Kiran Ahluwalia-
The ghazal, Kiran's specialty, is a song form that comes from the Indian subcontinent. It exists somewhere between the classical and popular tradition. Ghazals begin life as poems and with the addition of music, become songs. They have an unbroken 700 year tradition and that tradition is alive and well in the South Asian literary diaspora across North America. These new original poems written in Urdu and Punjabi by a variety of Indian poets, combined with Kiran's music, make an original contribution to the ghazal tradition, perhaps the first recorded ghazals to be entirely created in North America.
Kiran Ahluwalia is a performer of vocal music. More precisely she is a performer of two distinct styles of vocal music from the Indian subcontinent, now India and Pakistan. Kiran sings ghazals and Punjabi folk songs. The word ghazal is an Arabic word that means "to talk to women". Given that men have traditionally spoken to women a great deal about love; the name attached itself to a form of poetic sung verse that originated in Persia about 1000 years ago and reached India around 400 years later. This happened about 600 years before Kiran Ahluwalia was born but was to have a profound effect on her life.
Kiran Ahluwalia is not only an interpreter of ghazals she is also a creator. As a composer Kiran is forging a new repertoire, putting words of Indo and Pakistani Canadian poets to her own musical compositions; music that is firmly rooted in the tradition, while taking a contemporary turn. She has become an organic part of the long line of singers who have preserved and reinvented the ghazal form over the last thousand years.
Smadj-Take It and Drive
Smadj is the moniker adopted by musician and composer Jean-Pierre Smadja.
Smadj was born in Tunisia, but raised in Paris from an early age. His work is the product of a musical upbringing that has embraced influences from all over the world.
Smadj took up the guitar as a teenager, and he soon began to develop his own style of playing. By his early twenties he was featuring regularly at jazz clubs in and around the city, whilst gaining a reputation as a sound engineer through the mobile studio he had set up.
As the sound of electronic music spread throughout Paris during the early 90's Smadj began to feel constrained by his chosen genre. His first reaction was to start to fuse jazz with the North African sound of his birthplace. The name he gave to the project was Tatoom, which combined a number of musicians. Their world-groove sound caught the attention of label Moby Dick, which released Tatoom presents Tatoom in 1996. The group split up shortly, due to the departure of the singer.
During the mid-nineties Smadj had also collaborated as a session guitarist with a number of high-profile musicians, such as Tony Allen (Fela's drummer). At the same time Smadj met Sofi Hellborg, a Swedish saxophonist, who had experience of playing with African artists such as the Afro-Jazz musician Manu Dibango. Together they began to improvise live over DJ sets, fusing jazz and breakbeats. Smadj started to sample and program beats himself, as an accompaniment for his guitar, and the pair released their first EP, Bon Voyage, in 1997 with label Freerange UK.
One of the many people who Smadj had been impressing with his music was Robert Trunz, owner of MELT2000. In 1998 Robert signed him to do a full album, Equilibriste. The title means 'tight-rope walker', which is a reference to the boundary he treads on the album between nu-beats and jazz. He spent much of '99 gigging around France and England to promote it.
As Smadj's musical horizons broadened he had also been developing his mastery of a new instrument, the oud - an Arabic incarnation of the Lute comprising six pairs of strings. His second album for MELT2000, New Deal, was the first work to feature him on the instrument, and it marked a departure into more experimental and diverse territory. The album represented the sound many African, Arabic and Indian cultures, set against the environmental noise of Paris and New York.
Soon after the release of New Deal, Smadj was introduced to Mehdi Haddab, the famous oud player. Smadj found in Mehdi a tutor and partner. The two began jamming together, soon performing in front of close friends. It was not long, though, before Smadj was drawn by his fascination with technology towards combining the sound of the oud with his beloved Apple Mac. The idea of processing the oud with effects more closely associated with dance music was truly unique and the high level of musicianship shared by the two artists was bound to yield similarly original results. Soon the pair formed DuOud. The act was quickly picked up by Label Bleu, responsible for releasing their album Wild Serenade to critical acclaim. DuOud have toured the world, performing at prestigious locations such as London's ICA. In 2003 they were nominated for Best Newcomer at the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music.
