The swamp of Music Meeting felt like an oasis

Anyone who has ever played ping pong knows ‘around the table’. Players run around the table hitting the ball back and forth. You also seem to be able to play that with four pianists and two grand pianos. The Sunday of the Music Meeting festival in Nijmegen opened with four Cuban top players – Ramón Valle, Rolando Luna, Marialy Pacheco and Andy García – who improvised with each other, constantly changing positions. The difference with ping pong was that no one went off, every musical serve, smash or delayed effect ball came back.

Also read this interview: Maite Hontelé no longer touches the trumpet

The festival makes new connections. Artistic director and former Latin trumpeter Maite Hontelé was finally able to incorporate her surprising take on Cuban music into the wider program. Some bookings were nearly three years in the making. But now that it was finally possible again, there were the usual other scourges of festival life, such as international trains not running and chaos at Schiphol that still caused bands to get stuck. Oh, and it rained continuously over Nijmegen for eight hours.

Still, it was impossible to regret your ticket. The level was consistently high, the program varied. The audience that danced under umbrellas and ponchos to the raw, earthy Haitian vodou of Chouk Bwa supplemented by the Belgian knob-turners The Angströmers, then found a roof over the head with the delicate songs of the Spanish Rita Payes† Her performance was enchanting. She alternates playing the trombone with her heavenly voice in Iberian jazz.

Intimate Encounters

On a smaller stage, the festival programs intimate encounters, documentaries and interviews with artists. There Payés played again, accompanied only by her mother on guitar, which made it even more refined if possible. And meanwhile, the soaked diehards had another party in the Balkan brass of the North Macedonian Dzambo Agusevi Orchestra and the Bosnian Damir Imamovic managed to make heavy songs about Sarajevo manageable with a coolly humorous presentation.

West African pop is never missing at Music Meeting. The Malian singer Djely Tapa did not bring the promised ‘afrofuturism’, but she breathed life into her somewhat standard mix of afrofunk and rock by playing the drums with her band with full dedication. Again, the refined version of the genre was presented on the covered stage. The Malian super band Trio da Kali interprets the griot tradition with great playing on balafon and ngoni. But especially with the voice of Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté. It sounds so full and warm that the swamp that Park Brakkenstein had now become began to feel like an oasis in a blistering desert.