Nine Street Corners in Sendai, and a Jazz Festival That Stopped Being One in Year Two

Sendai’s Jōzenji-dōri — a zelkova-lined boulevard in the city that produced the reedman Kazutoki Umezu — is not a jazz district, which is roughly the point. On September 15, 1991, twenty-five groups and 150 musicians played nine street-corner stages along it, in light rain that cleared, for a crowd of about 5,000. The idea came from the pianist Mitsuhiro Sakakibara, who had watched buskers in Boston and concluded that music belonged outdoors, and from Masahiko Gotō of the 141 shopping building, who wanted an existing indoor jazz series moved onto the pavement. It was billed simply as the Jōzenji Jazz Festival. By year two it had added “Street” to the name and quietly stopped being a jazz festival at all, admitting rock, gospel, classical and folk — “jazz” retained for the attitude rather than the repertoire. It now draws some 620,000 people and 734 groups, still volunteer-run, with the musicians paying a participation fee rather than collecting one.