Smadj's latest work, Take It And Drive is a collection of new music, featuring a number of artists with whom he has recently collaborated. Amongst those featured on the album are vocalist Rokia Traore, Mercury Award winner Talvin Singh and Mehdi Haddab himself.
Pat Metheny - Offramp
This 1982 recording by the Pat Metheny Group represented a crossroads for the guitarist, a creative expansion from his original concept in terms of acoustic and electric instrumentation, folksy roots material and modern jazz influences, American and third world sources. Having thus marked out the territory for a decade's worth of experimentation and growth, the Metheny Group cemented its standing on the cutting edge of contemporary jazz with Offramp. Lyle Mays' harmonica-like synth theme, Metheny's soaring, vocalized synth-guitar lead, some rich orchestral touches, and an easygoing blend of backbeat and chord changes made "Are You Going with Me?" one of Metheny's most enduring arrangements. Still, for every gentle, alluring set piece, such as the tangolike "Au Lait" or the rural vistas of "James," there was a visceral, emotive free-for-all like the title track, where Metheny unleashed wild, wailing synth guitar elisions over a loose, abstract pulse--anticipating the energy of the guitarist's collaboration with free jazz guru Ornette Coleman some four years hence on Song X.
Mariza-Transparente
Mariza began singing Fado as a child, before she could read. Her father sketched out little cartoon stories to help her remember the lyrics. At the age of five, she would join in the spontaneous singing in her parentsâ?? restaurant in Mouraria, one of Lisbonâ??s most traditional neighborhoods.
Mariza was born in Mozambique, but her family moved to Portugal when she was a baby, giving her plenty of time to get immersed directly in the â??Fado Housesâ?? where singing is part of everyday life.
She tells of a fifteen-year old boy learning to play the classical guitar that would call her over to sing. â??This little girl can sing!â?? he would exclaim to his friends. Now this boy is a grown man and forms the instrumental backbone of Marizaâ??s band along with an acoustic bass and Portuguese guitar, unique because of its shape, 12 strings, and distinctive tuning.
At the age of twenty-six, Mariza released her first CD, 'Fado em Mim', in the United States in April 2002 on Times Square Records/World Connection. The recording presents six classic Fados and six original compositions, all of them tugging listeners at the heart and soul.
Fado is Portugalâ??s Blues or Rebetika or Tango or Flamenco. â??They all stand on emotions,â?? says Mariza. â??Fado is an emotional kind of music full of passion, sorrow, jealousy, grief, and often satire.â?? Yet Fado differs from its musical cousins in its poetic mystery and its ability to fuse dichotomous traits: impossible pain and fervent joy, lifeâ??s cruelty with loveâ??s intensity.
At the very outset of her career, Mariza was being compared to one of the biggest icons of Fado: Amᬩa Rodrigues. In the words of Nuno Nazareth Fernandes, one of the greatest Portuguese composers: â??Mariza is an adorable extra-terrestrial being, someone sent by the Great Creator to reinvent the Fado.â??
Mariza had her first major national exposure in 1999 as one of the guest performers in Tribute Concerts for Amᬩa Rodrigues in the Coliseums of Lisbon and Oporto. Both performances were broadcast live on one of Portugalâ??s Network TV channels. Marizaâ??s performances immediately sparked interest in the public and in the national media. In 2000, she received the award, â??Voice of Fado,â?? presented by Central FM (Portugalâ??s national radio station). She was invited to â??introduceâ?? Fado to rock icon Sting by a highly rated national television show Hermansic.
Mariza walks the fine line necessary to both genuinely carry the tradition and bring it freshness for today. Her performance style captures the raw emotion that characterizes the genre, but with her own personal twist.
Egberto Gismonti
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti drew his inspiration for this music from time he spent with the Xingu Indians in the Amazon, and it's intended to invoke both their spirit and the experience of the jungle. Gismonti assembled some remarkable musicians for this 1977 recording--guitarist Ralph Towner, percussionists Nana Vasconcelos and Collin Walcott, and saxophonist Jan Garbarek--but he uses them sparingly. The opening "Palacio de Pinturas" is a gorgeous duet between Gismonti's 8-string and Towner's 12-string guitars, a music so tonally rich that it suggests multiple geographic sources. "Raga," with Walcott on tabla, is more specific, with Gismonti's rapid-fire runs suggesting a sitar, but his use of percussive harmonics is a new element. The long final track is a remarkably varied suite. It begins with a light trio that has Garbarek's only appearance--a keening, soprano-saxophone solo--and includes "Sapain" for an ensemble of blown bottles with voices and wooden flute. Gismonti's fascination with shifting instrumental colors creates consistently interesting music, combining traditions and sources into a novel musical
Jan Garbarek (born March 4, 1947) is a Norwegian tenor and soprano saxophonist active in the jazz, classical, and world music genres. His daughter Anja Garbarek is also a musician.
Garbarek's sound is one of the hallmarks of the ECM record label, which has released virtually all of his recordings. His style incorporates a sharp-edged tone, long, keening, sustained notes strongly reminiscent of Islamic prayer calls, and generous use of silence. He began his recording career in the late 1960s, notably featuring on recordings by the American jazz composer George Russell (such as Othello Ballet Suite and Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature). If he had initially appeared as a devotee of Albert Ayler and Peter Brötzmann, by 1973 he had turned his back on the harsh dissonances of avant-garde jazz, retaining only his tone from his previous approach.
As a composer, Garbarek tends to draw heavily from Scandinavian folk melodies, a legacy of his Ayler influence. He is also a pioneer of ambient jazz composition, most notably on his 1976 album Dis. This textural approach, which rejects traditional notions of thematic improvisation (best exemplified by Sonny Rollins) in favor of a style described by critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton as "sculptural in its impact," has been critically divisive. Garbarek's more meandering recordings are often labeled as New Age music, a style generally scorned by more orthodox jazz musicians and listeners, or spiritual ancestors thereof.
After recording a string of unheralded avant-garde albums, Garbarek rose to international prominence in the mid-1970s playing post-bop jazz, both as a leader and as a member of Keith Jarrett's successful "European Quartet." He achieved considerable commercial success in Europe with Dis, a meditative collaboration with guitarist Ralph Towner that featured the distinctive sound of a wind harp on several tracks. (Selections from Dis have been used as incidental music in several feature films and documentaries.) In the 1980s, Garbarek's music began to incorporate synthesizers and elements of world music. In 1993, during the Gregorian chant craze, his album Officium, a collaboration with early music vocal performers the Hilliard Ensemble, became one of ECM's biggest-selling albums of all time, reaching the pop charts in several European countries. (Its sequel, Mnemosyne, followed in 1999.) In 2005, his album In Praise of Dreams was nominated for a Grammy.
In addition to the selections from Dis, Garbarek has also composed music for several other European films, including French and Norwegian films. Also his song 'Rites' was used in the American film The Insider.
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Pepe Habichuela-A Mandeli
The first solo work by the brilliant guitarist in which he is accompanied by Carles Benavent on bass, and Rubem Dantas and Antonio Carmona on percussion. He was the first flamenco artist to be accompanied by Benavent and Dantas, and he was also the first to record with the Nuevos Medios record label, which also gambled on the new generation of the Habichuelas: Ketama.
