Between Sardinian traditions and the avant-garde: Q & A with Paolo Angeli

Q - What repertoire will you be exploring during your Making Tracks tour?

A: I normally start touring with about five hours of music and I decide on stage what to play. It’s a very creative process, a kind of exploration with lots of space for improvisation too. This means each concert of the tour will be different. Of course my last two albums ‘S’Û’ and ‘Sale Quanto Basta’ will take up a large part of each show, but there will also be new music I’ve just composed and my interpretations of compositions from Björk and Peter Gabriel’s too.

Q - Can you tell us about the Sardinian traditional music that inspires your music? 
A: Sardinia is an island with a unique musical background. We are a meeting point between a lot of cultures and at the same time we have a strong and unique island identity. For three centuries, for example, we had Spanish domination and before that, Arabic. Sardinian music is like a big 'arazzo' [tapestry]: it looks cohesive but inside the painting centuries of small changes have taken place. The old polyphonic singing is called canto a tenore: it’s amazing … there are four singers who combine bass notes with overtone singing and a very rhythmical use of the voice. People may have heard of Tenores di Bitti as they have been produced by Real World Records, but each village in Barbagia has a slightly different sound. Even today, we can talk about how Sardinian music has a strong specificity, but we can also discuss for hours about small differences and details between the ways of singing in Bitti, Orgosolo, Mamoiada or Bolothana. Some very interesting and unusual changes have taken place down the centuries. In church music the old polyphony met Gregorian chant, so the harmonies were influenced by that.  

In canto a chitarra [Sardinian for “singing with guitar”] we have a monodic tradition with a very complex evolution: it's the fado of Sardinia. In the bells tradition of the church, there’s dance music played in relation to the most important moments of life. Then we have launeddas, an instrument documented from 3500 AD with three pipes and played using circular breathing. The great saxophone player Evan Parker loves this tradition and played with a launeddas player too. Again, every small village has its own variations for this music. Aggius and Castelsardo are not more than 70 km apart but they have a very different repertory. The same is true for Cuglieri and Santu Lussurgiu - two villages with an amazing tradition of church music.  Church music and guitar music have really influenced my background. I can use the guitar like a vocal quartet during holy week, or I can play with the bow the role of the singer and play by foot the guitar part! I love to play with a drone and I do it with propellers touching the strings, trying to reproduce a sound similar to launeddas. Since I started to play traditional music and to sing choral music too (a tasgia, the polyphonic vocal style of northern Sardinia), it has been the deeper influence behind my music. At the same time I’m an improviser. I played with Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Iva Bittova, Hamid Drake and many other great improvisers like Pat Metheny. This means I live in a no-man’s land - I use the small details of traditional music in combination with a more open way of seeing the world.

Q - You describe Palau, the place you grew up, as an extremely stimulating musical environment. Can you explain why? 
A: Palau is a small coastal village of 3000 people in the north of Sardinia, below Corsica. In secondary school I had to take a boat to go to the island of La Maddalena. In my family, music has been always something very important. I'm at home now as I write, and today I woke up to my father playing and singing, looking for a couple of chords from an old song by Domenico Mudugno. My father has been my first mentor, and on every occasion - like dinner with friends or meetings with the family (my uncle is a great guitarist too) - music has been part of our life. He has a very extended repertory, from Sardinian music to old ‘Canzone Napoletana'. One day he said to me, “why don’t you play guitar?” So when I started to play guitar - at the age of nine - I already had music in my ears. After the age of twelve, I started with my brother to play in a rock band in the village. There were five rock bands playing within a range of 200m! It was so amazing to spend time listening to cover versions from the musicians of my village. It was often many years until I got to hear the originals, and this meant we learned music with ‘mistakes’ too!

As Palau is a tourist village, it is more open than others to all kinds of music. There was also a US army base on the island of La Maddalena, so in the square of Palau there were black people break dancing since the beginning of the 1970s! The same square was used during popular festivals to listen to the great traditional musicians like Mario Scanu, Cabizza and choirs like Coro di Aggius or Tenores di Orgosolo. An old teacher of classical music, Mr Tagliabue, opened a small shop of music and I had some lessons of harmony and counterpoint there too.  To live in Palau has enabled me to grow up without borders between different types of music.

