Jazz in Buenos Aires is in full blossom.

About 5 years ago, as a result of a negative situation I had been observing in the local jazz circuit, I wrote an article in which, addressing my fellow musicians, I tried to analyse the reasons and describe certain troublesome aspects related to what was happening.

At that moment, with some pain and sorrow, I felt we were in the middle of a very serious crisis.

In my opinion, the highest peak of that crisis (and at the same time the turning point that started the change) was the cancelling of a two-day jazz festival that had been announced at one of the biggest concert halls in the heart of downtown Buenos Aires.

I remember some of the musicians who had been summoned for that event explaining that the festival had been called off because “the producers withdrew from the project for foreign motives”.

But the truth was much simpler and cruel: no tickets sold. Not even a promotional campaign on one TV channel (with one of the highest ratings for public television) could avoid the disaster, which was the first blow into the heart of what at that time I called “the circuit or system of exclusion”.

I insist once more: in the article I was addressing all musicians in general and particularly those who belonged to that “privileged” group. Only my colleagues. I make this clear because many people understood that my message was aimed at the media.

Sad misunderstanding. Mass media have always responded to whatever is happening in the cultural world and acted consequently.

At least that is what happens with those media worth reading, watching or listening.

For those musicians who were going to take part in such an important event, it must have been a terribly disastrous disenchantment to find out that after several years of receiving economic and promotional support, interviews and an endless number of articles in many newspapers, magazines, radios and cable channels, they found it impossible to draw all together even a small number of interested people.

Today, with a deep feeling of joy and satisfaction, I feel it is my duty to express that the situation has undergone a spectacular positive change.

Recently I have been going around Buenos Aires’ jazz clubs, and once and again I have had the opportunity of listening to young musicians of the new generations who show a very complete training and education, aesthetic qualities of the highest level and offering really and healthily refreshing projects.

As I had felt it and hopefully expressed in that article, time has been putting things in order.

Buenos Aires, thus called for its “good air”, has now some “refreshing air” too.

You can see it for yourself; go and pay a visit to jazz clubs and concert halls around this city, something that can take several weeks, given the number of top-notch projects and the incredible variety of weekly shows.

Just as when I wrote and published that article I was complaining about what was happening, when I started to observe this marvellous flowering in the local jazz scene, which began about two years ago, I had the dream of setting up a small orchestra with young musicians.

Such a project would be like a personal testimony, an expression of the sensational change that is still going on and has already passed the point of no return.

Fate gave me a hand and I was able to create the “Modern? Jazz Band”: an old dream come true.

And there is something that deserves a special mention. To my view, the most important jazz event of the last few years: the Buenos Aires “Mirá Jazz” International Festival.

For the first time in a long time, this festival has included in its two latest editions the most varied expressions of jazz, national and international. It has shown a spirit of brotherhood, faultless organization and production comparable to any international event.

In the drawer of the desk on which I am writing this, I keep a clip from La Nación newspaper, dated October 22, 2008. The title of the article says it all:

“Five days of jazz passion”.

In five days, 200 artists (37 from other countries), 49 concerts (49 concerts!) and the premiére of three works and three documentaries drew the unusual number of 25,000 people.

And last year’s edition was even greater.

A vital item: the Mirá Jazz festival has offered an exclusive and special particitation to “Jazzología” (“Jazzology”), the most important series of jazz concerts of the last 25 years. “Jazzología” started in 1984 no less, is still going on with the force of an icebreaker and has resisted storms, earthquakes and political tsunamis.

It is impossible to predict the size of the consequences that this deep refreshing change can bring about in the future.

Only five years ago, the circuit of “privileged” musicians was finally starting to collapse.

In the last two years the situation has overturned in a spectacular way, and what is even healthier, many of those musicians from that old endogamous circuit who knew how to adapt to the change are still fully active, with fresh, open and stylistically deeper projects.

An old wish is coming true: the sorrowful gap between “traditionalists” and “modernists” is starting to fade away.

Many “modern jazz” musicians are beginning to understand where the music they play really comes from, and as they receive the influence any serious musician must acquire, their projects become more convincing due to their stylistic depth.

This encourages “traditional” musicians to understand why and toward what directions the unavoidable evolution of jazz must necessarily go.

And the public celebrates with a standing ovation.