Nisvil Honors Paquito D'Rivera and Boney M

The second night of the 32nd Nisvil produced a line no festival press release would ever write. “Living legend, when you say that, it’s actually a euphemism for someone who’s an old man,” Paquito D’Rivera said in Nis, a few hours before he walked out with his trio onto the main stage of Nis Fortress. The Cuban clarinetist, saxophonist and composer received the Car Konstantin award for his contribution to jazz that evening, and delivered the line in the most fitting spot possible, standing in front of a prize that by its nature rewards a long road already traveled.

Friday, August 14, was the night the festival drew a line under two anniversaries and handed out both of its top honors. The main stage program opened at 7:30 PM with the Polish outfit Public Lunch, school friends from Gdansk giving Nis audiences the premiere of their debut album, and closed at 2 AM, when the Belgrade reggae band Del Arno Band stepped off the stage. In between came Bulgaria’s Barney Esville & Barks at 8:25 PM, Argentina’s La Orquesta de Antes at 9:25 PM, Paquito D’Rivera’s trio at 10:25 PM, and Boney M at 11:35 PM.

Why did the jazz Grand Prix go to a disco act?

The “Saban Bajramovic” Grand Prix is awarded for fusing jazz with other musical genres, and this year it went to Boney M, marking fifty years since the release of their first album. The choice carries a logic that isn’t obvious from the dance floor: the group producer Frank Farian put together in West Germany in 1974 sat at the crossing point of disco, funk, reggae and soul, and its four original members came from Montserrat, Jamaica and Aruba. Organizers also framed the award as a posthumous tribute to Farian, the man who assembled that sound in the studio and then exported it to the rest of the world.

The award was collected by Maizie Williams, the original lineup’s singer, who is still touring.

“I’m glad to be part of Boney M’s history, fifty years of it now. We keep going because we enjoy performing live. Our fan base is huge and spans every generation. At Nisvil we’re going to play our best known hits.”

That last line meant, in practice, a catalog that has sold more than 100 million records. The best known titles include:

• “Daddy Cool” and “Ma Baker”
• “Rasputin” and “Rivers of Babylon”
• “Sunny” and “Belfast”
• “Brown Girl in the Ring” and “Gotta Go Home”

Paquito D’Rivera brought a different kind of resume to the fortress, the kind measured by a shelf of trophies: five Grammy Awards and eleven Latin Grammy Awards, on top of a body of work that helped bring Cuban music into the jazz canon. His trio played Latin jazz for an hour before the crowd got its dose of disco, a lineup that looks like a mismatch on paper and played out on stage like the same story told twice.

“I’m grateful to my trio, which is responsible for this new phase of my music and sound. It’s a pleasure to be here. This is a major place for music. So many great jazz musicians have come out of this region. Because of where I’m performing, I feel like a medieval jazz musician. I’m very impressed by the music of this region, and by the way people dance to those odd rhythms,” D’Rivera said before the show.

What did the festival award before the main program?

The lifetime achievement award was presented two days earlier, on August 12, at a press conference in Nis. It went to pianist and composer Mikan Zlatkovic, who took his first steps in his native Pristina before leaving for the United States in the early 1990s, where he built his career. Nis mayor Dragoslav Pavlovic presented him with the honor.

Festival director Ivan Blagojevic explained the award’s purpose.

“The award is, in a way, our equivalent of a national award, the way we designed and conceived it, for an overall contribution to our homeland’s jazz culture,” Blagojevic said.

Zlatkovic declined to reveal in advance what he would play, and that explanation doubles as the shortest possible definition of his craft. “When I step onto the stage, I know what’s coming. That’s the only time I know. Before that, I don’t. That’s the essence of improvisation,” said the pianist, who performed on the festival’s opening night.

Special recognitions this year went to Zarko Stankovic, guitarist, composer and co-founder of the Nis band Daltoni, and to Nenad Milosavljevic of Galija, while the British band Incognito was honored to mark twenty years since its first performance in Nis.

The numbers behind four nights

This year’s edition brings together more than 1,000 performers, over 20 stages and roughly 300 events, while the main fortress program alone runs to 22 performances across four days. The festival runs from August 13 to 16, and its closing night belongs to Nis rock: Daltoni, Galija, Lavina and Bohemija are on the bill. This year also marks ninety years since the birth of Saban Bajramovic, the singer whose name one of the festival’s two main awards carries.

At the same press conference, Blagojevic thanked the Ministry of Tourism and Youth for its support and again pointed out the absence of support from the Ministry of Culture. It’s worth remembering the next time someone writes about how much international visibility Serbia’s festivals actually have. That night, Nisvil brought a Cuban Grammy winner, a German disco brand with half a century behind it, and a Belgrade reggae band with forty years of work onto a single stage, and did it without a line item from the budget of the ministry that carries the word culture in its name.