MANY Guyanese who have never left these shores can now boast of an up close and personal experience of one of the most distinctly indigenous and flexible art forms of the United States of America, following the recent collaboration of the U.S Embassy in Guyana and the local Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport to welcome the Phil Dunlap Trio Jazz group to Georgetown.

Coming to the end of a packed week of educational workshops, the band performed last Thursday evening at a private concert at the residence of U.S Ambassador to Guyana, His Excellency Brent Hardt; and special invitees included Prime Minister Samuel Hinds; Foreign Affairs Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett; and Culture, Youth and Sport Minister Dr. Frank Anthony, among a plethora of other ministers of the Guyana Government and members of the diplomatic corps.

Hardt said he and his wife Sasha were delighted to welcome guests to their Cummings Lodge residence for a night of “jazz by the seawall”. He said that since his arrival in Guyana, over two years ago, he had been working to bring a jazz band to Georgetown, and finally, thanks to the hard work of a public affairs team led by Tabby Fairclough and the support of the U.S State Department’s Bureau of Cultural Affairs, the venture had come to fruition.

He encouraged guests to have a relaxed evening with no fuss and ceremony, and to think of the event as the “Blues Alley of Cummings Lodge” – an intimate jazz club with good wine, beer and spirits.

Hardt quoted late past American president John F. Kennedy, who observed that “the life of the arts is far from an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation; is close to the centre of a nation’s purpose, and is the test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.”

He also pointed out that that was one of the reasons why, at the height of the Cold War, the State Department first unleashed its finest Jazz musicians – Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Benny Goodman and many others — to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union. “We wanted to show people of diverse cultures and backgrounds the quality of our civilization, which was beautifully reflected in jazz music, and most especially in the people who performed it,” Hardt said.

He noted that the art form helped to “supersede traditional ways of thinking, and point the way forward to a better, fairer, and more perfect America,” even as the United States struggled, and continues to, struggle with issues of race.

Over the years, the Department of State, its Bureau of Cultural Affairs, and its embassies and consulates worldwide have used cultural programming as a means of public diplomacy, to pursue U.S foreign policy objectives and promote mutual understanding and cross-cultural exchange and learning.

The Jazz Ambassadors programme (U.S Department of State) was established in 1961 as a mandate of the Fulbright Hays/Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act, to encourage cultural exchange between Americans and citizens of other countries.

The performance was scheduled to be repeated the next day for the general public, with a public concert which, up to press time, was timetabled for last Friday evening at the Theatre Guild in Kingston.

Highlights of the past week included a jam session with Guyana’s top jazz players, an education presentation, and performance at the St John’s Bosco Boys Orphanage; in dept workshops with students and staff of the National School of Music, and performances at the Bishops and Berbice High schools.