LOCAL FESTIVAL OFFERS MORE RARITIES THAN WINE

May 2, 2008 by PT Rothschild.

MUSIC PROVES PURER THAN ORGANIZED RELIGION OR CULTURE

Temecula, CA – Tomorrow at the Temecula Wine and Music Festival, jazz goers will experience more than the tastiest wines around, they will also experience two music anomalies. They will hear a ‘white’ band from Perth, Scotland that sounds like a black band from Chicago, in fact ‘white’ has been part of the band’s name for the last 30 years. Crowd goers will also hear a Muslim jazz keyboard player (Dwiki Dharmawan), who is possibly the Muslim world’s only professional jazz musician. I hope the irony isn’t lost tomorrow but I wonder how many concert goers will reflect on it.

The Average White Band is a band I first heard back in the day, a day when I thought only ‘black’ people could make sweet soul music. I remember a friend brought over a LP, whipped it on my stereo before I could see the cover and said “listen”. Right off I was tapping my foot, and by the second tune I was wriggling my butt to the beat, a truly funky beat, and fresh! Dude said, “These cats (that’s what we said back then) are from Scotland.” I said, “Get outta here. Are you B.S.-ing me?” I had to see the album cover to believe it. This band might have been the inspiration for the movie, ‘The Commitments’. Now many years have passed since that day and along the way I’ve learned that ‘soul’ comes from the heart, not from the color of your skin. A certain style of music may predominately reflect a particular culture’s roots, but that music can be made by anyone with the soul to try it. One listen to AWB’s ‘Pick Up The Pieces’, ‘Schoolboy Crush’, ‘Cut The Cake’, or ‘Person To Person’ with your eyes closed will seal the deal.

Michael Paulo, the producer for the Temecula Wine and Music Festival, and himself an accomplished professional artist on saxophone, helps put on the JAVA JAZZ Festival held each year in Indonesia by the efforts of Peter Gontha, an Indonesian Christian. “We’re friends, known him for years. When I go over there, I’m kind of an ‘artist-in-residence’. I bring in artists to do the shows. I met Dwiki Dharmawan through Peter. It’s a paradox (putting on a jazz festival in a largely Muslim country), but it’s working. It’s one of the biggest festivals in the world. It runs a week but on the weekend, there are sixteen stages going at once. The mantra is to preach moderation through American music and art. When you take away the politics (racial history) and the negatives (drug history) etc., and introduce the music as an art form to the (Muslim) public, guess what? They love it.” Well said!! For info on all the bands and artists at the Festival, go here.

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