In college, I took a course called History of Jazz. It consisted, almost in its entirety, of picking a jazz record, playing it, then writing a few sentences about each song. A regular assignment might have read something like this: “Thelonius Monk’s Boo Boo’s Birthday starts out with some piano. Then you can hear a saxophone. I think. Is that a clarinet? Well heck, why not! After that...”
So here, in Hua Hin, for the "2014 Hua Hin Jazz Festival", armed with the university-sanctioned ability to listen to the genre, I feel confident that I possess the necessary wherewithal to report, professionally and extensively and qualitatively, on seven consecutive hours of live jazz performances.
I arrive at about 5pm with a group of journalists. We have been told there will be a Jack Daniel’s-sponsored bar. We are very excited about this development. Will there be different kinds of whiskey? We hope so. Will we get to try the whiskey for free? We hope so even more.
This year’s festival, one day only — July 26 — is the first to be held at Suan Luang Rachinee Park in lieu of beachfront, a consternating fact for Oey from JSS Production, which is responsible for the event’s 100
million baht sound system.
“I think it’s too small; I’m a bit disappointed,” he tells me. Oey’s afraid there won’t be enough space for the thousand-plus who are expected to attend. It’s early, and the park is already filling up, and his nervousness could soon find itself grounded in reality. What worries me is the weather. The sky is a sheet metal grey, blending on the horizon with an ocean the colour of tin foil.
I find Jesada, the managing director of Boffo, the company behind the festival’s organisation. Is there some sort of contingency plan for rain? A backup location? Tents, tarps, umbrellas? He looks at the sky; he looks at me.
“It will not rain,” he says, in what is more self-reassurance than forecast.
About an hour later, and Jesada hasn’t yet been proven wrong. I’ve now had to time to explore the park grounds, where the opening act is already under way. Saxophone Madness is described on the programme as a “battle” during which musicians seem to be murdering a duck with, like, five saxophones at once.
All Star Jazz Battle.
The festival’s set-up, regardless, is quite impressive, especially considering it was coordinated in a flash flood-esque three months (Boffo stepped in after the previous organiser backed out due to political strife in Thailand).
Four large video screens line the stage, itself backdropped by the sea and illuminated by lights of trippy purples and blues, phosphorescent greens and reds. Music flows limpid and crisp from the multimillion-baht speakers. There’s also plenty to see at the sponsors’ booths, the main draw being food and beverages provided by restaurants from the area’s leading hotels (the JD, unfortunately, comes out of my own wallet). A strange toilet truck called Love At First Sit is parked here, as well. It is the most luxurious vehicle I have ever peed inside.
I grab a sandwich from Anantara Hua Hin Resort and Spa’s booth — French bread, merguez sausage, garlic-lime rouille and rocket salsa — and scarf it down in about three-and-a-half bites. Then I buy another (bratwurst and sauerkraut). Everything looks delicious, and prices are just as appetising — almost everything is below 200 baht.
The Steve Cannon Band, led by the eponymous American trumpeter, has now taken the stage. He’d toyed with the idea of dedicating his show to one musician, he says. “But there are so many great trumpet players. It seems silly to focus on one.”
He then launches into a boppy, fast-paced hour of songs by the greats — Dizzy Gillespie, Chuck Mangione, Miles Davis — filling the few-hundred spectators (about a 50-50 split of Westerners and Thais) with a communal buzz. People are content, light-hearted, and it shows. Some have purchased VIP tickets, allowing them to get extra close to the stage, but most are seated in several grassy areas a bit further back, drinking beer and glasses of wine.
With Cannon’s last note, we’re ready for more. Who’s next? Programmes rustle. But this is where the fun stops for now. It’s time for the opening ceremony, a high society photo op led by a couple of emcees who banter with the audience about as well as a bulldozer does a rainforest (“Let me see a show of hands, who bought their tickets from Thai Ticket Major?”).
Then it is time for the something called the “All Star Jazz Battle”. With ever-mounting horror, I watch for what seems like years as six singers — fame-seeking 20-somethings from shows such as The Voice and The Star — parade about in a two-hour, self-congratulatory performance complete with renditions of Two Door Cinema Club’s What You Know and Beyonce’s Crazy In Love that have been engineered into Frankensteinian jazz covers. The phrase “all stars” is either sad or laughable. One guy, when he tries to hit high notes, sounds like a bat with confidence issues. A pretty girl sings, her eyes so earnestly hammy as to be unnerving. It is a low, somewhat embarrassing moment, one that makes you wish for an aggressive strain of contagious laryngitis, or at least a vaudeville hook.
So I spend this time I wandering about. I approach a man with stark white hair and the slightly elven look of a Scandinavian. Toreflaa is visiting from Oslo, Norway. He is affable and smells like nine beers. His wife, who does not speak English, watches, wide-eyed, as we speak. She seems bewildered and a bit frightened.
“We just arrived; we have Heineken,” he says, lifting his glistening can. “We’re just waiting to hear some jazz. So far it’s just a jazzified pop.” But he’s cheerful enough for the moment, and I leave him to comfort his terrified spouse.
I also meet Na, from Bangkok. He is packing up his things, getting ready to leave.
“I cannot live here anymore, man,” Na says, gazing, mournful, at the stage, where a group of the fabulous All Stars screech about how they get their kicks on Route 66. He’s not the only one. The schedule is almost two hours behind, the clock is closing in on midnight and many have started to trickle out, bleary-eyed. I notice several people sleeping on the ground.
But there is emancipation in the form of The Travellers, a Japanese quartet (although the drummer is from Detroit, Michigan). They look the part in matching pinstriped 1940s gangster-era suits and shining, slicked-back hair, and sound even more so, smashing through a blistering rockabilly-infused set that riles the subdued crowd.
There are still two bands left on the bill — Infinity and Soul After Six — but vendors have started to close up shop, most of the wine is gone and cleaning staff has started to lurk, spectre-like, about the park’s boundaries, clutching brooms and collecting stray bits of garbage. It’s clearly time to go.
As difficult (and also unwise) as it may be to nit-pick a free music festival, there is somewhere a medium between accessibility and commercialism. You narrow the focus, cling less to the smart set — the VIPs, the photo ops — search for artists who care more for music than reality TV-tinged glory, consider changing the venue to Hua Hin city centre, with stages nestled among its many bars and restaurants, perhaps charge a small entry fee, and baby, you’ve got a real jazz fest brewing.
For now, though, this is what we’ve got. And it ain’t half-bad. In a country currently searching for itself — emotionally, politically, economically, socially — events like these are craved, some might say essential. This is what jazz, if anything, is about — not the snare drums and trumpets, the intricate modes and scales and chord progressions, but the convivial optimism, the relaxed atmosphere, the organic good times, free from camouflage and Humvees.
This is what keeps people happy, even when the beer runs out, and Lord knows the Land of Smiles could use an authentic grin about now.
