BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE
The Golden Thyme Coffee Café is not very big, and doesn’t have fancy food or elegant decor. It has decent coffee—from Peace Coffee—and is a friendly local hangout on a mostly residential stretch of Selby Avenue in the Rondo neighborhood of Saint Paul. But once a year, it’s a very important establishment, as it is the hosting sponsor of the Selby Avenue JazzFest. The 14th JazzFest was Saturday, Sept. 12.
Selby Ave JazzFest began as a vision of Golden Thyme owner and community activist Mychael Wright back in the early months of 2002. As Wright says on the JazzFest website, “The first anniversary of 9/11 was coming up and you could just tell that people were feeling pretty somber … I then thought to myself, ‘I’m tired of feeling this way. We need to celebrate the good things that are going on in this world … especially here on Selby.’ Nothing gets people together like a good old-fashioned block party, so we took it from there.” Ever since then, the JazzFest takes place on the second weekend in September, and has grown in popularity and musical significance year by year.
The problem with fall festivals here in Minnesota is the narrow window in which to have them. After the State Fair packs up for the year, the next weekend starts a mad dash to get all these wonderful festivals—of food, music, drink, culture, and various niche passions—scheduled, presented and attended before the good weather runs out. And so it was that on this Saturday, Minneapolis had the iconic Monarch Festival, and the Taste of Greece, while nearby Wayzata had James J. Hill Days and Saint Paul had the Mac-Grove Festival in addition to the Selby Avenue JazzFest (and many other smaller events). Despite this, attendance was good, as the audience, connoisseurs of jazz and African-American culture both nearby and not, know what they like, and that they will find it here.
The lineup of the music was in two parts. The opening part comprised the very popular local group Dick and Jane Revisited, along with jams and guest slots by some of their partners and jazz drummer Eric Kamau Gravatt, who has accompanied McCoy Tyner and supergroup Weather Report, among others, with his group Source Code. Headliner Walter Chancellor Jr. was featured in the second part of the show. Chancellor, who made his name playing with Prince on the “Emancipation” album, and has played with many big names in funk, jazz and R&B, such as Chaka Khan, Bobby Lyle, Larry Graham, The Steeles and Debbie Duncan. Chancellor also played along with other musician partners, including Thomasina Petrus (more on her below). Other musical acts included Salsa del Sol, who as the name suggests perform various styles of Latin American dance music; Walker West Urban Legends of Jazz; Lex-Ham Community Band; and the Jazz Heritage Showcase.
But the JazzFest is really a street festival, with more happening than just music. There was one side street dedicated to food. While BBQ, especially the ubiquitous pulled pork, predominated, there was also a large assortment of Cajun, Soul Food and Afro-Caribbean foods such as Curry Goat, Fried Plantains and Rice and Beans. One food truck was selling copious amounts of Catfish Sliders.
The long block leading up to the music block was closed off and filled with vendors and nonprofits hawking their wares or their messages. The far end of the block was anchored by a Quilting Tent offered by the Million Artists Movement, an offshoot of the Black Lives Matter movement. Finished quilts were displayed, and you could enter the tent, where there was a sewing machine or two and squares of fabric waiting for your inspiration. Nonprofits and politicals present included the Rondo Land Trust, FairVote MN, cancer and other health-related charities, school reform advocates, candidates from both the Greens and the DFL for Saint Paul school board and city council, and most of the arts organizations in Saint Paul.
A wide variety of items for sale were also included on the vendor street. African style caftans and dresses, tailor-made men’s suits, perfumes both commercial and new age, books from a pan-African publishing company, jewelry and all manner of other crafts—these just skim the surface. Thomasina Petrus, who is a jazz singer herself, was selling her delicious cashew brittle, alongside CDs of her Billie Holiday album, wherein she styled 10 songs that Lady Day did not live to know in the style that she might have done them, finishing up with two iconic Billie Holiday songs, one of which is “Strange Fruit.”
The side street in the opposite direction from the food street was the Family Fun Area. Organizations as diverse as the Children’s Museum and Home Depot had tables set up for arts and crafts and make-and-take activities for children. In a mini-park area off of Selby Avenue, one of the main sponsors, UCare, had a mobile medical testing unit offering free glucose, blood pressure and other tests, and incentives to have them done.
Good health and food security, with an emphasis on the needs of the African-American community and the local neighborhoods, were another prominent theme. Mississippi Market had a booth on the vendor stretch, where they were giving away bananas and selling cooperative ownership, and in the Health Fair area, another big bus turned out to be the Mobile Market, a novel approach to the “food desert” and transportation problems of poorer communities which is proving very popular.
It was a glorious sunny fall day in which to enjoy the music and the other attractions of this highly local and excellent street festival. Because the JazzFest takes place in a quiet, residential neighborhood, the sound system was pretty low-key for a music festival. Some of the older residents brought, not lawn or camping chairs, but their living room side chairs, right out into their lawns or the street and sat contentedly taking it all in. Lovely.
