Electric blues singer Shemekia Copeland set the tone for the 2022 International Jazz Day All-Star Global Concert at the United Nations General Assembly Hall when she opened the program by belting out her contemporary civil rights manifesto “Walk Till I Ride” from her 2020 social justice-themed album Uncivil War. The concert was billed as a “Call for Global Peace and Unity.”
Some of Copeland’s lyrics seemed quite fitting for what is happening now in Ukraine:
We’re walking for the refugees and those who have no home/ For every single living soul who feels so all alone, we gonna walk
If you ever stumble, reach out and take my hand/We're in this life together 'til we reach the promised land/ We gonna keep on walkin' 'til our shoes wear out/ Until we reach salvation and you can hear us shout
And toward the end of the concert, Copeland performed another appropriately themed blues rocker, “Ain’t Got Time for Hate,” decrying the messages of hate heard all around us.
UNESCO has designated April 30 as International Jazz Day, and works with the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz to organize the All-Star Global Concert and support hundreds of events, including performances and educational programs, around the world on all seven continents. (That includes performances by crew members at the U.S. McMurdo Station in Antarctica.)
The U.N. General Assembly Hall was the site of the first International Jazz Day gala concert in 2012. But this year’s concert was virtual with no audience, and webcast worldwide on Saturday. Here is the complete concert on YouTube, which featured more than three dozen musicians representing nearly two dozen countries.
In his opening remarks, legendary jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, the concert’s host and artistic director, observed that Jazz Day is “dedicated to peace, tolerance, and dialogue, while offering hope and healing amid these extraordinarily turbulent times. Music has been a source of comfort, strength, hope and continues to be a rallying cry for the Ukrainian people and other citizens from conflict zones surrounded by the most horrific conditions imaginable. While enduring unbearable pain and suffering, music has helped to strengthen its citizens and has bestowed a sense of faith and inner peace.“
Hancock’s remarks were reflected in the center of the southwestern Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi where a leading Ukrainian jazz musician, Mike Kaufman-Portnikov gave a solo piano concert titled “Jazz: Music of Free People.” Proceeds from the concert were to be given to the Ukrainian armed forces. Chernivtsi, near the Romanian border, has seen an influx of thousands of people fleeing the fighting to the east.
Kaufman-Portnikov’s repertoire included the jazz standard “Lullaby of Birdland,” his own composition “Lullaby in Jazz,” a jazz version of a French chanson, a traditional patriotic military song “Lenta za Lentoju,” and variations of the Ukrainian national anthem. It was followed by a jam session with local musicians.
The concert had to be moved from the street to inside an adjacent art gallery because security precautions required that there there couldn’t be so many people gathered outdoors, his manager Elyzaveta Borovtsova said in response to an email.
At the gallery, Kaufman-Portnikov also introduced a film, Hello! We Are from Ukraine, featuring a collection of music videos prepared by Ukrainian children across the country and abroad.
Kaufman-Portnikov had planned to launch a nationwide tour on Feb. 24 at a Kyiv jazz club. Instead of the sound of a piano, explosions rocked the city as the Russian invasion began. No one demanded a refund, and all proceeds from ticket sales went to support Ukraine’s armed forces. The concert was presented online.
“Now, perhaps more than ever, when the world is divided into two camps, light and darkness, jazz—the music of freedom—can make people stop and think,” Kaufman-Portnikov said in response to an email query. “War is not a reason to remain silent. Music is a weapon. Jazz proved itself in World War II as a powerful, inspiring weapon. Jazz gives the feeling of the freedom of thought and expression.”
Since the war broke out, Kaufman-Portnikov has been presenting mini-concerts online and outdoors to boost morale. He has also offered online music education classes for school children, and has volunteered to help care for children in orphanages.
During the global concert, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, speaking by video from the U.N. cultural agency’s Paris headquarters, said today celebrating jazz’s “universal and humanistic values ... which record its origins forged in the fight against racism, against discrimination, and against all forms of division.”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, noted that during the Cold War the State Department sent Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and other prominent jazz musicians throughout the world as cultural ambassadors to share “the creativity, the diversity and the freedom of jazz.” (She didn’t mention that the musicians did so even though they faced racism and discrimination at home.)
“As another jazz ambassador, Dave Brubeck told an audience in … Poland: No dictatorship can tolerate jazz. It is the first sign of a return to freedom,” she said. (Brubeck performed in Poland in 1958 as part of a State Department-tour, three years after the communist government had lifted its ban on jazz. It was the first time an American jazz band had visited Poland since World War II.) But it was the musicians themselves who demonstrated how jazz brings together people of all ages, genders, and ethnicities and builds cultural bridges across all borders.
There were jazzy versions of some familiar songs meant to lift the spirits in different ways. Jose James sang Bill Withers’ upbeat, feel-good “Lovely Day.” And there were poignant performances of two more melancholic songs about finding hope in troubled times—South Korea’s Youn Sun Nah performed Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” while Lizz Wright did Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile.” Throughout the concert, Asian female musicians were prominently featured—bassist Linda May Hon Oh (Australia), saxophonist Erena Terakubo (Japan), and pianist Hiromi (Japan).
And a video recorded in a Moroccan studio by the cultural agency ANYA Music celebrated the musical talent of women from Africa performing an original composition with traditional rhythms and instruments—Abigail Narkie Teye (percussionist, Ghana), Laura Prince (performer, Togo), Maah Keita (bassist, Senegal), Mounaissa (guitarist, Mali), Nelida Karr (guitarist, Equatorial Guinea), and Senny Camara (composer and kora player, Senegal).
In an East meets West combo, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane performed “Part 1-Acknowledgement” of his father John Coltrane’s deeply spiritual masterpiece “A Love Supreme” with trumpeter Randy Brecker, Lebanese pianist Tarek Yamani, Indian tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, bassist James Genus and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. And Hancock himself sat at the piano to perform perhaps his favorite composition, the meditative “Maiden Voyage” with Coltrane, Brecker, Genus, Hussain, and drummer Brian Blade.
Among the other musicians taking part in the Global Concert were pianists John Beasley (musical director), Joey Alexander (Indonesia), Helio Alves (Brazil), Laurent de Wilde (France) and Rey Lema (Democratic Republic of Congo), vocalists Gregory Porter and Alune Wade (Senegal), bassist Marcus Miller, saxophonist David Sanborn, guitarist Mark Whitfield, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, harmonica player Gregoire Maret (Switzerland), harpist Edmar Castañeda (Colombia), and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh (Syria).
In his closing remarks, Hancock said: “Over the past few years we’ve faced unprecedented challenges so as we look towards next year’s International Jazz Day, we ask all of you to keep the ideals of jazz alive. And when we meet again next April 30, it is our hope that our world will be a more peaceful, united and healthy place for all citizens.”
Let us hope so.
As usual, the International Jazz Day flagship concert closed with all the artists gathering together to perform John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which Hancock described as “a timeless masterpiece (that) has more meaning today than ever before.”
Here’s a video of the performance of “Imagine that closed the 2016 International Jazz Day concert hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House.
More information is available at the website for International Jazz Day: jazzday.com.