He Golden Dragonfly Jazz and Blues Festival He returned to celebrate his 25th birthday. From May 4 to June 17, lovers of jazz and the blues you will find in the Golden Dragonfly puppet theater a temple dedicated to these sounds, which since its birth in the delta of the Mississippi River at the beginning of the 20th century they have been the cornerstone of popular music since the 1950s, when the blues led to the rock’n’roll and from then on in its infinite slopes.
Thus, for a month and a half, more than 21 groups will fill the Bogota nights with color and music as part of the XXV Festival of Blues and Jazz at the Dragonfly. will be twenty-two concerts by great Colombian blues and jazz figures such as Carlos Reyes, Óscar Acevedo, Natalia Bedoya, Urpi Barco, Citadino Blues, Carlos Elliot, Ana María Oramas, Betto Martínez. Programming can be consulted here.
In these 25 years, the festival has brought together 399 groups that, in 789 concerts, have positioned it as one of the most important events for the circulation and projection of blues and jazz in Bogotá and Colombia. Regarding this, infobae spoke with César Álvarez, director of the Libélula Dorada and organizer of the festival to find out how they will celebrate these five decades of music.
It’s been 25 years of the Libélula Dorada Blues and Jazz Festival. How have these five decades been, betting on the diffusion of these genres in Bogotá?
A question that we are asked a lot is how a puppet and theater group starts a Festival of BMonday and Jazz. When we acquired our headquarters, which is at Carrera 19 with Calle 51 in the Teusaquillo neighborhood, we wanted to expand and open our doors to other artistic manifestations, which lacked dissemination spaces for their artistic projects, and we saw that in the city there were moment, 25 years ago, a very interesting movement of new groups of blues.
We started that first festival in 1998 with around eight very high quality bands; I especially remember candelaria blues, vertigo red house…many of those no longer exist. The following year, we decided to expand it to jazz. This is how during these 25 years more than 390 bands have performed and more than 800 concerts have been held.
What will the celebration of these 25 years be like, in addition to the programming, which runs until June 17, what do you have prepared?
Traditionally, there have been festivals with a much broader participation, this year of the 25th anniversary of the festival, we make a series of direct invitations, generally in festivals it is done by summons. We kept the call, from which several bands were selected, but at the same time we invited groups that have been part of the festival’s history, that have grown around the festival, and that is why we have invited such important groups as Natalia Bedoya, who has a great trajectory not only in the blues, but also in many other types of music. She has a beautiful staging around the blues. She has participated several times in our festival.
Another great guest and friend of the festival and of the Libélula Dorada, who is Carlos Reyes, he has participated in a large number of versions of the festival, in different formats and on this occasion they have prepared a very special concert in a trio of blues marvelous.
We also have very special guests, for example, on Wednesday, May 10, at 7:30 pm, there will be a French group that was passing through Colombia and wanted to bring their confidence that they are songs from the jazz manouche French. we also have city blues, a legendary band in history that blues in Bogota; We have the Acevedo Krauss duo, who is Óscar Acevedo, one of the pioneers of jazz in Colombia, who will come to the duo format with a great saxophonist.
There will also be Carlos Elliot, who has toured more than 16 countries with his blues and he is a great researcher of blues original, has toured festivals north of the Mississippi, where the roots of blues. We will also have Ana María Oramas, a great flutist, in band format.
In addition to the concerts, what other activities will there be? Well, there are also talks, conversations about the blues and to jazz, and El expreso del viento returns, nights of harmonicas.
Yes, we will also have, and it is a nice coincidence, as a guest of Beto, the caricaturist from The viewer. He is celebrating 25 years as a cartoonist, and he has a story set to music with a harmonica around the blues. We have a tribute there to Janis Joplin, which will be carried out by the four jackals and Julieta Rock, she has been on other occasions with this wonderful tribute with a large property with a great stage presence.
There will be Loco Lucas, another great jazz band; the GRM trio and we culminate an event that is already traditional in the festival: The wind express, harmonica nights. This is a night that we dedicate to the harmonica. That little instrument that has been so present in the history of bluesWe invited several harmonica players and, as a base group, the Bogotá Blues Band led by Leo Parra, who is also a great researcher of the original sound of the blues. He is also going to be some didactic concerts in which he shows us much of the history of blues accompanied by a great Argentinian harmonica player Adrián Jiménez, who will also be in The wind express.
Adrián Jiménez has a great history in the blueshe was formed in Buenos Aires and was part of the bands that accompanied great Afro-American singers who came to Buenos Aires, then he retains that original sound, which makes it very, very, very interesting to see all those facets around the blues and to jazz.
There will also be a cinema club as part of the festival. What films will be shown?
Yes, as a novelty and as a contribution to the training of publics in the knowledge of the blueswe are going to make a cinema club that makes the window we will comment on different films and we will present one in particular that is a documentary about the blues in Bogota. The cinema club will be on Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. and there will be five film clubs that will be part of this great program to celebrate 25 years of the Blues and Jazz Festival.
The films that will be screened are: Pandebonium (2020), Bogota Blues (2017), Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959), too late blues (1961), Sun Ra: Space is the place (1974), The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins (1969) and Always for pleasure (1978).
25 years after the first Festival of blues and jazz of the Golden Dragon, how do you see the scene of the blues in Bogota?
I think that year after year, this is a movement that has been growing, I think that festivals such as the Free Theater have contributed to a large extent, which unfortunately was never done again, legendary figures from the jazz to Bogota. there is also Jazz in the Park. It’s very nice to see how year after year a large number of people come to listen to jazz and enjoy jazz.
On the other hand, the great quality of the musicians, I think that several universities already have an emphasis on jazz and this means that very talented musicians are emerging. Another peculiarity, I think it has to do with it, is that musicians are trained from a very young age, seven or eight years old, and when they arrive at the university and leave, they come out with an impressive technical quality, with some very interesting musical proposals.
That causes a very large movement, which suddenly one does not perceive so much in the city. One would hope that suddenly it would have more places to listen to jazz, although a large number of spaces are beginning to emerge for people who love these musical genres to go listen and enjoy this music.
