“Oui, Ronsieur.”

Cocktails and Chocolat Chaud RaYé molten volcano thing

If you’ve seen Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, you may remember Gil Pender’s climactic realisation that everyone is just chasing the past. The Parisian 20's are the bee’s knees because of nostalgia and the simple relief that it’s not normal reality. Marion Cotillard’s character from the 20's wants to stay in the 1870's because it was the beginning of the ‘beautiful era’ and all the cool kids were doing it.

Which brings us to jazz clubs. People don’t want jazz clubs to be like Starbucks or IKEA. They want old school pizazz and sophisticated suave, not pumpkin spice lattes and techno Scandinavian beats.

I visited one such establishment called Club RaYé- an establishment established only 5 months ago. One of their cocktails is named ‘Hemingway Dacquiri’ and its contents are “Plantation 3 stars Rhum, Luxardo maraschino liquer, grapefruit juice, lime juice.” It could have been called the ‘Dan Brown Dacquiri’ or ‘KONY 2012 Dacquiri’ but in 2014, a new club themed itself around the early 20th century.

It’s two-way as well. For every café evoking the past, you have a restaurant of tomorrow. Designers are trying to imagine what clubs will look like in the future while future clubs are going to try to capture how they look today. It’s like a game of tip where everyone is It.

Jazz clubs have a natural appeal to them. Reminiscent atmosphere, live band, liquid mood. It’s a flavoursome genre of music and the rarity of such clubs makes them special.

Outside, the old white and black tones of RaYé are nowhere to be seen. There is no feeling of a golden jazz age in these streets, and the thing is- it doesn’t feel like there needs to be. It simply feels like reality, and sometimes reality has a nice texture to it.

I think the reason places like Club RaYé exist is because we don’t want to lose something people of another era were able to enjoy. There’s no need to live in the past, but it would be a shame if we could never have a taste of it.