THE INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE OF JAZZ

Special to JAM by Charlton Price

Bassem Nasir, host of "Soul Jazz/Night Rhythms," the only Palestinian jazz show, from Station AMWAJ ("The Wave") 91.5FM, Ramallah. (Note the KC Jazz Ambassador apparel.)

The KC Jazz Ambassadors and JAM have two new Middle East connections: Bassem Nasir, host of the only Palestinian jazz show (in Arabic and English) on FM radio in Ramallah, heard all over Israel and Jordan, and Arnie Lawrence, erstwhile noted NYC altoist, who, since 1997, has headed the International Center for Creative Music in Jerusalem. Let me tell you about each.

Jazz, and JAM Arrive in Ramallah
My main Middle East man in jazz is Bassem Nasir, Palestinian-born and US-educated (at Purdue). Stage-struck after graduation, he scuffled around show biz for a while in the Big Apple. Now he's back in his hometown of Ramallah, a Palestinian town about as far north of Jerusalem as Blue Springs is east of Kansas City. There he hosts a thrice-weekly "Soul Jazz/Night Rhythms" show on AMWAJ, "The Wave," 91.5 FM. (Monday, Wednesday and Saturday evenings, should you be in the area.) It is the only Palestinian jazz broadcast, and the bilingual Bassem deftly mixes Arabic and English on-air, including jazz-connected guests from the area, as well as from the US, Europe, and beyond.

This 20-something entrepreneur also builds multi-cultural connections via good sounds by coproducing a Jerusalem Jazz Festival. It is drawing performers and audiences from the whole region, and from abroad. August 2000 will see the second annual festival event. Bassem, you might say, has gone from Purdue to "Perdido." He is helping in many ways to make exciting things happen on the jazz scene in and around Jerusalem.

I first heard about all this a year ago, when Bassem's letter to JAM gave his e-mail (bnasir@hotmail.com), saying he'd like to hear from readers. And he told of his day job, which also has a jazz angle.

In the basement of Ramallah's municipal building he's been running the local version of a computer-based educational program called FutureKids; it is franchised in 40 countries. Cool jazz on the CD player provides smooth background for the kids' computer-based instruction and recreation.

"I think there's a future for jazz with kids," said Bassem in his note to JAM. "Not all kids, granted, but hey, no matter how old you are, you gotta love Ella!" No argument there, right?
Luckily, it happened that I saw Bassem's JAM letter just as I was about to go back to a management consulting assignment in Hebron, a Palestinian Arab city just down the road from Ramallah and Jerusalem. So I hotmailed him. And a week later, we met! It was at a party to which I had been invited by a Palestinian friend of Bassem's -- who also happens to be my longtime friend, and my partner for the Hebron project!

So, Bassem and I planned a guest shot for me on his "Soul Jazz" show. That night, several weeks later, we did yet another of the worldwide tributes for the Ellington centennial. Nowadays, Bassem's ties to KC are even stronger. He often airs not only music by Ella, but also Basie, Bird, McShann, the Methenys, and now also the Mike Ning/Sherry Jones CD tribute to Bill Evans. He has become a Founding Member of our Jazz Museum. And, as the picture shows, he sports a KC Jazz Ambassadors pullover.

As you read this I'm back in the Middle East, hoping for another guest shot on Bassem's jazz show, and to deliver more KC jazz for future programs. Earlier this year, in January, Bassem came over here for the International Jazz Educators convention in New Orleans. While there, he helped to spread the word about Arnie Lawrence's International Center for Creative Music. Bassem says that while in New York, trying to break into show business, he came to know and love the classical music of the theater, including the Gershwins, Porter, Hart, Kern and Loesser. And he discovered Soul.

"My favorite music was Motown, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. I knew nothing about jazz! To me it was just a bunch of musicians playing together, with weird arrangements and harmonies.

"Back home in Ramallah, I wanted to do a Soul music radio show. A local station (not AMWAJ) said they'd like me to do a 'soul jazz' show. I didn't tell them I knew nothing about jazz. Instead I quickly borrowed from my uncle some of his jazz CDs, especially the first volume of Ella's 'Cole Porter Songbook.' What a great choice! I discovered that I knew a lot of jazz standards because of my time around show biz -- and the lyrics, and the verses, not just the choruses."

Now Bassem's "Soul Jazz/Night Rhythms" show airs it all, from Jelly Roll through John Coltrane and beyond. Guests on the show have included Arnie Lawrence, singer Judy Silvano from New York, Bradley Williams, and others who continue to come through the area, both to participate in the jazz-focused International Center for Creative Music and for the annual Jerusalem Jazz Festival.

