By Steve Huffman
shuffman@salisburypost.com
Estimating the size of a crowd is akin to counting grains of sand on the beach.
And to her credit, Eleanor Qadirah didn’t try to put a number on the turnout for Saturday’s Rowan Blues & Jazz Festival.
Except to say it was a good number of people who crowded the Salisbury Post’s parking lot to hear plenty of fine blues and jazz music.
“We may have doubled or tripled the turnout we had a year ago,” Qadirah said. “We’re very pleased.”
The 10th annual festival featured some of the best musicians the Southeast has to offer ó Big Bill Morganfield, the Homemade Jamz Blues Band and Joe Robinson, included.
But early in the day the event also featured a music workshop for youth and a performance by various youth jazz bands.
“It’s an opportunity for a diverse group of people to come together,” said Latisha Feamster, one of the volunteers who made the event click. “What better way to bring people together than through music?”
Qadirah, the festival’s organizer since its inception, said its aim is to “preserve, promote and present jazz.”
Thanks in large part to weather that couldn’t have been more picture-perfect, organizers succeeded.
“It’s worth all the work,” Qadirah said as she stood back Saturday night and enjoyed the fruits of her labor. “I do this for the sake of Salisbury.”
She said she took a look around Salisbury 10 years ago and decided that a jazz festival was what the town needed.
“Salisbury is just an artsy town,” Qadirah said. “This just rounded it out.”
She said the event has grown in popularity, becoming such a hit that 200 bands applied this year to participate.
“And I listened to tapes from every one of them and responded to them all,” Qadirah said.
She laughed Saturday as she recalled the early days of the event when turnout was nothing like it has grown to become.
“All big festivals start little,” Qadirah said.
Gail Gorman-Mayer is a member of the board of directors of the Rowan Blues & Jazz Society. Taking in the festival Saturday night, she said she loved all it has become.
“The people are always so friendly and well-behaved,” Gorman-Mayer said. “It’s very family-oriented.”