The Jazz festival was a completely unexpected treat. The course of jazz in the US has, as far as I knew, headed off into strange experimental realms, with only a couple bands still playing "old fashioned" jazz: ragtime, dixieland, big band stuff. The only bands that played this, that I had ever seen, were either in amusement parks or in New Orleans style restaurants. I assume there must still be these bands in New Orleans itself, but I've not been there to confirm, and I'd bet that most of those bands make their money from tourists.

The Jazz Festival opening weekend, there was a sunday afternoon of jazz in the theater in the Princes Street Gardens, under the view of Edinburgh Castle. The whole afternoon was great. The worst of the bands were still above average, and the best got my tapping toes in gear far before I noticed what they were doing. Nearly all of the bands were playing New Orleans Dixieland jazz. All quite traditional, and since I quite like the style, it was wonderful. A lot of guys from all over Europe (and even one or two from the US) singing classic jazz lyrics in their best Louis Armstrong bark, but all with distinctly non-American accents.

Among the bands that played that afternoon were La Vella Dixieland from Barcelona, Spain, the 100 Club from London, Ray Gelato and his All Star Giants, also from Britain, and Big Al Carson, all the way from New Orleans itself. By far, the hottest of these bands was La Vella Dixieland, blasting out some of the finest, hottest, toe tappingest jazz I'd yet heard. All classical New Orleans, of course. The Spanish accented "It Don't Mean a Think if it Ain't Got That Swing" was absolutely fabulous.

Played so close to the other bands, it was far too easy to make some stereotypes about the bands and their home countries. The Spanish jazz was hot. The British jazz was tempered and either slightly over the top, or a wee bit stuffy. The German bands were precise, but with less emotion in the music. Ray Gelato's stuff was great, filled was fifties-style schmaltzy music. Big Al Carson, the only band from New Orleans in the afternoon, had the smoothest voice of the entire day. The tunes just slid ride on out, and seemed effortless and quite lovely.

All good things must come to and end, and the afternoon was up. I had a schedule for the next week, and chose an assortment of bands to see - some I had been introduced to during the afternoon in the park, and others for sheer novelty value. My biggest novelty choice also turned out to be one of the slickest bands of the entire week.

I made a point of seeing La Vella Dixieland again, since they were so good the first time, and they were fantastic again. The room they were playing in was fairly compact, which just seemed to reflect their energy rather than constraining it. This time, when they played "It Don't Mean A Thing...", it sounded more American. It turned out their guitarist was originally from the states. I'm a nut for bands with exceptional percussion, and the drummer for La Vella Dixieland was top notch. (Really, they were as good as all my cliches are tired!) Towards the end of their show, everybody stopped playing except for the drummer, who had an assistant holding two glasses of water, each filled to a different level. He started drumming away on the glasses, keeping the rhythm on one while he drank from the other to adjust the tone, and then just pounded away on these glasses turning them into magical instruments of beat and music. It was simply astounding how much sound he could get out of such a pair of glasses. Of course, we had to get a CD, and Kristin ran around and got nearly all of their autographs.

Each of the two rooms in the club had about four bands playing each evening, for hour long sets, sometimes switching rooms, sometimes off to another venue. Showing up either early or late near a band you really wanted to see gave a great opportunity to catch some other bands you would have missed otherwise.

One of the bands we caught like this was the Tenth Avenue Jazz Band. They were from the states, I thought somewhere in the south, not from New Orleans, though I learned later they are from San Jose, California. It felt like the band's leader kept nearly insulting the audience with flippant cultural remarks, but it seemed to amuse the crowd (what there was of it, probably 25 people) more than offend. The question "Is there an air conditioner? Some windows maybe? A fan?" drew muffled laughter. The leader also seemed put out by the fact that the locals don't dance to the music. In the States, anytime there's a Dixieland jazz band, there's always dancing. But nobody danced to the music here. The leader had the band do a couple slow numbers to convince people to get up and dance, to mild success. The last thing they did, which seemed to go unnoticed by the locals, but definitely caught us off guard was what they called a song done "as if jazz came from Britain". The best way to describe it is a twist on the jazz beat. A typical beat goes "one TWO three FOUR", with the emphasis on the two and four beats. Their "British Jazz" was a standard tune, but accented like "ONE two THREE four". It makes the music feel a bit more stilted, like instead of flowing through dance steps, you'd have to trip through them. Or at least march. It was great to see the band playing with the form, though, rather than saying "hey, this music is static, and we can just play the old way." They showed the music is still quite alive, and that you can still push it around a little, even if only for those paying close attention.

The big novelty treat, for me, was the Uralsky Jazzmen. I thought to myself, what kind of Jazz could possible come out of the Ural Mountains in Russia? It turned out, really good jazz, and some of the best new New Orleans style music we'd heard in the festival. It turned out that most of the band were some sort of professors of music at a variety of universities in Russia, and the leader, Igor Bourco, had been playing New Orleans jazz since the late 1960s, longer than I've been alive! They did amazingly respectable classical New Orleans music, but also rearranged some Russian folk and show tunes to the Dixieland sound. It was splendidly both foreign and quite familar. It sounded both Russian and American at the same time. I was impressed enough I saw them do two sets, but only had enough cash to get one of their two CDs. One, "America meets Russia", was classical American Jazz. "Russia Meets America" was Russian music arranged to the American jazz beat. We got the latter. I came expecting to be amused, and I was just downright impressed. I would definitely see them if they were in my neck of the woods again.

The last band I saw was Psycho Zydeco, a cajun band from Australia. They weren't classical jazz, for sure, but the zydeco music is great to lose yourself in. The energy was fabulous, and the band was most gracious to sign my copy of their CD. Of all the bands, this one seemed the most commerical, the most likely to make money from their music.

Sadly, the Jazz Festival had to end. (Probably actually a good thing, since the tickets to the mid-week shows weren't quite free.) It was quite a surprise to find one of the few native american music forms to be living such a glorious life in Europe, when it seems more of a lost art back at home. Nobody listens to it at home because it's "old". Maybe it's just "new" here? Either way, it was a great festival, and would definitely encourage me to return and see yet more of it again in future festivals.