Dubai: Saturday nights are synonymous with jazz at Novotel’s Blue Bar on Shaikh Zayed Road, making it a waterhole for local jazz aficionados.
Much like the music they come for, the huddled crowd is dressed to the nines, chitchatting out the week’s grind in the elegant cosiness of the venue. At the first sound of the saxophone’s brass howl, the crowd hushes itself to indulge in the empathetic tonalities of jazz with the Jankura Roberts West Trio.
“Blue Bar is the cornerstone for jazz in Dubai,” Andrew Jankura, the organist of the Jankura Roberts West Trio, says. “I’ve been in Dubai for 14 years and I’ve seen the genre grow in a positive sense, people are coming to appreciate its intricacies more. Even globally, the presence of jazz is not declining; it’s still kind of a hip genre of music to listen to.”
The Trio, which consists of Eric Roberts on drums, Matt West on the saxophone and Jankura, performs in front of almost 100 people every Saturday. “We have our regulars,” says Jankura, “but we get a lot of new faces as well.”
He says the local jazz scene is still in its childhood. “There are places around Dubai that have in-house jazz bands sometimes, but unfortunately most of them are not dedicated enough.”
Marwan Hawwa, manager of Blue Bar, says that bands like the Trio are rare to find in the region.
Hawwa, who also runs artist management company Mojo Productions, says he tries to promote music in general.
All that jazz
“We have blues and rock bands playing on other nights, but we have quite a few customers who only come for our Saturday night jazz. It is a niche market.
“Blue Bar offers a proper platform for musicians to showcase themselves,” says Hawwa. “There is proper lighting, stage and sound system. There is also state of the art gear for the musicians to use so they don’t have to drag along their equipment, like their drum sets.”
Jankura says a lot of music gets misclassified as jazz nowadays. “People walk into a place where a band is playing some pop song and they think it’s jazz. We do occasionally get requests to play popular tunes, but we always try to flip it with a funkier, more soulful approach.
“We try to keep hopping around the many subgenres of jazz. When people come to Blue Bar, they are surprised that there is a venue that plays this kind of music.”
Regulars
While that may be the case with first-timers, the regulars know just what they are in for when they step inside the place.
“I try to come here every week,” says Engineer A. Ineni, a jazz enthusiast. “My love for jazz stems from listening to my father play Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk on his record player. It’s nice to hear a fresh take on the genre, while still staying faithful to its subtly, elegant intricacies. It really helps take the edge off.”
Architecture student Saif Mhaisen, 21, says that the Trio made him see the genre in a new light.
“There’s a holistic experience to watching a band perform,” he says. “The guys are great. You can tell they’re enjoying themselves on stage and the audience can only follow. I think like many others, I had a skewed understanding of jazz, considering that pop bands headline jazz festivals nowadays. However, you still have a few decent acts come here every year for Dubai Jazz Festival’s Jazz Garden.”