He is the son of the Gypsy T'io josé Habichuela El Viejo (Granada 1910-1986), who founded this legacy of guitarists of whom Pepe (born 1944) is one of three brothers, all gifted guitarists. Pepe's son Juan continues the family tradition as founding member of Ketama, the foremost flamenco cross-over rock band. The rumba from Habichuela's first solo recording is an extraordinarily complex work, aknowledged here by Faucher who explains he has made choices as 'the original was impossible to extract as it is on the disc'. The introduction also explains that the works on recordings are like 'snapshots...which reproduce the pieces as they are played on that particular day and only at that particular time'. It appears the transcriber has worked closely with the composer and introduced three modifications which are clearly noted. It is in the introductory pages where this publication disappoints: the eulogy to Pepe Habichuela is in a tortuous Spanish style with sentences five lines long, i.e. an entire paragraph without drawing breath! The English is patently the result of inadequat translation. Surely the author would not actually want to say this: 'The artist well understands that he will only be safe by calling and putting the dance and the marvellous character's mischievousness a compás, and only in stripping them of grace and duende, making them slide their hands to pass it on to us'. From the Spanish I can deduce that he wishes to suggest the artist steals the grace and duende from past figures and allows it to flow through his own hands that we might witness it. To suggest that Pepe Habichuela strips anything of grace and duende is bordering on the libellous! These introductory words by Francisco Almazán are in Spanish and English only. The explanatory notes on 'sound and technique' are by Alain Faucher, the English is more felicitous than the translations of Almazán's Spanish and gives great insight into Pepe's unique technique. There are those who declare flamenco cannot be written down. This is patently untrue. However, like all music, noy every nuance can be accurately written in black and white. To my mind, the greatest fault of tab notation is the failure to notate the rythm. The extraordinarily improvised nature of Habichuela's rythm makes this some of the most difficult music to accurately notate. Without the recordings to hand I feel it would be extremely hard to get the correct nuances and subtle interplay of accompanying role/melodic exposition/rythmic interlude.
Everything is written here, and the result is a collection of some of the most beautiful, original and profoundly jondo solo flamenco guitar pieces ever recorded. Emma Martinez (Classical Guitar)
Amadou and Mariam
- from the liner notes "Tje Ni Moussou"
African music's recent history has been written on recycled paper, with a pen dipped in the ink of savvy resourcefulness. The biographical vicissitudes of The Bembaya Jazz, The Ambassadeurs, and the Rail Band of Bamako contain enough burlesque episodes for a sitcom, featuring indelicate managers, venal witchdoctors an piracy experts. In this hazardous context, the itinerary of Amadou and Mariam seems full of no-fuss heroics. Take the first hurdle in their long obstacle course: after meeting at the Institute for the Young Blind of Mali, they have to obtain approval for a marriage deemed unreasonable by their parents; the youngsters were the only ones to see the chances of a blind couple being successful.
In those days of military dictatorship, a musical vocation caused those with the most obvious gifts to converge on the hotels, where the house-bands, in exchange for civil-service salary, played to a clientele composed of government brass and foreign citizens, distilling the latest pop tunes and other fashionable music from Cuba in residential ballrooms. At the end of the Sixties, Amadou Bagayoko cut his teeth as a guitarist in the Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako, a versatile group later joined by Salif Keita. He refined his guitar technique, causing his fluid playing to sparkle, and thanks to a bridge or two that spanned the musical continents, cultivated a sense of versatility - the opposite of a scattering - that was to become the emergence of the radiant Bambara blues that has brought their recent productions to full bloom.
Mariam Doumbia sang, often accompanied by Amadou, and when the couple finally decided on a common career, their chances of success in Mali were so high that... they chose to emigrate to the Ivory Coast. Their success there took them by surprise.
Separated from their three children, they recorded a series of cassettes produced the Nigerian Aliyu Maikano Adamu; clothed by a single electric guitar, these recordings contain the initial versions of "Dounia", "A Chacun Son Probleme", and "Mon Amour, Ma Cherie". These songs returned some seven years later to grace the album "Sou Ni Tile", which broadened their horizon and caused the universality of African music to coincide with the resources of modern technology. "Tje Ni Mousso" ("Man And Woman") in bambara, added nuances of sound and rhythmical inflections to the already rich spectrum of their previous work, and caused other essences and perfumes to flow in from the four corners of the globe - the Portuguese cavaquihno, the violin of Bengal, jazz piano - towards the epicenter that is Africa, the land of a thousand dances.
Amadou and Miriam seem to hear their own music through the filter that made them marvel when they were adolescents: the pop of the Seventies, electric blues, reggae, Cuba... Without ever conceiving of it as a project, without even really thinking about it, man and woman caused their distant offspring, those who cradle was the Dark Continent, to come home. And this opening onto the world, this sense of hospitality, recharged the music of West Africa with a vital energy, and secured it in the maternal role that founded its identity.
This record gives "world music" a sense, a function, and a center of gravity that previous misuse of the term had hidden, damaging its reputation. The phrase invites us to a double understanding which can be found again in the use of words distilling counsel and recommendations, as happens in village meetings where the old exchange words with the young: and this manner of keeping a watchful eye, of preaching respect, patience and tolerance, finally causes little local virtues to unfold in a universal wisdom. With simple words, Amadou and Mariam relate the superiority of harmony over discord.
