El nostre jazz de cada dia

On 1 April 2020, two weeks after the country had gone into lockdown due to coronavirus, the Catalan Classical Jazz Foundation announced that Xavier Valls Aubert had created a blog wherehe would post a jazzpiece each day to give us anenjoyable and stimulating experience.

The book you have before you compiles the comments about the “classical jazz piece of the day”that I wrote from 1 April to 18 June 2020, interspersed with notes that I added on certain days, which may relate to the music or other matters that were present during that period of lockdown.
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Classical jazz is the way of making music that emerged spontaneously from the African-Americancommunity at the start of the 20th century. In this musical style, the instrumentalistsuse the resources and methods of African-American blues and gospel singers to express themselves as if they were singing or speaking, and all the music made by the instrumentalists and singers is driven by swing, a powerful and relaxed rhythmic beat that had also already energised blues and gospel music. In addition to jazz pieces, there were also many blues and some African-American spirituals or gospel songs among the music that Xavier Valls chose.This is entirely natural, becausealthough they each have their own unique character,classical jazz and the blues and spirituals that preceded it are closely connected musical styles that inspire each other and, in many ways, draw from the same well, sharing the same way of performing and the same spirit.

Oriol Romaní