Tomorrow Comes Today at European Jazz Network Gathering

By Peter Margasak I Sep. 24, 2024

Wim Wabbes, outgoing European Jazz Network president, makes a point during an opening day session of the ENJ conference in Ghent, Belgium.
(Photo: Bjorn Comhaire)

Each year programmers and representatives of most of Europe’s most prestigious and important jazz festivals, clubs and concert series come together to strengthen continental connections, allowing members of the European Jazz Network to meet face-to-face. The organization was founded back in 1987 and has grown steadily in subsequent decades, now boasting 202 members from 37 different countries. The 10th and most recent gathering took place Sept. 12–15 in Ghent, Belgium, where outgoing EJN president Wim Wabbes welcomed international guests to the picturesque city. Not only was Wabbes relinquishing his EJN post, but he has also just retired from his position as artistic director of the gorgeous Handelsbeurs Concert Hall, a post he held for nearly 12 years, designing a stylistically kaleidoscopic program built around various strains of jazz, but also including rock and world music. The venue, which passed the programming reins to Jaïr Tchong, hosted a number of concerts showcasing Belgian artists.

The opening day of the conference was a closed session for members to discuss business affairs, including the introduction of the Polish curator Karolina Juzwa — the founder of the International Jazz Platform in Lodz — but on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 13 and 14, daytime activities occurred at the stunning Music Centre De Bijloke, a former 13th century hospital converted in a live music center. While the main concert hall has been updated with state-of-the art acoustic treatments and a modern sound system, its original roof remains intact, an architectural marvel that required an entire forest in the Ardennes to be felled for its planks and arches. The theme of this year’s conference was “Tomorrow Comes Today,” placing an unabashed focus on youth — exploring ways to attract young listeners, to address its changing concerns regarding the environment, gender and racial balance, and an unstable political period.

While Wabbes and Ha Concerts served as this year’s host, they partnered with VI.BE, a support organization serving the music industry in Brussels and Flanders, and JazzLab, the largest organizer of jazz performances in Flanders. Together they sought to present a vibrant array of speakers to tackle youth-oriented issues, pointedly enlisting young people as panelists. While the undertaking was admirable, many of the discussions failed to provide many answers, too often sticking to superficial bromides and platitudes rather than facing difficult conversations.

In a bold move, the keynote speech was given by a 25-year-old Belgian slam poet champion and songwriter of Rwandan descent, Lisette Ma Neza. She’s currently the first-ever city poet of Brussels, and rather that giving a traditional address she presented as a shape-shifting performance titled Letters from a Young Poetess, accompanied by piano improvisations played by Neil Akenzua. Ma Neza proved herself to be a superb singer, whether delivering lines steeped in western soul or African roots, and while there were pearls of wisdom in her oratory, bringing a poetic sensibility to an immigrant perspective with lines like, “The genocide still lives inside of us. I’ve learned it from within, that tomorrow is today. I’ve seen it in my brother’s eyes, that the past is present,” and “May we create hope from all this concern,” her optimistic yet measured message was light on details or solutions.

In fact, most of the panels and discussions I attended consistently elided conflict or real exploration, too often settling on cliched expressions of unity or vague talking points. English writer and broadcaster Anna Umbima did her best to draw out the participants of the Plenary Panel Debate on Saturday morning, but the discussion rarely felt substantive. Oddly, only one of the three panelists — the Poland-based pianist, improviser and artist Kateryna Ziabliuk — had any connection to jazz. Fatih De Vos is a rapper and social worker of Turkish descent, and Frederike Berendsen is Danish singer who initiated the Dutch branch of the climate advocacy organization Music Declares Emergency. While Ziabliuk confronted the conservatism that too often impacts jazz programmers who steer clear of controversial issues — and shockingly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was scarcely mentioned all weekend — the discourse was otherwise superficial, often loaded with cliches. Berendsen declared that jazz was always a music of protest, an assertion she backed up citing how hard drummers played during a year she spent living in New York City.

I attended one of five concurrent discussion groups presented on Friday called “Curating for All,” which focused on how to reach broader audiences in terms of age, ethnicity and gender. While there were some interesting proposals, the sheer number of attendees and limited time tended to water down the interchange. Late on Saturday, after the official program concluded, Xavier Lemettre, artistic director of the French festival Banlieues Bleues, called an ad hoc discussion to consider the potential ramifications of the increasing rightward shift in European politics, a transition that threatens arts funding in the future. It was the only period during the weekend where I experienced serious passion and debate. Sadly, I also heard little discussion of the actual music all of the attendees devote their livelihoods to, focusing on the administration and presentation of jazz-releated work rather than the music itself.

Still, there were many showcase performances by Belgian artists during the weekend, including an impressive set by a quartet led by bassist Yannick Peeters with guitarist Frederik Leroux, reedist Frans Van Isacker and drummer Samuel Ber, where artfully measured post-bop unspooled with exquisite patience and thoughtfulness. Van Asacker spiked his lyric improvisations with an acidic tonal bite, Leroux provided harmonically varied harmony, Ber pushed the music forward with a light hand and the leader framed the others with her warm, woody tone and assertive propulsion. Pleasing sets were also played the chamber sextet aki and the charged minimalism of Donder, but too much of the music felt hushed and tight-lipped, leaving this listener hungry for some fits of energy and tension. Still, despite the lack of substantial debate during the weekend, there was no missing the energy and enthusiasm the gathering transmitted for the task of preserving and extending a wide array of jazz-related music. Here’s hoping future solutions emerge for pressing issues on display, but the community surrounding the music keeps growing, and that’s an undeniably positive sign. DB