The amusing paradox carried by the songs of this blind couple from Mali is that they also have the power to return sight to those who think they can already see.
Egberto Gismonti
Over the last quarter century, the music of Egberto Gismonti has brought us, with its unique cultural baggage, an uncommon breadth. He draws on resources at once primitive" and "sophisticated," bringing those modes into question and shoring up issues, cultural priorities and biases. Most importantly, his music is not so much a cause for dogmatic argument or stylistic Iconoclasm as it is a sensuous and probing organism, a body of work that continues to grow and change.
At root and underfoot, of course, is his homeland of Brazil. As legend - and fact -would have it, Gismonti's deep appreciation of his heritage came as a result of his leaving. A pianist by training, Gismonti studied with the famed pedagogue Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and it was at her urging to return home and investigate his own turf that Gismonti's explorations began in earnest. He delved deep in the resident culture of Choros, the samba school, and spent time with the Xingu Indians in the rainforest, all the while fashioning a distinctive voice as a guitarist.
Such dualities fueling Gismonti's music are very much accounted for on ZigZag, his 14th project for ECM and, by his reporting, the 53rd album he's made over the 25 years since the Boulanger incident. Rawedged passages - full of Gismonti's percussive flourish and extended guitar technique - and lyrical writing coexist happily. Impressionistic textures and improvisational sections merge with intricately-detailed parts, with cascading two-guitar parts navigated by Gismonti and longtime collaborator Nando Carneiro. Most of all, the line between folklore, classical heritage, hints of jazz, and nameless modes of invention is beautifully smudged. This is, unmistakably and irreducibly, Egberto Gismonti music.
The son of a Lebanese father and a Sicilian mother, Gismonti was born in 1947 In the small Brazilian town of Carmo (Carmo is the name of the label he has run for a decade). He studied piano from the age of five, in addition to flute and clarinet, and casually picked up guitar as a teenager. These were the seeds. After his soujourn to Paris, he burrowed into the culture of Brazil and played with various musicians, including Airto Moreira and Flora Purim.
Gismonti's long and fruitful association with ECM began in 1976, when he recorded the acclaimed Danca das Cabeças, with fellow Brazilian, percussionist Nana Vasconcelos - a connection recemented with 1985's Duas Vozes. Subsequent projects brought Gismonti into collaborations with Jan Garbarek, Collin Walcott, RalphTowner and Charlie Haden, with whom he recorded the disarming, deceptively simple Folk Songs. In 1981, he released Sanfona, with his group Academia de Danças, and a solo album: portraits of the artist from two separate angles. In the '90s, Gismonti's Infância and Música de Sobrevlvência documented the evolution of his group, which, on ZigZag, is pared down to a trio, with Carneiro and bassist Zeca Assumpção and Gismonti on 10 and 14-string guitars and piano.
Throughout his musical life, Gismonti's work has proven far-reaching and visceral, both an indigenous product of Brazil and a universal statement. His work is a living mosaic of twentieth century impulses, understandable in all languages.
lnterview by Josef Woodard
On ZigZag, as with most of your albums, there is a cohesive, suite-like quality. Do you design them with that in mind, as a conceptual whole as opposed to just a collection of songs?
I'm trying to have a Brazilian cultural history for each one. I'm very involved with Brazilian stories. With each album, l'm trying to work or design or write a sort of Brazilian way. I’ll give you an example:on Danca das Cabeças, it’s about two guys together, walking through the Amazon jungle. Sometimes it's very humid, sometimes very dry, sometimes full of animals and sometimes full of silence.
Another album, the Solo album, is like a Brazilian newspaper - all the things that are happening in Brazil day by day. I'm talking about the Brazilian contradictions. We have news like "new tribes discovered in the Amazon jungle." On the other side of the newspaper, there might be a story on problems with nuclear power. There's a big contradiction.
All the albums have their own Brazilian stories. The cover on ZigZag looks at two women, these old people who have no place to live, no house. They exist. There are two women dressed very nice, full of color. There's a big river we have ... ZigZag means what's happening to this water.
