The Buenos Aires Jazz Festival is a music festival first organized in its current form by the city government of Buenos Aires in 2002. The festival takes place in multiple venues, attracting around 36,000 spectators during each of its first few years[1] and over 70,000 in 2012.[2]
The Buenos Aires Jazz Festival was inspired, in part, by the after-dinner "café concerts" popular in large Argentine cities during the 1960s and '70s. This was followed by Carlos Inzillo's Jazzología, which he first organized in September 1984 and remains the oldest continuously-running jazz festival in Argentina.[3]
Jazz festivals had been organized intermittently in Buenos Aires and a number of other Argentine cities, such as Rosario, La Plata and Avellaneda, during the 1990s.[4] Defying conventional wisdom during the depths of a severe economic crisis, the city of Buenos Aires announced a Buenos Aires Jazz Festival in July 2002. This first event was held on August 6-20, and was free to the public. Featuring mostly local artists, notably Pablo Ziegler and Dino Saluzzi, it was held in three locations: Thelonious, Notorious, and The Casual Bar.[5]