Roxane’s first impressions about jazz

When I think of jazz music, I think about black musicians, playing in black and white a lively and furious music with their trumpet, clarinet, in a smoky bar, but maybe it’s because of a personal experience. Let me explain…

My first meeting with jazz was during a trip around Europe, more especially when we were in Prague. I think my feelings about jazz will be always linked with this town… It was a very classic jazz evening : in a smoky jazz bar, black musicians were playing a lively and furious kind of music with their trumpet, cello, clarinet and piano. I think this city is really connected with music, you have musicians in every streets, every bars… In a way, you can find the same atmosphere as in Louisiana, even if now you have more and more tourists there, you have always a shroud of secrecy when you look the Charles Bridge at the evening circled by fog but without any tourist, or when you cross some poor streets with homeless people and prostitutes, just closed to the majestic music conservatory. Prague is like jazz music for me: rich and eclectic in a way, and also very inspiring, but in another way, always linked with poverty, and the underground. And full of history, too.

Now, I’m discovering here the Australian jazz, and if the set is really different from this one I had in Prague, the atmosphere stays the same : a very lively music, but which can be also full of mysteries, without the smoke in the bars because it’s not allowed here and nobody smokes in Australia anyways, but I think that all the fog is contained in the voice of the singer or in the instruments. I had never worked listening jazz music, but in Eastside Radio, we do that all the time, and I’m quite surprised because I really enjoy that kind of music!

These are the images which come in my mind when I heard some jazz… And what about my feelings ? Here again, I think you can have two different kinds. First, I think jazz can be very lively, as I wrote before. You just want to stand up and dance with all your energy. And in another way, it can be very relaxing and calm you down… I discover also a very welcoming music, like people here! So even if my first representation of jazz is quite far away from the atmosphere of Sydney, I can discover here another facet of jazz.

Underground Prague Jazz Club