All this helps to build participation in and enthusiasm for jazz in the Middle East. And it is using the international language of good music to provide a conflict-free, apolitical, emotionally rewarding experience -- a rare intention and mission in that part of the world. Kansas City jazz and KC jazz people now have the opportunity to join in building this better feeling and future.

So, thanks to Bassem Nasir, along with his colleagues and friends in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world, Palestine doesn't have to be "perdido." "Perdido" is just a Juan Tizol tune!

A Happier, Jazzier Future for Jerusalem
Jazz helps point toward a happier future in and around Jerusalem, thanks to Arnie Lawrence and his International Center for Creative Music.

Lawrence has the chops and has paid the dues -- dues not just to AFM Local 802, New York, but to the cause of jazz in Jerusalem and environs. Since coming to Israel from New York a few years back, he has been offering leadership, providing greater visibility, and building an ever-stronger following for jazz in and around Jerusalem and the region -- including the parts of the area known to some as Palestine and to others as the West Bank, or the Occupied Territories.

Thanks to Arnie and his jazz friends and colleagues from the USA and elsewhere, there's now a struggling, but ever-stronger, International Center for Creative Music in Jerusalem. It has over 300 students, a mix from all the local ethnic, religious and national groups. Visiting jazz stars such as James Moody and Arnie himself conduct master classes, join advanced students and appear with the large pool of local jazz talent in clubs and other settings both in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Haifa, and in regional venues. (JAM connected with Arnie because of the aforementioned Bassem Nasir.)

Arnie's childhood in Brooklyn wasn't particularly musical. His dad was in "the pajama game" in New York's garment district and "was a guy who could barely play spoons." But as a teen-ager, Arnie began to hang out at the Palladium, home of Salsa, and to dig the Afro-Cuban sounds of Machito and others. And he began woodshedding on reeds, especially alto sax. Soon after he got some gigs.

Alto saxophonist Arnie Lawrence gigging in a Jerusalem nightspot with Israeli colleague and guitarist, Elon Turgeman. (Sorry you can't hear them; they're playing Miles' "Blue in Green.")

One night on Long Island, Ben Webster dropped by a club where Arnie was playing. "He wasn't nice to everybody," Arnie recalled last year in an interview with

Newsday, "but he was capable of great tenderness, in his ballads and in person. To have him stand next to me and hear him play was the greatest lesson I could have."

In the many years that followed, Arnie says he "played with maybe 90 percent of the encyclopedia of jazz," notably in the Tonight Show band (before its move to the West Coast), with Blood Sweat and Tears, and with many others including Clark Terry, James Brown, Archie Shepp, Ellington and Basie.

All this experience comes into focus and gets passed on as Arnie grows his Center for Creative Music. As the prospectus for this bold venture notes, the Center "...provides a place for promising local musicians to specialize and become expert in world music through a jazz perspective." In the conflicted social reality of (the Middle East) today, the Center provides an amicable oasis where people from many backgrounds (Jews, Arabs, Christians, locally and from elsewhere) come together for a common goal: study and performance of world-class music... with a jazz perspective. Another important aim, already being fulfilled, is establishing closer ties with comparable musical institutions elsewhere. These include, in the US, the New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, England's Leeds Music College, Yamaha Schools in Japan, and a similar institution in Chile. (I hope that these kinds of connections also can be made between the Center and the Kansas City jazz community, through JAM and the Jazz Ambassadors.)

The Center and Center-sponsored jazz events have received steadily increasing media attention, locally and internationally. There was a Christmas jazz show from Ramallah on the BBC, and another airing on US National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." Center people also took part in a Voice of America worldwide broadcast concert last year celebrating the solar eclipse.

Because of the Center there is a growing pool of jazz talent, as well as growing audiences for jazz in the Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian Middle East. The Center contributes to sponsorship of events, and support for events sponsored by others, aiming for world-class standards of excellence in jazz, in communities and venues all around the region.

On the Internet, the Center received attention from the Yahoo online community. Yahoo called the Center "a rare example of peaceful and unforced Palestinian-Israeli coexistence."

And master classes with Arnie and international visitors, past and prospective -- the likes of James Moody and Joe Lovano -- remain a key aspect of the Center's program.

So, in all these ways, a future for jazz is taking shape in and around Jerusalem, the Holy City. ("Wholly Cats!" I mused while there, recalling the Goodman Sextet classic.)

And JAM will continue to follow the doings of Arnie Lawrence, Bassem Nasir, the International Center for Creative Music, and the "Soul Jazz/Night Rhythms" show on Ramallah radio.

Stay tuned!


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