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Wall Street Journal

‘International Jazz Day in Morocco' Review: PBS's Musical Melange

We get a glimpse of what we think we're going to get from 'International Jazz Day in Morocco' when a Tangier musician appears, cradles a three-stringed, round-necked guembri in his lap, and plays a blues solo he might have copied from a Muddy Waters record. His one-woman audience is an appreciative Dee Dee Bridgewater, the estimable American vocalist. So as intros go, it is international, arguably connected to jazz, and is definitely Morocco. Whether the enthusiastic Jeremy Irons was the right guy to host the show is a question—he's hardly the jazz ambassador that someone like, say, Christian McBride is. And opening act Shemekia Copeland, a rather generic blues belter (and daughter of Johnny), immediately takes the show in a genre-specific direction. Likewise, Melody Gardot, who is best described as a chanteuse. Which may be French, but isn't vaguely African.