Q - Can you describe your guitar for a non-guitar player? 
A: In 1993 I met Giovanni Scanu, and one year before I had met Fred Frith. I had a big confusion in my mind. I couldn’t decide if I preferred to play traditional or avant garde music.

I didn’t like so much the guitar at that time … so I started to modify the traditional Sardinian guitar to an instrument similar to a cello and a percussion instrument. Ever since the first prototype it’s been a kind of work in progress: there are hammers like on a piano, pedals connected mechanically to the hammers, motors and propellers, mobile bridges to change tune, 14 outputs and many other things that can be used to change the timbre. I play my guitar like a cello, I use my foot like on an organ and I try to arrange the music as if I'm a conductor with a small orchestra.

Q - Pat Metheny asked you to design your augmented instrument – how did that come about? 
A: I met Pat in 2001 in Sardinia at Sant’Anna Arresi Jazz Festival. He had been very impressed by my solo show. After that show, he asked me for a copy of my instrument and we began a very deep friendship, with long discussions about music and life. We have also played live together. Pat used a copy of my prepared guitar (built in Bologna by Liuteria Stanzani and Francesco Concas) in the world tour for his Orchestrion Project.

Q - You studied with Giovanni Scanu, the old guitar player from Sardinia. Can you describe him and his playing? 
A: Giovanni Scanu, alongside Adolfo Merella, has been the most important Sardinian guitar player of the old generation (Aldo Cabizza changed the way to play guitar using a plectrum - he was a great master too). Scanu’s way to play traditional music was a bit like the old blues. I mean, it was very simple, but at the same time very deep, and with a unique emotion. In 1921 Giovanni Scanu started to play this music on stage. For me it has been like going inside a mine of diamonds. We spent time sitting in front of each other with two guitars. I had to repeat exactly what he played. There was not any mediation, only sounds and very nice talk about legends of traditional music. He was the key to the older tradition and it was a big privilege to share nine years with him learning all the secrets of old Sardinian music. I could talk for hours about that experience, probably the most important and intense I have had, as it required a complete change in my way of playing guitar in relation to a music arriving from the past.

You can’t talk about guitar music in Sardinia without talking about ‘Gara di Canto’, a competition between two, three, or more singers.  In this tradition, canto in re - the most popular typology of song - could be 40 minutes long without repeating the same melody. The guitarist doesn’t know which melody or variation or improvisation the singers are going to propose. There is not time to think about it: the guitarist has to listen and follow the same melody of the singers, using a parallel movement one octave below. It's very difficult and needs years of preparation and knowledge of the entire database of melodies the singers could use. I love to play in support of singers and I play exactly in continuity with the old school ways. I have played with the most important and active cantadores but I decided to live in my own time and play traditional music only in informal moments. Of course I also introduced in my own repertoire a way to develop this tradition, and I engaged with the tradition in other ways. I digitalized the most important museum of traditional music in Sardinia, Archivio Mario Cervo, wrote a book about canto a chitarra, and produced a collection of five CDs with recordings from 1928 to 1967. So all in all, it has been an amazing part of my life.

Q - Of all the great guitar players you’ve played with, who has been the most influential? 
A: Fred Frith. I played with Fred in a duo, trio, quartet and big ensemble. He’s really been very important to my way of developing a ‘prepared’ instrument. I think Fred is a great improviser and composer and I love his way of playing guitar as there is always a choice of material in relation to an idea of composition in real time. Of course Pat Metheny has also had an influence on my first steps in jazz, and he influences my way of playing with freedom. I love the way Pat can surf between different kinds of music, suspended between Ornette Coleman, Steve Reich, David Bowie, acoustic guitar solos and projects like Orchestrion.

