Jazz Fest July 6

I decided to go again last night and followed the same routine of going first to TD Stage, then to Rio Tinto, then back to TD stage as this two venues are adjacent to each other.

First I saw was Leyla McCalla and her band.

She and her band are from New Orleans and the songs she and her band performed were Cajun/Creole/Haitian inspired songs with some songs having typical Caribbean sound. Leyla has a sometimes haunting voice and sometimes powerful and she played the banjo, the guitar and a cello. Some of the songs reminded me of Santana also.

Next was Pascuala Ilbaca y Fauna.

This band is from Chile and sang only in Spanish but the lead singer, the only female in the band, spoke some English between songs and some Spanish too. They played mostly Latin based songs, she said they were mostly political or feminist in nature but I couldn't tell. I was very pleasantly surprised, right about the middle of their show they played a couple of songs that could only have been described as progressive rock, with syncopation, varied time sigs and mellifluous solos. All throughout she would dance very impressively.

Last I saw just the first part of CRi. I did not get a good photo as the stage was either dark as night, or, there were strobe effects or the near-equivalent making photography with my mobile device extremely limited. CRi is a single individual who has panels to his left and right with a single small pedestal panel in front with him facing the audience. He plays what I'll call electro-synthetic dance music. Soon after the start of his show he had an eye-catching woman sing as part of his playing; but all she sang was something like 'I'll go right to you' just over and over and over, with the same repetitiveness of the music CRi was playing. I left the venue after about 20 minutes of this and headed home, it wasn't the kind of music I am particularly into.

The festival ends on Sunday, and though I do have some availability over the remaining three days, I've checked out who is playing on those two, my favourite stages, and none of the remaining scheduled bands am I keen enough to see. I checked other of the free stages too and have decided that the two times I went this year now is sufficient for this year. I missed the first few days, perhaps next year I will go earlier on.