And the sun brought....Jazz!

It last only one day, but after almost two weeks of rain, on Friday afternoon the sun showed up to bring us a bit of music. Anne, from my department, told me in the morning that in the afternoon there was going to be some music around the city, and it was worth to have a walk through the old part of Basel while hearing some music: The 23rd edition of the jazz festival in basel. I was supposed to meet Helen, Fernanda, and Cynthia later, but when I finished my haircut I came home, had a shower, and then decided to go to see some of those bands for myself before joining them. What the woman at work didn´t tell me was that there was going to be so many people around, and so many bands of jazz!! I expected some bands playing in the downtown squares, but everywhere in the city was packed. I spent around 2 hours from stage to stage (33 in total, impossible to see everything), and then meet the girls for some drinks with jazz & funky. It is as if the bad weather stopped only for an afternoon to allow people to enjoy the city and the music. Also inside each bar, restaurant and hotel, there was a band of jazz playing. I find Jazz a difficult music to listen to a long time, but it always sounds good, and a lot of jazz songs have one special thing that I like: You can hear the same jazz song, and one time makes you feel very happy while the next time you hear it sounds melancolic or even sad. But Friday everything sounded like the first part.


One of the best bands, or at least the one that made people move the most, was a group of guys that call themselves ED Elastic (in the pic below) . They were playing from 8pm until 11pm around the streets. I recorded a couple of videos in case you want to see how was the environment. Funky, ska, and of course, jazz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBdGgTWF1KY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMJqIn78H3Y

But the first prize goes to....The retired band. They are still an active band, the only difference is that their members are all retired, or at least that is how they looked like, both by their name and their age. Hot and Sweet jazz.

Quiet music, relaxing....as it says: "hot and sweet". With a very tender banjo included. The guy with the trumpet made a joke during one of the songs. He suddenly stopped playing after the moment his face was very read because of the effort of playing the trumpet, and some of us believed that was going to be the end of the "happy" gradfathers. Nothig far from reality. The happy gradfathers are still happy and playing jazz in another city.

A curious thing that I noticed was that the average age of the people around (and there was a lot of people) was quite high, which I don´t understand, because it was really a cool evening to stay out and enjoy some music and drinks in the streets. I don´t know the explanation for this. maybe the average population of basel is just like that, or maybe older people know better how to have fun in Basel than young people? (even if only for one night), because I have never seen so many people around here. For a moment it looked like a very crowded city, full of people, with hundreds of bars everywhere and people having drinks in the terraces.

After almost 4 hours, some beers and one glass of Sangria, it was time to leave. I really needed to sleep properly after this week. Yesterday I did basically nothing appart from sleeping, eating, reading, answering emails, and go for a run during the only half an hour that it was not rainig in the afternoon. And this morning I realized that I fall asleep around 10pm beacuse I had to go out and I didn´t. I guess that my last thought yesterday was something like: Marc, now you have to stand up, have a shower, shave, put some clothes, go to have more drinks again.......zzzzzzzzzzz.

And today, Sunday, while I am writing this the tree close to my window has started to move as if end of the world weather is back in town (how strange is that here!). "Oh, Zeus, king of the gods and god of the sky and thunder! Please, leave me in peace for some weeks, at least until the end of september!!" The only thing I can offer to the divinity right now is.....more street music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoGxuvKPsaM