Kathmandu's long-running jazz party has done it again. The 22nd Surya Nepal Jazzmandu festival wrapped up on 4 November after a week of concerts spread across the Kathmandu Valley, running from 29 October to 4 November — and, true to tradition, the final night ended with a field of people dancing.
What makes Jazzmandu worth knowing about, even if you've never heard of it, is the cross-cultural line-up. Nepali acts this year ranged from pioneering local jazz crew Cadenza Collective and Gandharva to Hot Club Patan, Kanta dAb dAb, a violin-and-tabla duo (Milan and Milesh), singer Jonisha Poudel, Santosh Bhakta on the ishraj and Roshan Putwar on bamboo flute. They shared stages with international guests: Cesar Haas bringing Brazilian jazz guitar, Swiss pianist Manon Mullener, Tito Puente Jr., France's Kevin Saura group, and the Nick Aggs Quartet — a quartet of musicians from Australia, the USA and Singapore.
The programming philosophy is simple but effective: put a sitar next to a saxophone, a tabla next to a bass, and let them talk. Festival founder Navin Chhetri, also of Cadenza Collective, summed it up at the Yala Maya Kendra courtyard show: every year the energy and musicians change, but the point stays the same — music is global and jazz is the shared language.
Weather nearly derailed one highlight. Rain was forecast for the open-air Gokarna show, so organisers scrambled — a tenthouse went up at Kasthamandap, a stage was built between Wednesday and Saturday, and tarpaulin covered the ground. Even with a forecast promising clear skies by 11 am, the wait stretched to 3 pm because, as Chhetri put it, nobody enjoys live music while getting soaked. Fittingly, the rain stopped at 3:15 pm, just as Gandharva started playing, and the show closed into a sunset.
The finale at Malla Hotel stacked the bill: Kanta dAb dAb opened, the Manon Mullener trio followed with Haas joining on guitar, then Brazilian jazz with Navin and Pravin Chhetri, a sax-led lift from Nick Aggs, a high-energy set from Kevin Saura's group, Cadenza Collective with trumpeter Zach Fawcett, and a closing salsa number with Tito Puente Jr. that pulled nearly the whole line-up back on stage.
Why should a traveller care? Because Jazzmandu is a genuinely unusual reason to visit Kathmandu: a week each autumn when valley courtyards, hotels and open-air grounds fill with world-class fusion shows at local-friendly prices, all within reach of the city's heritage core. If your dates align with late October/early November, you get the festival plus Nepal's clear post-monsoon trekking season in one trip. And even if you miss it, the scene it seeded — bands like Cadenza Collective and Hot Club Patan — plays around town year-round.
