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14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 13 OCTOBER 2024 PEOPLE MATTHEW VELLA mvella@mediatoday.com.mt He banged the drum: The story In Strait Street to Abbey Road, Cedric Vella brings to life the story of jazz drummer Tony Carr, adding an important piece of history to the canvas of Maltese music FOR its dense and knotty tunes, complex and syncopat- ed rhythms, jazz has at times been maligned as a world of snotty-nosed excellence. But no matter where one's musical prejudices lie, unlike the glob- al template of rock, jazz also changes with the cultural nuanc- es it takes root in; in places far from its American home, such as Ethiopia or Armenia to name only a few. It is hard not to be enthused, for example, by the exploits of Maltese jazz musicians in Paris, like Sandro Zerafa, now the con- venor of the Malta Jazz Festival; or Oliver Degabriele's Akalé Wubé, a Parisian band styled by 60s and 70s Ethiopian music, which brought back to the stage Girma Bèyènè, one of the most influential arrangers of the gold- en age of Ethiopian jazz. And similarly, it is difficult not to be intrigued by Cedric Vel- la's Strait Street to Abbey Road, which premiered on Thursday, 10 October at Spazju Kreat- tiv in Valletta – a documentary which not only takes viewers for a whirl around the life of its sub- ject, Maltese jazz drummer To- ny Carr, but also for a deserved insight into the roots of Maltese jazz. Born George Caruana in 1927, Carr and his contemporaries lived through the ravages of World War II dreaming of the sound of jazz, and emerged into Strait Street hopping from one bar to the other at what was the 'university' of Maltese jazz – the Old Vic Music Hall, the Cairo Bar, the Cotton Club, Morning Star, Charlie's Bar, all lined up in a stretch of red-light enter- tainment for the British forces. Here the young George played with Freddie Mizzi and Sammy Galea, and Jimmy Dowling's band, together with Joe Curmi 'il-Pusè' and Frank 'Bibi' Camill- eri. These were times in which bands competed for the well- turned-out audiences of the day. Carr took inspiration from Robert 'Juice' Wilson, the Af- rican-American jazz violinist who, stranded in Malta with entertainer Levy Wine right at the outbreak of WWII, became established here and promul- gated jazz to yet another white audience. "Juice Wilson was the best thing that ever happened to Malta," Carr said. "A player like him, my God, he was such a player… They [Juice Wilson and Levy Wine] were the first black players we ever had in Malta and that's where I learnt to play that style." The challenges for director Cedric Vella in Strait Street to Abbey Road might have been ev- ident in the paucity of audiovis- ual material that features Tony Carr, who as a session musician was at the service of stars, and not necessarily in the limelight. So the gold nuggets of footage from the BBC where Carr plays in the Ronnie Ross band, and other archives that Vella fish- es out, as well photos of Carr scouring for a cowbell inside an Abbey Road studio teeming with stars like Paul McCartney and John Bonham, have a legendary quality to them. The main interviews with the ageing Carr had already been carried out back in 2015 in London by the jazz drummer and researcher Gużè Camilleri, grandson to the legendary Bibi, who researched Carr's life for his master's degree in ethnomusi- cology. A decade later, Vella had to use newspaper cuttings and photos, and Jimmy Grima's 2-D illustra- tions, to craft the story of a man from a small island who had big dreams to make the big time in London. In this manner, Vella artful- ly manages to tie up a familiar story arc of many a Maltese mi- 'The ideal rhythm section' – Tony Carr with bassist Spike Heathley, and Eddie Thompson, in the Ronnie Ross Band In Paul McCartney's Rockestra (1978), Carr lets Speedy Acquaye take his beloved congas, and instead plays the cowbell at Abbey Road