Awesome jazz and blues
Captivating: Coco York delighted audience with a Jazz and Blues performance last Wednesday night. Picture: John Price
Saturday, June 14, 2008
IT was on last Wednesday that Coco York, the American jazz and blues singer, performed to more than 200 locals and expatriates at the Orchid Garden Hotel.
She is touring South East Asia and has been delighting audiences in Vietnam and Thailand in the last few weeks. She is now on her way back to Los Angeles, but will be returning to Bangkok for a six month tour, later in the year.
Coco was born in Arkansas and began her professional career in the clubs of the French quarter of New Orleans, where jazz music was born. It was the Black African community in the South of the United States that created the musical style we know as jazz today. Many thousands of African slaves entered the Americas through New Orleans, which in the 1840s had the largest slave market in the New World.
Jazz has its roots in the street music performed by slaves in the famous Congo Square. Attempts by the white authorities to ban these spontaneous musical gatherings failed. After the American Civil War, newly emancipated slaves were among the first jazz musicians.
It isn't surprising that jazz later became associated with the campaigns for civil rights.
Early in her career, Coco travelled to Africa to learn the music and songs of West Africa. Jazz is a musical form that combines African and Western traditions. The use of "blue notes", "call and response" and improvisation are typically West African.
During the 19th century New Orleans had a tradition of marching bands. It was from this band music and the African music of the slaves that the jazz tradition developed.
Early jazz musicians bought up the brass instruments pawned by Civil War ex-soldiers. Jazz historians consider Buddy Bolden one of the first prominent jazz performers.
In the 1890s there was little improvisation, which is such an important feature of modern jazz. Music was written down, but Bolden and other New Orleans born players, like Scott Joplin and Louis Armstrong, transformed the genre and created jazz as we know it today.
At the concert last Wednesday night Coco delighted her audience with old favourites such as "On a Clear Day," "Autumn Leaves" and "Fly me to the Moon". She was accompanied by the brilliant Thai pianist Roong Chareonchai and the talented Mark Hodgkins on saxophone and flute. Jazz musicians usually perform in quintets, but the trio last night managed without double bass and drums. "You can't imagine how difficult it is for a pianist to pretend to be drums, bass and piano all at the same time," Coco told us.
Coco admitted that she had not actually known where Brunei was, until she accepted this booking, but she had found it on the map and she "sure was glad to be here". She asked us, "How many of you kind people are actually from somewhere else?" Quite a few hands went up, but there were many Bruneians in the audience too. Some of us hadn't been to a jazz concert for a while and had to be reminded of the conventions: when a performer has played an improvisation, you clap. We soon got into the swing of it.
Coco struck fear and trepidation into British passport holders by insisting on audience participation. She wasn't going to allow us just to sit and listen. Those staring at their shoes risked having a microphone thrust towards them.
Coco introduced us to "skat" or vocal improvisation. Ella Fitzgerald invented this when she forgot the words to a popular jazz song. The audience was divided up into groups and we managed the call and response of the African spirituals. One young lady in the second row showed she was a natural — she clearly has a future on the stage.
Coco taught us all about "the Blues". In jazz and blues, the singer sometimes lowers the notes of a song by a semitone or less — it all depends on the singer as to how much. The notes are "flattened" and a major scale becomes a "blues scale". These blue notes mimic the pitches found in the African work songs, spirituals and field hollers, sung by plantation slaves. She sung us the blues classic "Why Don't You Do Right?" to enormous applause.
It was a great evening. Coco York has travelled the world to perform at famous jazz festivals such as the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Netherlands, the Jazz and Heritage Festival of New Orleans and the Malta Jazz Festival. Currently a Professor of Jazz Studies at the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music, Coco has been heard throughout Europe on television, radio and in recordings on the RCA, EMI and CBS labels. Her concerts and workshops for American Voices have taken her to many different countries.
The Brunei Music Society was delighted to welcome Coco York to Brunei and would like to thank Citibank for their financial assistance in making this concert possible. For more information, please sms or call the Brunei Music Society on 882 4850 or 888 3358.
