This year the JZ Music Festival is swelling like the bulging cheeks of a trumpet player. There are more acts, a wider range of genres and new venues to fit everyone in. TALK spoke with organiser Mark Elliott, UK acid jazz ensemble Us3 and local reggae rabble-rousers, Lions of Puxi.

Last year’s Shanghai Jazz Festival was a great success, with Giles Peterson, Joanna Wang and more creating an enclave of awesome in Jing’an Park. This year, the festival is even more ambitious. A showcase of Shanghai jazz musicians and American chanteuse Dee Dee Bridgewater (pictured) will open the festival on Friday16 October with a concert at the Yunfeng Theatre, before 37 bands and 20 DJs take to three stages – jazz, rock/folk and electrograss – in Century Park on Saturday and Sunday. 

“We had no choice about the move,” says organiser Mark Elliott. “Jing’an Park was too small. We sold out last year. Century Park was an obvious choice, and if this year is successful, I think I can speak on behalf of the team at JZ when I say we’d like to stay there in future.” 

The additional room allows JZ to bring together, and keep separate, acts as diverse as Cold Fairyland, Israeli dixie outfit Isradixie, Chinese rockfather Cui Jian, DJ Ben Huang and Catherine Lambert, whose character, a hotel lounge singer, beds Bill Murray’s in Lost in Translation. 

The decision to also use Yunfeng Theatre, Elliott says, reflects the breadth of music on show.

“Forgive me for the obvious answer, but of course I want to see Dee Dee Bridgewater"

“Some styles of music lend themselves to an outdoor party atmosphere which is the direction we’re aiming at for Pudong. Other styles require an attentive and quiet audience. So our festival has both parts, expressed through two locations.”

While the festival has a broad program, at least some of which will appeal to most, the fest’s target audience is distinct from other outdoor music festivals in China such as InMusic and Modern Sky. 

“Officially our target audience is 25 to 45 year olds,” Elliott says. They also aimed to keep the prices low “to make sure we’re not an exclusive high-brow event.”

Also, “with more music variety in 2009 we’re going to attract a wider target audience. It’ll be predominantly Chinese of course. What we hope is that some of the people who come to see household names performing will also be attracted by some of the other acts going on.”

With regards to his own top picks, Elliott says, “Forgive me for the obvious answer, but of course I want to see Dee Dee Bridgewater with the JZ Big Band conducted by Nicholas Bouloukos.”

JZ Music Festival. 16-18 October.

RMB 150 for one day, or 200 for both.

Web: www.jzfestival.com

What About Us3?

Even if you don’t know the track name, you’re sure to recognise the sound of ‘Cantaloop’, Us3’s biggest hit. It was what they played in cafés before St. Germaine came along. The London jazz rap group are one of the headliners at the upcoming JZ Music Festival, and TALK interviewed the band’s musician in chief, Geoff Wilkinson.

Us3 was very nearly over before it began. In the early ‘90s Us3 started getting some serious radio play with a track called ‘The Band Played the Boogie’, which samples Grant Green’s ‘Sookie Sookie’, originally released under Blue Note Records. EMI, the record company that owns the rights to Blue Note’s songs, called Geoff Wilkinson into their offices for a sit down. Somehow, Wilkinson managed to turn a conversation about potential copyright infringement and lawsuits into an all-access pass to the back-catalogue of Blue Note Records.

“At the time,” Wilkinson says, “the marriage of hip hop and jazz was a hot topic, as was the whole sampling issue. Other hip hop acts like Gang Starr and Stetsasonic were already flirting with jazz, and I said to the guy in our first meeting that if they let me use the Blue Note back-catalogue as a sampling resource it could be the ultimate fusion. I was also aware that it shouldn’t just be a retrospective thing though, which is why I also featured a lot of young jazz musicians from the growing London scene then. In a way it was a typical Blue Note thing to do, it was adventurous and forward thinking of the label to allow me to do it.”

Instead of making the expected d**k move, EMI and Blue Note paved the way for the seven Us3 albums that followed.

In Shanghai, Wilkinson says, “We’ll be playing a selection of tracks from all seven Us3 albums, with an emphasis on the latest albums. The two rappers I’m bringing over are Brook Yung (featured on the latest album stop. think. run) and Akil Dasan (featured on the previous two albums Say What!? and Schizophonic). The sax player Ed Jones will be with us, he’s the only musician I’ve had on every Us3 album. Bryan Corbett will be playing trumpet, who features on stop. think. run too, and on turntables we have my favourite DJ in the world DJ First Rate, an incredible turntablist. He was a member of the Scratch Perverts when they won the DMC World Championship. I’ve hand-picked all the musicians in the band, and they are all fantastic performers. I think we’ve got a good reputation onstage!

“The band also features Sean Hargreaves on keyboards and Chris Dodd on double bass. I run the beats from my laptop onstage. We’ve been touring with this set-up for about 10 years now. It rocks!”

Us3 are playing at the JZ Music Festival, 8.30pm, 18 October.

Roarstafari: Lions of Puxi

In 2008 a French gypsy jazz combo teamed up with a band of brothers from Mauritius and their Chinese ‘cousins’. The resulting nine piece reggae monster is one of our picks for the JZ Music Festival.

“Everything started when we jammed ‘Englishman in New York’ one night at the House of Blues and Jazz,” says lead singer Robichou Gauthier, “and as I didn’t want to sing the original English lyrics I simultaneously translated it into Chinese and the crowd loved it. We realised we had to record it and do a music video with it.”

Things took off from there. “I edited the video with my laptop,” he says, “and it’s now been seen all over the world, on French and American TV, on websites in Holland, Hungary, Thailand, the Philippines. From there, we decided to start doing our own stuff, and until today, it’s worked pretty well.”

Gauthier describes their sound as “mostly reggae style with hints of funk and bits of hip-hop. We try to load our shows with musical groove, human energy, heartfelt smiles and do our best to communicate that to our audiences. And most of the times it works!”

One question hanging over the band is whether they can consistently produce reggae in a city as notoriously lacking in sunshine as Shanghai. Aren’t reggae musicians solar-powered?

Gauthier says, “Yes they are, but not just that. I guess we need sea, sex and sun to play better music, but Shanghai also gives us a powerful inspiration, and helps us to grow in a different way. The lack of sun pushes us to consider our environment, adapt, and find inspiration in the places others overlook. These Lions aren’t going extinct!”

In fact they’re just getting started. “We are happy to be at the beginning of reggae music in China, and happy to bring new vibes to this country. On the other hand, we get influenced by all the crazy little things that happen to us in the empire of the middle.”

Oh, and one other thing. Where do they get their weed and how much for an ounce?

“No idea,” Gauthier says. “That stuff is illegal.”