The Solvang Festival Theater is celebrating the fifth year of its jazz concert series, but the collection of summertime concerts received a small tweak last year, explained the theater’s Executive Director Pam Pilcher.
Pilcher told the Sun that the concert series is now called the Sunday Jazz and Beyond concert series, with the “beyond” highlighting the fact that the concert series features more than just jazz, but also music that is certainly steeped in jazz tradition.
A great example is the upcoming performer, Brother Yusef, a solo singer-songwriter who will bring his unique brand of blues music to the Solvang Festival Theater courtyard on July 31. Yusef explained the close link between blues and jazz music to the Sun over the phone from his home in the Pasadena area.
“Jazz is nothing but the blues gone to school,” he said. “All the great jazz players, from Miles to Byrd or Coltrane, they will tell you, ‘All I’m doing is playing the blues.'”
The blues runs through most forms of popular music today, Brother Yusef said, including rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, and even elements of hip-hop. Every artist takes the form and makes it their own, Yusef said, and he’s no different.
Brother Yusef calls his style “Fattback Blues,” which is inspired by the “fatback” style of cooking from the American South that uses salted pork fat to add a richness to food.
“It’s this really rich, honest, and authentic blues,” he said. “I always like to explain it as a mixture of delta blues, a little bit of Chicago vibe in there, and a lot of Louisiana hot sauce mixed in. So it’s a combination of a lot of flavors.”
Brother Yusef performs solo with his guitar, keeping beat with a tambourine attached to his leg, and beating time with his foot. His melodic inventiveness and rhythmic approach are a bold combination, making for a style unto itself.
But that’s what the blues, and its cousin jazz, is all about. The blues and jazz were developed by black Americans who took the music they carried with them through slavery and living under Jim Crow laws in the South, and created a style that favored freedom and improvisation over rehearsed lines and choreographed collaborations, Brother Yusef explained.
“It’s very democratic, and it goes back to the idea of the people who were not a part of the democratic process creating a very democratic music,” he said. “It’s a music of freedom. People who were not free created a music that allowed them to be free, and express themselves freely.”
That freedom is celebrated in the blues and jazz, which prizes improvised music, arising from a flow state, composed in the heat of the moment.
And that’s what the Jazz and Beyond series is all about, explained Pilcher, enjoying a beautiful day in the theater’s patio area, listening to some great music, sipping some wine, and being in the moment.
“It’s our way of bringing more live music and performing arts to the community,” she said. “And Brother Yusef was just incredible [last year], great personality, very engaging, and he even had people up and dancing, which isn’t easy to do in Solvang!”
Arts Editor Joe Payne can listen to or play the blues all day and night. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 4, 2016.