Not everyone at San Francisco's Fillmore Street Jazz Festival Saturday was there for the jazz.

"We're here for Dad," laughed Marcia Frainer, as she and her son, Nathan, 18, picked out a couple of belt buckles - a Spider-Man and a Dr. Who - at one of the knickknack stands along Fillmore between Eddy and Jackson streets that outnumbered the jazz bands many times over.

Chewing on a Ritz cracker topped with salami, Joshua Askew considered his favorite part of the jazz festival, a venerable two-day celebration focusing this year on female artists from vocalist Darlene Coleman to Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers.

"The jewelry," concluded the 11-year-old from Modesto, a diamond-studded earring glinting in his left earlobe. Besides, he said, "I like hip-hop."

But those who did come for the music were not disappointed.

"Oh, it's outstanding," said Cliff Jones, 64, from Atlanta, one of a small crowd marveling at an ensemble of teens from St. Ignatius College Prep singing jazz tunes and playing violin and cello outside Extreme Pizza. "It sounds good."

Facing one of the festival's three stages, Michael Smith, 76, lounged in a deck chair he'd set up and listened to the Arabelle Schoenberg and Nora Stanley Group.

Jazz "has a tendency to reach in the soul," he said. "Once you start listening, it's hard to get away."

Billy Zeng knows about that.

The 24-year-old has been on edge lately because he's studying for his medical school admission test. So while driving the other day, he flipped through the radio stations in search of something nondistracting. Something without lyrics.

Hearing jazz, which he hadn't listened to in years, Zeng stopped searching.

"I got hooked on it," he said. "It was really soothing."

So on Saturday, Zeng brought his 11-year-old cousin, Anthony Zeng, to hear jazz live.

"It's OK," said Anthony, who usually listens to pop music. "That's actually why I brought him here," Zeng said. "To introduce him to something else."

Jazz always has been something else. And the city's heavily African American Fillmore district was the place to find it, especially after World War II, when Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and other jazz geniuses straight out of music history books were playing local clubs.

Then came a city redevelopment effort to build low-income housing in the district, and the demolition of homes and businesses that pulled the bottom out of the culture of jazz that had grown there organically.

In the 1990s, jazz returned to the Fillmore, and the annual festival took hold.

Luis Rodriguez of El Cerrito is glad for that. He sat in the sun with his 3-year-old daughter, Soledad, waiting for the Waves of Silver band to play.

"I love Coltrane, and I'm a big fan of live music," Rodriguez said.

Just then, the drummer began a rhythmic tapping, and Soledad stood up. Bobbing her head and moving her body to the music, the toddler began to groove. "Chic, chic, chic-a-boom," she murmured, looking at the stage.

And a new generation of jazz fans was born.

The jazz festival concludes Sunday.
