Despite the rain the Grassmarket thronged with music lovers yesterday.  I don't know why these guys had to play in the open when others had the benefit of covered stages.  They are not the Salvation Army by the way.

There was more open air revelry today but I got hooked on the golf and shamefully stayed indoors and missed the Carnival Parade, the bands in Princes Street and a sun-drenched Grassmarket.

I felt a bit short-changed at the first Jazz Festival show I went to.  I was drawn to it by a wish to hear Abdullah Ibrahim, the grand old man of South African jazz.  I enjoyed his set but it only lasted 30 minutes.  The rest of the evening was not to my taste and although jazz is a pretty wide and elastic term none of it qualified in my view.  The second half was also too noisy and although I moved to the back of the theatre and stuck my fingers in my ears I decided to leave after 15 minutes or so. 

The Portobello High School musicians were much more to my taste at one tenth of the price.  They appeared in various combinations as a jazz combo, a blues band and the two girls sang individually and together with piano accompaniment.  They were very good and a lot of people had turned out to hear them at 10.30 on Saturday morning.

They were followed by a great fun Italian outfit called Bandakadabra.  They were keener on  audience participation than suits me but luckily I was far enough away to get off with clapping and swaying on the spot rather than being drawn into more extreme antics.

Another gig was a game of two halves in which a group led by Martin Kershaw played beautifully more than making up for the challenging free jazz style of  the Roby Glod Trio.  They were allegedly both playing music by or inspired by the same man (Lennie Tristano) but you could have fooled me.