Jazz in Amsterdam Part 2 (of 3)

North Sea Jazz Club November 24
(Review by Ron Ainsborough.)

.

Sidi Toure Band, Mala in Cuba Live & Gilles Peterson

This jazz club is located 1-2 miles from the centre of Amsterdam, and had a couple of quirks much to our amusement, firstly for drinks you have to buy tokens to use at the bars,cash is not accepted. Secondly you have to have bladder control because after you have had a drink you have two options to pay to use the toilets, one if you exercise that control and only need to go once it only costs you 50 cents, but if you have no control you can pay 2 euros and go as many times as you like (an absolute bargain!)

Different!
The night we were at the club starting at 10pm till5 am, a jazz festival was on, and as 5am is a bit past my bedtime we only stayed till 1am but in that time we saw the first band to play live (in one of two venues within the club) and they were call the 'Sidi Toure Band' and they were a band from Mali and comprised Sidi Toure on guitar and vocals, another guitarist, someone playing an amplified very 'small irregular shaped guitar type' string instrument with the strings secured and wrapped around the end of the wooden neck of the instrument (but what a sound he got out of it!), and last but not least, the drum sound which was a half spherical (wooden I think) drum placed flat on top of an amplified box which gave a bass drum sound in addition to a hand held sticks sound on the drum (no idea how it works,but again a great sound). The lyrics were all in French so I could not understand one word but the music was typically African (I  am told from the area of Africa where the blues/drum sounds originated?) and from the start the uninhibited Dutch were all dancing to the wonderful beat of the African sounds which finished after an hour with a great and well deserved ovation. It was a fascinating and very enjoyable set by a band, the likes of which, I had never seen live before. Again a concert to be remembered and not to be missed.

I had never heard of Sidi Toure till this night and have discovered they have toured small venues in the USA, have been to London, Sweden, Germany etc. recently.

After that we heard a Cuban sounds band comprising two conga drum players, a keyboards player with someone on an synthesizer (can't spell that to save my life!) who overpowered everything going on. Not Cuban in any respect so we left that part of the night to those that like that kind of thing and went back to the first venue. 

Gilles Peterson, a Swiss born DJ living in London(works for the BBC as well), who played his mix of heavily jazz influenced music which was good and listenable and served the dancing members of the club very well indeed. So we left at 1am after a very enjoyable and interesting night and would go again given the opportunity because they have a lot of top jazz on as their programme shows.

Ron Ainsborough.