The writer is the Principal of Jerudong International School.
The Brunei Times
She is touring South East Asia and has been delighting audiences in Vietnam and Thailand in the last few weeks. She is now on her way back to Los Angeles, but will be returning to Bangkok for a six month tour, later in the year.
Coco was born in Arkansas and began her professional career in the clubs of the French quarter of New Orleans, where jazz music was born. It was the Black African community in the South of the United States that created the musical style we know as jazz today. Many thousands of African slaves entered the Americas through New Orleans, which in the 1840s had the largest slave market in the New World.
Jazz has its roots in the street music performed by slaves in the famous Congo Square. Attempts by the white authorities to ban these spontaneous musical gatherings failed. After the American Civil War, newly emancipated slaves were among the first jazz musicians.
It isn't surprising that jazz later became associated with the campaigns for civil rights.
Early in her career, Coco travelled to Africa to learn the music and songs of West Africa. Jazz is a musical form that combines African and Western traditions. The use of "blue notes", "call and response" and improvisation are typically West African.
During the 19th century New Orleans had a tradition of marching bands. It was from this band music and the African music of the slaves that the jazz tradition developed.
Early jazz musicians bought up the brass instruments pawned by Civil War ex-soldiers. Jazz historians consider Buddy Bolden one of the first prominent jazz performers.
In the 1890s there was little improvisation, which is such an important feature of modern jazz. Music was written down, but Bolden and other New Orleans born players, like Scott Joplin and Louis Armstrong, transformed the genre and created jazz as we know it today.
At the concert last Wednesday night Coco delighted her audience with old favourites such as "On a Clear Day," "Autumn Leaves" and "Fly me to the Moon". She was accompanied by the brilliant Thai pianist Roong Chareonchai and the talented Mark Hodgkins on saxophone and flute. Jazz musicians usually perform in quintets, but the trio last night managed without double bass and drums. "You can't imagine how difficult it is for a pianist to pretend to be drums, bass and piano all at the same time," Coco told us.
Coco admitted that she had not actually known where Brunei was, until she accepted this booking, but she had found it on the map and she "sure was glad to be here". She asked us, "How many of you kind people are actually from somewhere else?" Quite a few hands went up, but there were many Bruneians in the audience too. Some of us hadn't been to a jazz concert for a while and had to be reminded of the conventions: when a performer has played an improvisation, you clap. We soon got into the swing of it.
Coco struck fear and trepidation into British passport holders by insisting on audience participation. She wasn't going to allow us just to sit and listen. Those staring at their shoes risked having a microphone thrust towards them.
Coco introduced us to "skat" or vocal improvisation. Ella Fitzgerald invented this when she forgot the words to a popular jazz song. The audience was divided up into groups and we managed the call and response of the African spirituals. One young lady in the second row showed she was a natural — she clearly has a future on the stage.
Coco taught us all about "the Blues". In jazz and blues, the singer sometimes lowers the notes of a song by a semitone or less — it all depends on the singer as to how much. The notes are "flattened" and a major scale becomes a "blues scale". These blue notes mimic the pitches found in the African work songs, spirituals and field hollers, sung by plantation slaves. She sung us the blues classic "Why Don't You Do Right?" to enormous applause.
It was a great evening. Coco York has travelled the world to perform at famous jazz festivals such as the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Netherlands, the Jazz and Heritage Festival of New Orleans and the Malta Jazz Festival. Currently a Professor of Jazz Studies at the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music, Coco has been heard throughout Europe on television, radio and in recordings on the RCA, EMI and CBS labels. Her concerts and workshops for American Voices have taken her to many different countries.
The Brunei Music Society was delighted to welcome Coco York to Brunei and would like to thank Citibank for their financial assistance in making this concert possible. For more information, please sms or call the Brunei Music Society on 882 4850 or 888 3358.
The writer is the Principal of Jerudong International School.
The Brunei Times
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