Sax and the City

Eclectic beats, ad lib notes, South American flavour and Rat Pack suits - the Vancouver Jazz Festival is in town.

With over 1,500 bands assembling in the city, it is a dream for someone like me, who loves the medium and pinches pennies at every opportunity. Walking down the steady slope into Gastown, the festival unfolded in front of me. I have come to know Vancouver for it's unpredictability - volatile and faceless one moment, edgy and relaxed the next. This Jazz Festival exposes the latter, and I love it.

At the top of Water Street, the pianist of English jazz quintet Empirical wafts out a mixture of chords and arpeggios, while his fellow entertainers jump in and out with scatterings of saxophone, trumpet, drums and double bass. The smooth grooves are only interrupted for a few short words just once in an hour, and spectators soak up the evening warmth as they lie back on the floor, drifting away with the music.

Along the road, there are the standard collections of hotdog stands, lemonade stalls and street performers, but the crowds gather at two ends of the street, where two stages are erected. After taking my heartbeat down close to flat-line, I picked myself up and made my way towards the opposite end of the celebration. A coffee and newspaper stop in between (I had to feel cool on a day like this), I arrived to the magical sounds of samba beats, Spanish song and South American salsa. A very different proposition from the Londoners preceding them.

Here, different races from Caucasian to Chinese to African to Latino were mixing in a fanfare of colour and energy. People danced with people they had never met, old with young, shy with extrovert, there was no-one left out. Here, the power of music was evident, as people embraced in the fun. The lead singer in this band spoke not a word of English, but he still had the crowd at breaking point, as he raised the temperature with his chants which, from what I could surmise, were along the lines of:

"Do you want this?" ("Noooooooooooo!" comes the reply from the crowd)

"So you want this?!" ("Ciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!")

Another man was alive with dance, as he supported the lead with his own vocals. A hysteria descended upon the spectators as they moved in ways they probably never knew possible (me included!).

After offering great entertainment for two hours in an evening fit for a fiesta, the group finished off with a conga, South American style (I know what you're thinking, and there was no 'Let's all do the con-ga!'). The trombonist, trumpeters, drums, and vocals all seeped into the crowd, leading hundreds of people on a fantastic snaking line around the dance area.

The Jazz Festival has already impressed with only the first two acts I have seen. With over a thousand still to go, in the next ten days, the city will be sca-ba-bado-bob'ing for some time yet!