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Gilbert Calleja
Bringing culture to the people is the battle cry for many of this summer’s cultural activities organisers. The Malta Council for Culture and the Arts (MCCA) has launched its Malta Arts Festival which will, for the first time this year, be concentrated over a three-week period starting from July 28 until August 9.
Early last February the council and its festival had stirred controversy when it announced that the Malta Jazz Festival (previously part of the Malta Arts Festival) was handed over to NnG Promotions, a four-man team of music impresarios. The festival had been the conception of Charles ‘City’ Gatt who for the last 15 years had worked hard to bring quality music to Malta. Understandably disappointed, Gatt said that he made it a priority to bring to Malta ‘only’ the best the jazz world had to offer but refrained from commenting further about this transition.
The jazz festival as we knew it is over. “The Malta Jazz Festival brought high quality music to Malta but had experienced a drop in attendances during its last couple of editions,” Dr Paul V. Mifsud, MCCA’s executive director told MaltaToday. Mifsud explained that the festival was trusted to NnG Promotions in the hope that it will attract a wider audience.
NnG Promotions have proven their worth on numerous occasions particularly with the organisation of large pop-rock concerts featuring the likes of Elton John, Eros Ramazzotti, Claudio Baglioni, and more recently Sting and tomorrow’s show featuring Roger Waters playing out the entire set from Dark Side of The Moon. This team of successful promoters which consists of Jonastin Zammit, DJ Gianni Zammit, Nigel Camilleri and Anton Attard, have all the right entrepreneurial qualities. However, their line-up of choice for the jazz festival has been heavily criticised as being too mainstream and too distant from the international jazz greats which the audience were used to see at Pinto Wharf.
Replacing musicians like Wayne Shorter, Don Byron and the Yellow Jackets this year will be the original Blues Brothers, Bill Bruford’s Earthworks and the Alan Parsons Live Project.
“We are expecting around 1,500 to 2,000 people to turn up every night,” Nigel Camilleri said. “Ticket sales are slowly picking up and as yet the night which has sold most is Saturday 22 July, when we will have Emily Bezar, the Tunnels featuring Percy Jones and Bill Bruford’s Earthworks.”
This is quite surprising especially when one considers the popularity enjoyed by the Alan Parsons Live Project, who were expected to be this year’s most popular attraction. Parsons has not only achieved wide popularity with his Alan Parsons Project but also made a name for himself as studio engineer (or as he is often defined, recording director) on albums like The Beatle’s Abbey Road, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The public’s preference for Bruford over Alan Parsons is interesting in the light of all that has been said about the previous editions of the jazz festival. Bruford was the original drummer of 70s prog-rock band Yes and later joined the equally famous King Crimson. In 1976 he also toured with Genesis. As a young musician he was heavily influenced by Miles Davis and he brought this influence into his work with the said bands.
Is the preference for Bruford’s jazz band Earthworks over Alan Parsons’s prog-rock and pop act the public’s manifestation in favour of jazz? What we know is that the council’s decision to sign off the festival in order for it to reach a wider public is in contradiction with the intent behind its recent restructuring. “This (restructuring) will change the council’s role from that of organising institutionalised cultural events, to promoting and creating new cultural concepts and products,” read a statement released earlier this week by the council. “This will provide Malta with high calibre, quality projects and events and enjoy the economic gain of opening an inflow market of culturally attracted tourists particularly during the lean tourism season.” When asked about the newly appointed team of arts advisors Dr Paul Mifsud said that they will help realise the council’s role as the country’s arts regulator, ensuring that cultural projects and artistic events are managed by professionally trained people.
In his comment to MaltaToday, Mifsud stressed the importance that Malta’s cultural life should help attract more tourists and bring Valletta (as a cultural hub) back on its feet. Mifsud praised the work done so far by the advisors on the Malta Arts Festival and said that emphasis was made for performances “to cater for everybody and not just a limited high-brow audience.”
However, Mifsud’s rallying for the popularisation (some would say vulgarisation) of the arts contrasts sharply with the council’s mission to secure “artistic quality”. The Eurovision song contest is undoubtedly very popular with the Maltese but it is only a cheap pop event and surely no one can say that it encourages cultural progress or that it promotes artistic debate.
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