Salsa-Celtica was the last band to be interviewed for the 1st day. I had posed to them the question of whether Salsa and Celtic music are polls apart like water and oil and it seemed to have generated a lot of buzz which saw them talking excitingly. They were very friendly and chatty which made for some good conversation.

If you see them naming their next album, “Water and Oil” you know where they got it from.


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A really fun band to hang out with, I'll let them do all the talking for themselves. Here, have a read.



Hi my name is “Diamond” Dave Billing and these are the Doodaddies. This is Dave Brewer, or Dave no. 2, followed by Yugon Chobanoff on drums and Bob Thomson right at the end there who plays the upright bass. My mate Dave Brewer plays the electric guitar.

Oh, I almost forgot about myself. I play the mouth organ or the harmonica or the ‘tin sandwich’ as some people call it back in Australia or the ‘harp’ – the blues harp. It’s the same thing.

Our style of music is the electric Chicago style of blues which is pretty deep in West Australia which is where we are from, we listen to records from the 40s and 50s and emulate the style of the blues from Chicago and we try to add our own style to it. We are very passionate about the blues music that we learned.

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Hamilton is my age but he looks much more mature than he really is due to that after-five look. Arguably the most virtuosic mandolinist in the world, he plays a custom-made 10 string mandolin or bandolim. All the band members have an online presence.

Hamilton De Holanda has just received the most prestigious Brazilian music award for the best instrumental group of 2007 (similar to the Grammy)



(This interview has been edited from extracts of the press conference)

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Ben of Bens Belinga's Quartet is an enigmatic fellow. He is loud like his African-American counterparts yet there is an aura of African mysticism and jazz around him. He is one who does not mince his words as you will see later. We also found out that Belinga is a family name.



Disclaimer: Some parts of the interview may have been lost in the translation from French-Cameroon into English. Special thanks to Michael (Singapore) for playing translator.

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Of all the interviews that I came for, the interview with Jun-Lin Yeoh, the Festival Director was unexpected as it was unscheduled. Here we got to pick her brains and the motivations behind the selection of each band for the Genting Jazz festival:


How does Jun-Lin Yeoh decide on the type of programming for upcoming jazz festivals?

Basically it starts with something that I've heard and I like and then out from whatever I have, I put bands together for Genting Jazz. Each has to be different and I guess you'll see the bands tonight...Nothing must be the same and the bands must come from different countries as far as possible, (of) different genres in jazz.

I think a lot of misconception of jazz has been around. People hear one type of jazz which is contemporary jazz; of course they like it because it is the jazz of our time, but there are so many other different aspects of jazz.

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Four hours before the start of the first night of festivities, members of the press were ushered into “The Olive”, a cosy place to lounge for a press conference with the various bands who were to play that night. I took the opportunity to pose a few more questions to jUnKoFuNc's front man, Albert Sirimal in addition to those I had asked the previous evening. (To listen to their practice podcast, please click here)

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We met up with Malaysia's sole representatives for the Genting Island Jazz Festival 2008 last night for quick check on their final preparations for the festival as well as an interview with band leader, guitarist and vocalist Albert Sirimal.

A man of humble demeanour yet friendly, he shares with us the interesting circumstances that saw to their selection to perform at the festival as well as personal thoughts about the present and future climate for jazz in Malaysia.

As as token of appreciation to fans of the band who are reading this, you can download samples of one of the rehearsals by visiting this page.

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Finally it's out - the post-concert interview with Az Samad!

In this belated email interview — through no fault of his, Az Samad shares a side rarely heard and seen, touching on issues such as the artificially constructed dichotomy between the so-called musical purity and economical reality and necessity, his wonderful band mates and the future direction of jazz in Malaysia, as he perceives it. He also clues us in on a special project.

We think he's on to something here.



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We want to thank Az Samad for agreeing to do this interview in the short time span that we gave him. We promise we will ask more personal questions in future, but for now here's the 'professional' angle (or so we think)



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For your weekend reading pleasure, the Jakarta Post recently interviewed Nial Djuliarso (homepage) on 7 Dec 2007.

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