It's Jazz Jim, but not as we know it.......

So now I'm a music critic!!

As previously mentioned, we are here for the annual Koktebel Jazz Festival, and it has been going for 3 days now.

Now I'm not a dyed in the wool Jazz fan, but I have been getting into Jazz more and more as I mature......

Jazz is a strange genre.....probably because stuff gets chucked into it that sort of doesn't fit anywhere else.

We are all familar with Trad Jazz, but there's plenty of other flavours. Ambient, Lounge, and a personal favourite of mine Acid Jazz, since I was introduced to it by an english bloke I met in Portugal two years ago, who had a prodigious collection, and gave me a couple of albums by a Swiss trio called Tratosphere. Mmmmm........Cool!

But I am in cultural shock as to what constitutes Jazz in this neck of the woods, but I'll try and give you a flavour.

We paid top dollar for seats for a performance in the gardens of the most historic building in town - Voloshin House, named after a famous local hang gliding pioneer, who crashed and died famously many years ago. Yes....I know.....bizarre!

The setting was a treat, no more than a couple hundred of Crimeas trendiest people sat around a small stage, trees overhanging, local champagne flowing .......

But what was emanating from the stage was amazing ...... amazingly horrible!

Some bloke, dressed of course all in black, was crouched over an acoustic guitar on the floor, next to a small guitar amp. And he was giving it his total attention. He did everything but play the bloody thing. Using the not exactly sophisticated technique of acoustic feedback (Santana and Hendrix anybody?) he was scratching the strings, twiddling the tuning knobs, manicuring his fingernails on the frets and generally producing the most random caterwauling his imagination and that poor mistreated instrument could come up with.

I am not exaggerating for a good story - I promise you. It was evil, self indulgent and devoid of anything remotely musical. I could have done it myself. Easy.....and better.

I looked around the audience - they, like me, didn't know what to make of it, and were trapped between the two extremes of "It must be me, this is art" and "what the fuck is this?"

I sat it out, in the hope that this was a pretentious way of creating an atmosphere by way of introducing the rest of the band, as behind the guitar abuser was arranged an array of further instruments - a double bass, piano, and drums.

Right enough, just as it really was getting beyond a joke......I mean you can only do so much with your teeth nails and shoes with a guitar.......another dude sauntered onto the stage, and took up station. With an alto sax. Looks like a cross between a trumpet and a clarinet, only with more twiddly bits. An alto sax is a very shrill instrument. Very shrill indeed. Just at the point where, if it all was really part of a really cool sophisticated jazz build up, and they would have burst into something tuneful, along with appreciative ripple of applause from the relieved audience, what does he do, but start to abuse his instrument in the same way.

A few minutes later the drummer came on, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

We left. Not totally in disgust, but we just thought we would go grab another bottle, and hopefully return to a new act.

We were gone no more than 40 minutes, and it was just gone 10pm. When we returned to the garden, it was empty and deserted. That was it.....the headline act. All over done and dusted in 90 minutes. Thanks for the dollars, you can go now.

I pride myself on being a music fan - I can listen to anything if its live, and I will go out of my way for a new experience. I have had some truly magical experiences, and a few not so, but always managed to extract something out of anything. This was a new term of reference, and a truly unforgettable experience.

So what to do in Koktebel at 10pm on a saturday night at the theoretical peak of the proceedings? Go seek out more "Jazz" of course, so off we went down the prom - all 2 kilometres of it, to find the "Nu Jazz" stage, which was supposed to be playing till the small hours.

And we were energised and happy on the basis of "it just can't get any worse, anything will be music to the ears after that"......indeed maybe it was indeed some sophisticated, yet sinister, cultural experiment. Maybe we were missing something.

Nope

"Nu Jazz" Ukrainian style comprises of 6 blokes belting out a sort of cross between Traditional folk music and the Sex Pistols. According to Luda, the Russian lyrics were angry, violent and misogynistic. The crowd just stood there, not bouncing to the rhythm, as crowds are wont to do, but rather letting out defiant battle cries on the prompt of the lead singer. Very much a cultural statement, and they had to be famous otherwise they wouldn't even be there.

Luda was all for home, but I still clung to the forlorn concept that we had just been unlucky, and it was still only 11, and a new band beckoned. So I put my foot down and insisted we wait it out.

Twenty minutes later I was shaking my head in amazement as 5 drummers from Azerbaijan......no other instruments........were all trying to outdo each other.

And then they started singing. We left.

I'm reluctant to criticise - I respect all musicians - they are up there doing it, and I am down here complaining. And I have to take into consideration the cultural differences, and I am a guest.

But it's been total crap! It's billed as "An International Jazz Festival" - it isn't. The only jazz here is on my Ipod. If they had called it "Womadski" they would have just got away with it. You can get away with anything if it's "World Music".

And I am not alone, I asked Luda to listen to the background crowd chatter in Russia......and the word she heard the most was "Gamono"......Russian for "Crap".

The final day beckons........could it all have been a bad dream? Am I missing the point? A stranger in a strange land?

I will summon up all my reserves of respect and optimism, and I will listen to every act with an open mind.

Stay tuned.