If you look at something, you can see. Let's talk about one glass of water. You can think, "OK, I'm thirsty, I want to drink this glass of water". Or you can think that this water comes from this river and think about what's happening with this river. What kind of tree or fish is involved with that river? "ZigZag" for us means that we're not sure for nothing. We're not responsible for nothing. I'm talking about the Brazilian culture.
This is such a mixed country - there are Europeans, Africans, and Brazilian Indians. We're so mixed, we're allowed to have all these contradictory stories. There are a lot of people in these cities who are talking about the latest computer technology. 100 meters from these people there live the people who have a salary of 150 dollars a month. This is very bad from one point of view, but on the other hand, we know how to live with all these contradictions. It becomes very powerful for us. We know how to survive with all these kinds of things - inflation or difficulties or contradictions. But Ws a country full of stories and arts, including music. What I'm doing is presenting a very small part of my country, talking about all these stories.
Does the title also have a musical reference, regarding your tendency to combine and oscillate - Zig Zag - between different cultural points of view?
This is the most Brazilian album I've done in my life. But it is very open in terms of culture. There is a lot of European influence, Brazilian influence, and Xingu influence, at the same time. That's difficult, to draw all these cultures together.
With the piece "Forrobodo", from the new album, you blend Romantic piano music with more discernibly Brazilian sonorities. Was that the graft you were after?
Forrobodo" is synonymous with confusion. Forro is a music from northeastern Brazil. In the '40s, during the Second World War, the North Americans came to Brazil, military people. We mix language. Forro means to party, to dance. Ali these Romantic sides that you mention makes for part of our music.
On "Carta de Amor", - you adopt a muted, or prepared, guitar sound, emulating percussion instruments. Approaching the guitar as a percussive tool is nothing new for you, is it?
That sound you're talking about is a sort of samba school playing. Instead of using percussion instruments like tambourine, we use guitars and bass. And we put credit cards through the strings and play. I made this decision in the studio. In the studio, the sound was so good and clean in terms of microphones and recording, we decided to do a more percussive piece. We tried different kinds of paper or newspaper, but in the end, the plastic sounds very good. Because I have 10 strings I had to use two credit cards through my guitar.
"Um Anjo" is a piano-based piece in the lyrical ballad tradition. Was there a context or backdrop to that piece?
I have two kids, 13 and 14 years old now. In the last few years, they have started piano and guitar training. I'm used to hearing my daughter playing piano far away from my studio. This piece Is a reflection of hearing her playing, or anyone, playing far away-a nice, easy piece. "Um Anjo" means it's someone playing far way, but that gives you a good feeling. You might have this idea- when you are in the country, you are far away from another house, but there is someone playing a nice, easy piece on the piano. The sound mixes with the wind, mixing all the good feelings.
There l's an impressionistic and almost tone-poetry aspect to your music, a sense of creating imagery beyond just the language of the music. Do you aspire to that practice, of evoking things larger than notes?
I realized that through having movie directors invite me to write music for movies. I've done 25 movie scores, and 13 dance scores. Ali these directors and choreographers say the same thing, that my music gives them so many impressions and images.
In 1970, you headed off to Paris. Was the idea then to become better grounded in European classical tradition?
No. I was invited by a French actress who decided to sing, named Marie Laforet. She had done a lot of movies with all these French actors like Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon. She invited me to write the arrangements. I accepted the invitation. Instead of working with her and being a tourist, I studied musical analysis with Nadia Boulanger and dodecaphonic music with Jean Barraqué. He was someone who dedicated 25 years of his life to following Anton Webern. I did that for a year and a half, in 1970 and 1971. In July of '71,1 went back to Brazil.
And it was Boulanger who advise you to return home and rediscover your own culture ?
Yes. One day, she said, "0K, Mr. Gismonti, that's the last day of studies for you, because you have to go back home and discover that you have a big fountain of inspiration in your place." I said "what are you talking about, Madame?" She said let me say one thing - you are a medium European composer and a very bad Brazilian one.
