{"id":291,"date":"2010-01-20T16:46:03","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T21:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/2010\/01\/ashevilles_grassroots_musician\/"},"modified":"2011-04-28T16:33:21","modified_gmt":"2011-04-28T20:33:21","slug":"ashevilles_grassroots_musician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2010\/01\/ashevilles_grassroots_musician.html","title":{"rendered":"Asheville’s grassroots musicians’ benefit for Haiti"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Guest, guitarist<\/a>, has organized a grassroots “Jazz and Blues for Haiti” benefit for Doctors Without Borders<\/a> on Monday Jan 26<\/span> Jan 25 at Curras Nuevo Cuisine<\/a> in Asheville, NC, a town he says “doesn’t to my knowledge have an immediate Haitian connection.” But Guest wanted to do something for people in crisis worth more than $10 bucks and knows how to leverage his skills; besides, he’s felt nature’s wrath himself, having been driven from Gulf Coast, where he and his wife lived “a beer-and-a-half from New Orleans’ French Quarter” by Hurricane Katrina.<\/p>\n

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Guest, a gentle finger-picker who likes to recast standards and ballads to highlight his style, leads his trio with bassist Zach Page and drummer Leonid Citer (both boast New York City playing-time) for the show. He’s lined up blues singer Peggy Ratusz<\/a> (“She’s like a mama to the blues here; she mentored Skinny Legs and All<\/a> which got pretty far on American Idol”) and the local Django-jazz band One Leg Up<\/a>. He’s expecting other bands to emerge for the party. The’y’ll play from 6 p.m. “until we’re done,” Guest says, and he hopes for some 300 attendees. No cover charge; collections will be made between sets, and home-made arts and crafts raffled. All the musicians are donating their time, and ALL proceeds are going to Doctors Without Borders.  <\/div>\n
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“People call Asheville the Boulder of the East,” Guest told me over the phone from the home he adopted in 2005, a regional capital of about 80,000 people in the Blue Ridge Mountains. “It’s like a college town-plus<\/i>. Some good musicians live here, though a lot of the local gigs are for very short money. <\/div>\n
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“There’s no Haitian community as far as I know, but we have a black community, of people who’ve mostly been here for a while. The neighborhood where I live, called Kenilworth, was established as a village for free blacks to  after the Civil War adjoining Asheville and became absorbed in the itself. It’s mixed now, not predominantly a black neighborhood any more.”<\/div>\n
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Guest has never been to Haiti, but seconded my notion<\/a> that rara troupes are kin to New Orleans marching bands. “I’ve never heard much Haitian music,” he admitted, “but maybe there’s an opportunity for it to get some attention now — if music’s being made. I know that Carnival is a big thing for Haiti, and I can’t image what they’re going to do about that. My wife and I plan to be in New Orleans. I hope we’ll have a good time without feeling too guilty.” <\/div>\n
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Putting on this benefit ought to cover his trip to Mardi Gras. Just thinking of this reminds me of Haiti’s Boukman Eksperyans<\/a>, which isn’t always as overtly political as here<\/a>, <\/div>\n

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but seems always as funky. Come on, Haiti, we’re pullin’ for ya.<\/div>\n
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