Q - You are artistic director of Isole che parlano, an international arts festival in Palau. What kind of acts do you book? 
A: Myself and Nanni Angeli started Isole che Parlano in 1996, organized by Associazione Sarditudine. The idea of the association is to propose traditional Sardinian culture and values in a creative way, cross-fading with contemporary cultures in order to promote a sense of solidarity, tolerance and community, and to emphasize the social role of art. We’ve done it since the beginning with a communication between traditional music and the avant garde, trying to make a bridge between all different kinds of music. What I love is creativity in music. So it's very important to show how we don't need borders between something arriving from free improvisation or from an old, deep tradition. We combine contemporary culture and avant garde movements with traditional cultures and we promote this meeting every September with a program full of original events, concerts, meetings, workshops for children and important photo exhibitions. Concerts and events take place in archaeological sites (holy wells, tombs of the giants) and amazing places (country churches, Punta Palau lighthouse, Roccia dell’Orso), beaches (Cala Martinella), squares and on a desert island between Sardinia and Corsica like Spargi Island in Cala Corsara. So you can listen to a canto a tenore without a stage, with just granite around you, or you can have a great solo show on a desert island.  My sister, Alessandra Angeli, also works on this project with a workshop for children and a very important part of the festival, organized by Nanni Angeli, is dedicated to photo reportage. In a way it’s like the local feel of a small village, reaching out to an ideal global world without hierarchies or dominant cultures. 

Q - You are touring with the South African guitar player Derek Gripper. Are you excited about this? 
A: Kora is one of my favourite instruments. The sound of kora makes me feel safe, it's like being in touch with yourself in hypnosis. I spent years listening to this music in the mornings and I thought many times of how I could work with kora music played on guitar … and then I discovered Derek Gripper! What he does is amazing, as he follows the kora tradition and lets me feel as if I have been listening to the masters of kora. At the same time, he introduces contemporary sounds and melodies, he develops the tradition in his own way and he does it with the most popular instrument in Western music: the guitar. His way of playing is so fresh that you forget how difficult it is to play the kora tradition on a six-stringed instrument. I can't wait to share the stage with Derek and listen night by night to his music!  

On chamamé, diversity and mate tea: Q & A with Chango Spasiuk

Q – At home in Argentina, you are considered the new hero of chamamé, the music ‘with the deepest swing in Argentina’. What exactly is chamamé?

A:

I am just one of the representatives of the new generation of this tradition, one of many, perhaps the one that has travelled the furthest abroad playing this genre of music. Chamamé is the folk music that is widely representative of the whole of the northeast of Argentina. It is a world of sound where many elements come together, from the encounter of Jesuit monks with indigenous Guaraní people, the mestizo population, some elements from the African world too from slaves who came to Argentina via Peru, and finally European immigrants, who brought with them the accordion, an instrument that has travelled to so many places in the world. From the coming together of these different strands of influences has emerged a tradition and a sound that we today call ‘chamamé’. Traditionally it was played with accordion and guitar, later more instruments were added, like the violin, vocals, often as duet singing, and not to forget that it is a dance music. Today many many ways of playing it exist, both in its instrumental and its vocal forms.

Q – You have become famous in Argentina as the presenter of a TV program that explores rural musical traditions – is there a need for roots music in Argentina?

A:

It’s been 30 years since I have been playing music, and only 8 years that I do this TV programme called Pequenos Universos (Small Universes). It can be seen on the web on the website of ‘Canal Encuentro’. In these 8 years I made more than 70 journeys for the programme, that is to say more than 70 documentary episodes, in all of which the idea is to show the oral transmission of uninterrupted traditions. At first we criss-crossed Argentina from top to bottom, and then also travelled through neighbouring countries, like Paraguy, Uruguay, Bolivia and Chile.

When talking about roots, the truth is that our roots are constantly present, they have never disappeared. What the programme tries to show, is that there is a lot more roots music in this country than we think, there is a lot more diversity than we think, and all these diverse music styles are a lot more complex than we think, too. The programme is simply trying to show off all this richness, all these treasures right there in front of us. In many places of the world diversity is now a problem, as we can see in today’s media, there are walls going up in many places, all caused by deep ignorance of the value of diversity. Our programme tries to look at diversity not as a problem but as a treasure. So the programme is not looking at whether there is a need for it or not, but it’s simply to show the great diversity we have in our culture.

It may be that it’s the music without roots that takes up the most space in today’s media and sounds mostly out of our radios, but still, music with roots connected to our culture is still very present in the everyday of our lives. In album releases, in local fiestas and many daily activities – roots music is not a museum piece but very alive and still very present in our lives.

Q – Most people associate Argentina with the tango and the bandoneon (or squeeze box), and you have a different tradition and instrument – can you describe this to your UK audience?

