PANGEA JAZZ FEST Set for Drom, 11/15

In a recent story about the state of contemporary jazz, Will Friedwald of the The Wall Street Journal observed that jazz has made as important a journey "from nation to nation and continent to continent" as it has from one style or one era to another.

To bring attention to and to celebrate that journey, Michael Katsobashvili, founder and the director of the New York Hot Jazz Festival, in partnership with Serdar Ilhan and Mehmet Dede of DROM, announce Pangea Jazz Fest - America's first festival dedicated exclusively to world jazz which will be held on Sunday, November 15th (2pm -2am) at DROM in Manhattan's East Village. Pangea Jazz Fest gathers an all-star collective of many of the city's top world jazz practitioners who combine jazz with the traditions of music from all around the world. During 12 nearly continuous hours of world jazz by some of its finest exponents, who will reflect the multicultural musical mosaic of New York City, the festival will highlight the fact that jazz is both a universal language and a catalyst of unity.

"Jazz is a symbolic force that pulls the continents together back into one, hence the name of the festival," says festival director Michael Katsobashvili. "It is a musical art form that knows no boundaries, thus is truly global. Though Jazz was born in the US, its ancestry and roots come from outside of America's borders from a multitude of musical traditions. Music from virtually any culture, be it Flamenco, Romany/Gypsy music, Arabic Maqam or Indian Ragas, can be played as jazz, or infused with enough jazz ideas to create a unique sound of world/jazz fusion. We will present the widest variety of traditions that we can, not only to entertain, but to bring people together and to place jazz in a more global context."

Festival attendees will journey from East Africa to Eastern Europe, from South-East Asia to South America, and from North America to West Africa. By focusing on the geographically sprawling Romany/Gypsy musical influences, the festival will also take listeners from Western Europe to Western Asia via the Balkans. In some cases the festival will highlight very different jazz influences from the same country, such as Colombia's cumbia and joropo.