Ethnicities Magazine - January 2017 - Issue N°7

starting point. She literally sang everything, when she
began. She begins with jazz in 1962-63 with the great
teacher Victor Boa. With Boa, she made much of her
career in that genre. Another master, immeasurably
large, Clarence Martin, arranger and bassist, was part of
the musical development of Violeta Green.
The first presentations of Violeta Green with Victor Boa,
creator of the Tambo Jazz, were given at Club Maxim’s,
which was located at Via España. The Club Le Marron,
at Rio Abajo, was another stage in which Violeta Green
occupied space. For decades, Panama had a great
jazzy rise. The history of jazz in Panama cannot be told
without the obligatory reference to Violeta Green.
For the time, at the beginning of the decade of the 60,
television arrived to Panama. And, even in its primary
stage, national productions were of very good quality.
The programs “live” were widely seen by the first
viewers that the country had. Violeta Green occupied
much of the screen for that time, as other Afro-Panamanian
artists did (Barbara Wilson, Many Bolaños,
David Watts, Felix Wilkins). I could name many here, but
many more, all very good. It was good TV. Cuban producers,
who already came with a vast experience of their
country, helped to forge a robust national television, in
terms of artistic programs. Violeta Green was one of the
television jewels of that time.
VIDEO
Violeta Green was an extremely versatile interpreter.
She was very good with tamboreras. Boleros were of
his complete dominion. Calypso, not to speak. She
described herself as a perfectionist. She tells, with his
own voice, that the only occasion in her entire life that
she recorded a disc was discarded, because she did not
end up liking how it sounded. She herself, Violeta Green,
pointed out that she later repented of it, because it later
seemed that what she recorded was way better than
what she listened from other national artists. Violeta
was very demanding with herself.
Improvisation, with the voice, while interpreting a piece
of jazz, was a characteristic note of Violeta Green. No
one in Panama like her did any better. Ella Fitzgerald, the
American Jazz Lady, was an iconic image for Violet; she
imitated her a lot, of course with the touch of Tambo
Panamanian Jazz. Violeta Green valued her voice so
much that she once said that “it was a gift that God had
given her, and that it would only be gone with death.”
And so it was, indeed.
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