servant told a Luanda breeder, pianist and pedagogue, that he was rowing in search of a port that he considered “safe”, to edit his first album; it was his Angolan “last port”, as he soon headed for the airport!!!
“And so, the ‘jazz lover’, alone and abandoned, away from his companions, without concerts, without records, without information, with rare radio and television programs, starts to have, in this brochure, a company, a stimulus, while ‘ wait seated’ for days more jazzy and, why not say it, more consciously generous. The idea of this “Feijazzoada”, which I serve you today at the best table in my backyard, is old”.
He concludes: “It is a creation of the great poet, journalist and literary critic David Mestre (1948-1998), who also promoted with enormous creativity ‘literary journalism’; a modality that was cultivated in Angola (and not only) by names such as Cordeiro da Matta, José Fontes Pereira, Pedro da Paixão Franco, António Assis Júnior, among others”.
For the author, celebrating jazz and life is necessary to remember David Mestre, the master of poetry who also opened the doors of Jornal de Angola to jazz. And also, to go on expanding the circle of friends of this music and trying to get other hands to grab the witness, so that jazz, in Angola, urgently comes out of intensive care. After all, countless Angolan blues tears also fed the Mississippi stream on whose shores jazz was given birth (slavery in the United States was its womb).”
Jerónimo Belo has collaborated with Televisão Pública de Angola (TPA), in the “Clube de Jazz”, for over 30 years and has been running a weekly program on Rádio LAC since 1992.
International Jazz Day
This year, Luanda will celebrate, for the 9th consecutive year, since 2014, the International Jazz Day, with a concert on the 28th, at Casa das Artes, a co-production with Banda Ango Jazz, directed by pianist Dimbo Makiesse; and on the 30th, the Jazz Festival will take place in Benguela, with Banda Ango Jazz, at Lodge Kapembawé, commune of Dombe Grande, municipality of Baía Farta, province of Benguela.
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