Kool & The Gang celebrates its 50th anniv. at Barrière Enghien Jazz Festival

By Leonard Silva. Pictures : Vincent Shango

The only jazz festival, at the heart of summer in Paris region, in the northern outskirts town of Enghien-les-Bains, the Barrière EnghienJazz Festival celebrated from 3-7 July its twentieth anniversary.

For  this special occasion the event set in the marvellous surroundings of the Lac d’Enghien called upon a dream line-up of  such luminaries as Maceo Parker, Chick Corea and The Spanish Heart Band, Stanley  Clarke, as well as today’s contemporary popular music heritage band Kool & the Gang and the likes of Boney Fields, Rickie Lee Jones, and  Brooklyn Funk Essentials. One could also spot and listen to Generation X‘s Charlie Winston with his brand of electronica cum pop-folk.

 This year sunny day’s event, as usually with most concerts free of charge, draw crowds numbering in the thousands to the banks of the famous town lake where the major festival stages are set. With her blend of jazz, funk and hot dance music, world heritage band Kool & the Gang drew on a classic repertoire  of such tunes like  Ladies Night, Fresh, Get Down On It, and the seminal anthem-like Celebration.  Ronald Bell and his band mates, celebrated on a hot July summer night their fiftieth anniversary as a band, in front of a huge crowd of young and old, some of them on a trip back to twentieth century’s eighties nostalgia.

Stanley Clarke, Boney Fields and others

Saxophonist Boney Fields with his blues and funk shaped on New Orleans funky style and bass player Stanley Clarke whose concert (sort of jazz and rock fusion meets-classic jazz) turned into a free -of- charge-master class, were as well among the highlights of the 20^th edition of the Barrière Enghien Jazz Festival.