All images provided to The Peninsula by Matteo Gaspari
Doha, Qatar: Every year on April 30 International Jazz Day is marked. A celebration of a musical expression aged over a full century and a half, berthed from the shackles of servitude, which then went on to conquer the globe and reshaped the musical landscape for good.
Jazz was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, where enslaved African-Americans would gather to play music in a part of the city called Congo Square. Using marching band instruments, they merged African, Caribbean, and spiritual music, which was also popular at that time.
Photo by Konstantin Aal / Unsplash
All these elements combined together to give birth to jazz, and, despite many disagreements concerning the exact time period of the genre’s prevalence, most will agree that jazz music rose to fame in the 1920s.
Jazz music was played in jazz clubs, in restaurants, on the radio, and virtually everywhere in the United States, earning the era the moniker "The Jazz Age"— the go-to term to describe the 1920s American landscape.
World War I played a pivotal role in its global dissemination, as American soldiers introduced European counterparts to its infectious sound. Several years later, that sound made its way to Doha.
Matteo Gaspari, bassist for the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, jazz player and avid fan, shared insights into jazz's journey in Qatar. Gaspari told The Peninsula that he has been performing in Qatar for the past 15 years.
Matteo Gaspari. Image provided to The Peninsula by Matteo Gaspari
The bassist, who arrived in Doha in 2008, was a fan of the genre first long before becoming a performer. He reminisced about his younger days in his native country Italy, where he would listen to jazz legends like Miles Davis and Charles Mingus on cassettes he had to borrow, long before "the comfort of YouTube" and smartphones.
Being at Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra allowed Gaspari, a musical degree holder from institutes in both Italy and Germany, to practice building his jazz chops. Though he did not play jazz at that time, he was more than eager to learn.
A fateful encounter with former Doha resident Chris Coull was the catalyst needed for him to blossom into the jazz virtuoso he is today.
Coull had been playing around Doha since the early 2000s with the "Doha Jazz" collective and has held charity events in the country. The two started a duo which later grew into a big ensemble, and began playing gigs around the country, with Gaspari giving Coull credit of assembling the formidable group of musicians who played alongside them.
Matteo Gaspari and Chris Coull. Image provided to the Peninsula by Matteo Gaspari.
The two even managed to end up on a CD titled "Blues on the Corniche" that was recorded in Doha which was released in 2012, made up of original arrangements by Coull alongside some well-established jazz standards. It featured musicians from the "Doha Jazz" collective.
Gaspari admitted that most of the gigs they got during the beginning were corporate events, but soon people took a liking to their sound. This took him and the band, Jazz Spectrum Q, to more gigs around the country, with very positive impressions being left on the attendees.
One of Gaspari’s fondest moments was accompanying his band at the Museum of Islamic Art Park in the early 2010s with over 2,000 people in attendance. “Their reaction to the music was very pleasant,” he said.
At Al Hazm mall. Image provided to the Peninsula by Matteo Gaspari
Gaspari, who is a fan of fusion jazz, told The Peninsula that they have been performing a type of jazz fusion they called Jazz Arabesque; in which Arab and Middle Eastern instruments and songs meet ideas rooted in jazz music.
“When we started people repeatedly asked if we knew Arabic music and we said we didn’t and they were a bit disappointed,” he said.
“But these requests only piqued our interest, and so we grabbed a tabla, we grabbed the oud, these traditional Arab instruments, and we started learning Arabic songs and then added a jazzy twist to them.”
All images provided to The Penisnula by Matteo Gaspari.
Arab audiences were “blown away” by beloved classics by Feirouz being played in a fresh, innovative, and exciting manner, and Jazz Arabesque remains a popular and a highly requested act by the ensemble.
Gaspari also recalled the “big jazz club” that opened at the St. Regis Hotel in Doha in the early 2010s, an offshoot of jazz icon Wynton Marsalis’ New York-based organization “Jazz at Lincoln Center.”
It opened to much fanfare he said, with much positive reviews and great interest in the artform, all which undoubtedly helped popularize jazz around Qatar, particularly in Doha.
"It was an amazing opportunity to play jazz with all the great players who came to Doha all the way from New York," he told The Peninsula.
Matteo Gaspari. Jazz at Lincoln Center, S. Regis Hotel. All images provided to The Peninsula by Matteo Gaspari.
Gaspari told The Peninsula that, despite jazz being relatively old music, jazz aficionados have been coming out of the woodwork more and more in recent years, which meant more gigs and regular performances for his band, at four different locations every week.
When asked if this appeal has extended to a younger generation, Gaspari said that the youngest person he’s ever met who was invested in his music was a 24-year-old, but admittedly the majority of fans remain to be much older people.
Despite preceding much of our modern world by nearly 170 years, jazz music still remains as relevant as ever, and its ability to coexist alongside all musical expressions might ensure its existence another centuries more.