In 1970,1 was 23 years old and it was very heavy to hear that from Nadia Boulanger. She said "go back to your place and pay attention to Samba School and pay attention to berimbau music and Forro music." She also said "you Brazilians are allowed to be crazy. Mr. Gismonti, fifty years ago, there was crazed French guy who sat down by a very small river and, after one month of looking at this river, he said 'La Mer.' This guy was Claude Debussy. He looked at this small river and said 'La Mer.' It doesn't matter what you can see. The most important thing is what you can feel". She said "you guys from the third world, especially from Brazil, are irresponsible. You can be completely crazed. Don't become a medium European composer."Can you mention one good European composer today? There are factions, if you're talking about Luciano Berio and Luigi Nono, Italian guys. But, in general, the composers in the '60s or 70s, if you're talking about Stockhausen or even John Cage, all these guys were very intellectual. But they were so far away from a basic art, to say something rather than to think about something. People like Anton Webern or Jean Barraqué, who spent a lot of time with him, taught me a lot. But, by studying Brazilian music, I tried to find a music that was much more natural than this kind of intellectual stuff. Ali this kind of basic interpretation of feelings come from inside, not from outside or from scores in front of you.
Nadia Boulanger was very powerful to me, because she encouraged me to come back to my country and walk through the Brazilian roots. I came back and stayed at this place with the Xingu Indians in the Amazon jungle. I used to drive a lot through the country in Brazil, which was really important. It changed my life a lot.
So you headed off on a process of self discovery. One could examine your history and listen to the music you make, and draw logical connections between the different ingredients. To what extent do you see your music that way, as a crystallisation of your experiences?
I don't know. It's easy to talk now, after doing 52 albums, to do any kind of analysis. I'm not afraid of mixing things. Another thing about our culture - we are really open to any kind of culture. All the European cultures and other cultures are a part of our own culture. We're able to draw attention to or use any kind of culture. I am really free to write music - that's the reason I've made 52 albums in 24 years. I'm not so responsible. I'm not making an œuvre - I'm not responsible for it.
Always, there are traditions that are producing my music. That's it-going into the studio and performing with the trio or orchestra or whatever. I finished my first symphonic album for ECM four months ago. I'm sure that this album will be appreciated by all those people who like my music. It's difficult to talk about it. I'm in process. I'm not sure about the music I'm doing. I have less doubts than I had 25 years ago, of course, but I'm not 100 per cent sure. Not yet.
You’ve been with ECM for two decades now When you made your first album for them, Dança das Cabecas, did you have the sense that this would be the first step of a long evolutionary process?
No. I didn't. Fortunately, Manfred Eicher is not like a conventional album producer. He is really involved with music and new cultures. This was incredibly important to me, to have met someone in Germany who has his own good label, because I knew ECM before I started with it. I was really impressed when Manfred said 1 have no idea about your country. I know about your music, and because of that, I've invited you to do some things. Talking about your country, I want to know about a new culture, because we need new information to survive.
That's very heavy, to hear a producer talking about your culture. That's incredibly strong. This was 20 years ago, and we still have the same relationship today. It's amazing, doing albums for ECM and sending texts and layouts from Brazilian artists. The photographs are done by Brazilians.
Referring back to when you returned to Brazil in 1971, was it at that point that you seriously took up the guitar?
Not really. I started with the guitar in '68. As you know, guitar is the most popular instrument in Brazil. Everyone plays guitar. Because I was an adolescent, 16 or 17 years old, it was difficult for me to go to the parties with my piano. The reason for taking up the guitar was to learn how to play a portable instrument. Before guitar, I started on flute and then clarinet. It was difficult, because with popular Brazilian music, you sing and play at the same time, and it was difficult to do that with flute and clarinet. I made the decision to play the guitar just to satisfy myself and to be able to go to parties to play music.
You're a unique player, in terms of guitar orthodoxy. Did you begin experimenting, veering away from tradition, right away?
The thing is, where I was living at this time was a city 300 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro called Friburgo, based on the German city of Freiburg. They had a lot of people playing guitar, but no teacher. At the same time, I had already had good training on piano. I had played classical piano for nine years. I did transcriptions of Piano music for guitar. And because I was far away from classical guitar teaching, I didn't know about the classical, six-string instruments. The first guitar I had had seven strings, which was very useful for the Brazilian music called Choro. That's the instrument that plays all the bass lines. After six months or a year of doing transcriptions from piano, I realized that I was missing a lot of notes on the low and high registers. Because of that, someone gave me the idea of adding one more string, so that I had an eight-string.
