Ilojazz : bien plus qu’un festival - beyond a festival

Attentive to the changing tastes of our intergenerational spectators, but also to the musical colour of composers, the organisers of the Ilojazz festival (held in the guadeloupean cities of Pointe-à-Pitre and Les Abymes) develop year after year, a thorough concept in order to sensitise and initiate a diversified audience, train and employ cultural and artistic practitioners or allow encounters between local and international professionals.

Cap Excellence (Excellency Cape: the local urban community’s authorities) is working towards an easier access to jazz music so that amidst elitist perceptions, its original power to struggle can remain. Cultural activist Luc Michaux-Vignes, a key witness of many events in Guadeloupe also shares this perspective.
Programmers thus privileged direct and interactive exchanges, targeting all publics  including people who are generally not reached by the cultural offer.

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From primary school

To start from the bottom of the age scale, institutions responsible for educational and cultural questions have been approached. Seven-years-old school children met the storyteller Suzy Ronel outdoors to combine the experience of books, reading and music. In good conditions, very early training will easily make an experienced audience: it is believed by the participants to the assembly of jazz’ specialists, musicians, scholars, educators, organised in december 2012 and entitled: “ Caribbean jazz…an identity language?”

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to retirement…

One or two older generations, of middle-aged people, attended one of the events of Ilojazz at the university. Many of them had never crossed its gates. Thierry Césaire leads the university’s cultural activities and for him it is important to host practical training courses, talks or shows as a way to attract a wider audience inside the university.

Ears and spirits opened wide

Throughout the editions, it is important for the festival’s organisers to lessen geographical and economic impediments to its attendance. The master class for amateurs and professionals, the introduction to jazz aimed at the general public, the karaoke jazz for amateurs, the display of photographic works by students of Université des Antilles et de la Guyane (the University of Antilles and Guyana) or even outdoor happenings, itinerant ones or a graffitist creating a fresco on Place de la Victoire for bystanders, those actions eventually reach a large number of persons.

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…and reach for those who seem hard to reach

Another kind of public: unclaimed young people who experience serious family problems. With the project Photo Et pourtant Elles Parlent! (Pictures yet They Talk!) In 2009, six teenage girls of the women’s shelter Le colibri benefited from an initiation into photographic art, a practical learning that could lead to vocational studies.

In 2013, two young people under the surveillance of the judicial police took part with a group of secondary school students, in a master class of the international malian artist Cheick Tidiane Seck at the cultural centre Sonis. They had him listen to some of their musical compositions.

Educators of the youth judicial police agree on the efficacy of local culture to integrate young people with special needs into their territory and to reflect a positive image of themselves; as with the practice of gwoka that can restore self-esteem and jazz to help renew interest in the other.

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No music without musicians

If we are to fully feel music, musicians should be able to make a living out of it and ideally thrive in playing at the festival if we can expect a change in listeners’ habits, too accustomed to access cultural goods for free, especially downloadable movies and music, preventing the whole business of records from cash inflow. To address this issue, another aspect of the festival is designed to mentor and support musicians’ vocations.

Festival-related actions were targeting aspiring artists but also the work in progress of experienced ones. A day of professional meetings co-ordinated by the department of performance arts of Pôle emploi (Employment pole, the national agency for employment) and the cultural structure Kolimel took the place of the ‘speed meeting’ operation led during the 2010 and 2011 editions of the festival.

Marc Prévost, manager at the new Pôle emploi culture-spectacle (department of culture and performative arts of the national agency for employment) in Guadeloupe and Swanha Desvarieux * founder and administrator of Kolimel had two priorities: brief presentations of organisations of the cultural sector and direct interactions of individuals. As a regular partner of the festival, Kolimel secures contracts for entertainment workers.

From 2002, Kolimel has mentored people willing to make a living from artistic jobs by providing technical, administrative and artistic information and training leading to the obtention of a degree. Swanha Desvarieux works with the city of Les Abymes, especially with the “Insertion par la culture” unit created in 2007 and led by Joël Coco-Viloin, who is consistently present on the field.

However, there are more candidates than available places in those two cultural structures that are victims of their own success and of the current need in transmitting an intelligible description of artistic professions and of the reality of alternating regularly with working, training and unemployment periods. Artistic, technical and administrative professions of the cultural sector require a regular updating of skills. Led by their passion, will they be ready for the permanent search of an assignment, without any hope of success?

Finally, from a global perspective, Jocelyne Daril, head of Cap Excellence’s Cultural Actions and Policy, believes that tangible results will be achieved if convinced and relentless actions increasingly tend towards making culture accessible to everyone rather than merely providing grassroots cultural projects.

Culture should be seen as a “force of Territorial development”.  It is the choice of the cities of Les Abymes and Pointe-à-Pitre that efforts and investment of today will shape tomorrow's guadeloupean audience.

 

Ayelevi Novivor,
Pointe-à-Pitre

*Swanha Desvarieux, administrator of Kolimel, educator and responsible to design courses to employment