.Editorial - 2016 -

For our English-speaking friends - 2016 -

Editorial
In memory of Jacques, who has departed this world to join Dexter Gordon, Art Tatum, Stan Getz and the others The organisers of the Souillac jazz festival, a professional performing arts event, are still reeling from the tragic events that took place in France in 2015, but are determined, in honour of the victims, to continue to support the freedom of creation and expression and the precept of living together in harmony. This is what the festival’s volunteers have been advocating for forty years with their partners in both the public and private sectors.
Every year the Souillac jazz festival provides an opportunity for musicians from many different backgrounds to interact with members of the public from all walks of life. It provides a platform for modern jazz with its many sources of inspiration and for the outpouring of emotions in music that is both generous and humane.
In 2016 the festival will bring together two cultures: Cuban Santería and Haitian Voodoo. It will feature an encounter between the trumpet, all-important on the new jazz scene in New York, and the master of the underground electronic sphere; an exhilarating interaction of jazz, punk, jubilant free jazz and great black music played by an ultra-dynamic, pocketformat brass band mingling with shades of ancient Egypt and New Orleans at its most exuberant on a Shrove Tuesday.
Come and join us in the festival and let us all share these values of communion and fraternity.
Robert Peyrillou, President and Artistic Director

Note: Sim Copans the festival’s founder, wrote the following in a preface to the book by Paul Oliver entitled “The world of blues” : “In Cuba and Haiti, where thousands of slaves from the same region of Africa worked on huge plantations, the way in which African culture has survived to this day is astonishing”.
The “Creole spirits” project, the work of Omar Sosa and Jacques Schwarz-Bart will take us back to the African roots of jazz.