I never played like a traditional classical guitarist. I'm not a guitar player, first off, where the left hand lust pushes one string and right plays the same string. Because of the piano training, I was used to using two hands independently. I can do one thing with the left and something else with the right one. On the piano, It's easily to play separate things-say, playing 2/4 and 3/4 with different hands. I use that on the guitar, to play lines with the left one and other notes or lines with the right one. That's because I had no teacher for guitar.
What effect did jazz have on you? Can we use that term in connection to your music, generally?
Listen, the biggest experience I had with jazz music was in 1975, during the time I spent in Los Angeles, to write Airto Moreira and Flora Purim's album. Because of them, I met Herbie Hancock, who invited me to practice in his studio, in a garage. We used to play a lot with Herbie, almost four or five days a week. He was very interested in Brazilian music and in electronic stuff. It was 1975.
One day, Herbie was playing electric piano, Wayne Shorter was playing saxophones, and a bass player named John Williams, someone else playing drums, and I played acoustic piano. After one hour of playing, we stopped, and they said, "you Brazilian guys play samba very good, even through the jazz music." But I am not able to play jazz. And they are not able to play our music, with our accents, either. I had an experience with John McLaughlin, an incredible musician, who has done three or four pieces of mine, full of accents.
I should say that jazz is very important for one kind of Brazilian music, bossa nova. If you're thinking about how much bossa nova is used for North American musicians, there is a big connection in terms of chord changes, harmonies and this kind of stuff. But basically, there's no connection if you think about the fact that jazz is in 4 and Brazilian music Is In 2.
Of course, musicians like music, and because there are a lot of jazz musicians who I like a lot, they have been at my home personally, or on albums or videos
I like good music. But I'm not able to play any kind of jazz. I do it for fun, yes, play a little jazz with my kids or with other musicians, but not to represent myself.
One obvious musical link with your work is the music of Villa Lobos, both in terms of folkloric interests and new variations on what it means to be guitaristic. Did his music steer you along?
There is a big connection, because I am very involved with all the Brazilian possibilities. I am doing it the same way as Villa Lobos and all the Brazilian composers. In Brazil, they used to call me for any kind of party where Villa Lobos was receiving some kind of homage. Almost all the things that have happened in Brazil, they mention Villa Lobos. That's good, but I don't think about these things.
I am really interested in Brazil. I'm working to survive, myself, and, consequentially, to give some new possibilities to different people. Today, it's easy for me to talk about these kinds of feelings, because almost all the critics are liking my music. The last time I played at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, a reviewer wrote that I had my soul full of rights to do any kind of thing. That gives to the people the possibility to be a little irresponsible - in a good way.
I'm not responsible for anything. Ali the nuclear tests done by France, that doesn't matter for me in terms of the music. I can do nothing about that. But I can give to the French people who are angry with that a one-hour concert with fun music and fun soul and fun culture. It's difficult to talk about, even in Portuguese.
Is it important to spend a lot of time in Brazil, to connect with the feeling and the cultural soil there?
I need to stay, because of my friends, because of all the contradictions. It gives me a lot of power to continue. It's difficult to me, as a Brazilian living in the country, having all my life established for the next 25 years. I remember when I went to Japan, I met someone with an important position in the film industry. We had a lot of sake together, and this person said, I know what will happen with my life for the next 25 years. In 25 years, I will be the president of the company. But I'm not happy because of that. I want to take my bag and take any freeway, all over the world."
To be 100 per cent sure means to die. I read philosophers, especially the French guys or the Eastern guys like Gurdjieff. After all these years, I realize that we have a lot of possibilities in Brazil through this irresponsibility we are talking about. l'm not talking about simple things like respecting laws or people - which is basic to living. But you have to be responsible at the moment for being creative. I'm not talking only about music, I'm talking about life. You must be creative. You must be excited about something, not doing the same thing everyday.