A:

That’s a very interesting question. The world associates tango with Argentina because it’s the most international music to come out of the country. It was connected to the golden era of Argentine cinema, and these films were very widely watched all over the world, and their sound came very much from the culture of tango. But the bandoneon is not an instrument that has only been involved in tango, it also plays an important role in chamamé and in many other folk traditions all over Argentina. Some big bandoneon personalities come from the tango, but there are also many in chamamé, like Cocomarola, Abitbol, Riera, Flores… all of them great bandoneon players. In the music of the north of Argentina, the region of Salta, the bandoneon is also a key instrument, there are some well known and proud figures of this music, like Dino Saluzzi. So there are lots of connections between bandoneon and tango, but the instrument itself really is key in the development of many other folk traditions around the country.

Both the bandoneon and the accordion are used in chamamé – they are similar instruments, although the accordion has a broader palette of sound colours. Chamamé is a rural music, the music of farmers and labourers, of people who work with livestock, of people who dance. These rural landscapes are regions of subtropical climate and big rivers with their own complex cultural mix where the various elements mentioned earlier come together.

On the other hand, tango is an urban tradition, from the city of Buenos Aires, a big harbour city, and although the bandoneon has been a key instrument, the elements that come together are totally different and the historical and their geographical context is totally different too. Also, chamamé and most of our folk traditions are based on a rhythm of 6/8 or3/4, while tango is binary, with a rhythm of 2/4 or 4/4.

Q – You are of Ukrainian heritage. How has this informed your music?

A:

The province of Misiones received large numbers of European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - Ukrainians, Polish, Germans, Volga-Germans, Russians, Swedish… Among all these families arrived my grandparents, the parents of my mother and the parents of my father, and they settled in the town of Apóstoles, which is where I was born. So in addition to all the influences that already existed before the immigrants arrived (Guaraní, Criollo, and influences from over the border with Paraguay and Southern Brazil) now appeared these new colours to add themselves to the existing palette. The rhythm of chamamé was predominant  in this area, but now suddenly other rhythms appeared, like rural polkas, shottish, waltzes. So at one point all these new elements got added to an existing world of sound, and this is also what happens with my music. My music contains all these elements existing alongside each other, in a very spontaneous, natural way, without any kind of conflict. There is no sense that one influence is more important or better than another – where I was born all these influences were simply around me.

There were the more local, criollo roots of early chamamé, and there were the traditions that the immigrants brought with them, which over the next 100 years took on their own distinct local colour. This particular Ukrainian music now sounds totally different and has a totally different aesthetic than any other Ukrainian music, wherever you might find it in the world. You won’t find this sound in other places where Ukrainian immigrants settled, not in Canada, nor in Brazil or the USA. The fusion that took place in Misiones is totally unique to that place, and this is reflected in my music.

There are other elements too that are connected to the Ukrainian culture but have not necessarily something to do with music or aesthetics, for example a sense of hope, flexibility, a capacity to adapt… these are all things are reflected in a very subtle manner in my music too. I think the most important being a sense of hope, and also celebration… celebration in a sense not to be confused with the spectacle of a performance or a party.

Q – Where is your home town and how does it influence your music?

A:

I was born in Apóstoles, in Misiones, a wedge of land between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. It is a very intense land of red earth and dense jungle. Well, there is much less jungle there now than there was before, but it’s a subtropical place, with many mountains, trees and big rivers, rivers that are red coloured from the red earth they carry, the river Parana flowing towards the river Urugyay which again flows towards the south of Brazil. It’s a region of a many different cultures superimposed on each other, which have shaped a new, unique culture: the Mbuya-Guaraní, the Criollos, the Uruguayans, the Brazilians, and obviously the immigrants from Europe that started arriving at the end of the 19^th century. That’s where I come from. A place where in summer, during the months of January and February, the temperature rises to more than 45 degrees… it’s a very intense place because of all these elements, and many more.

It is where yerba mate grows, and many years back I made an album called ‘Tareferos de mis Pagos’, an album dedicated to the mate harvest and its labourers. Mate is a herb that is drunk as an infusion by everybody in Argentina, across all ages, children, adults and old people, and across all social classes too, but it only grows in this one region of Argentina, and a part of Uruguay. It’s almost a mythical plant, used by the Guaraní, then adopted by the Jesuits, and today it’s very well known and used all over Argentina and in neighbouring countries too, but it only grows in this one region where I come from.

Q – Are there any musicians from around the world you would like to collaborate with, and why?

A:

I’d like to collaborate with lots of them! With electronic music artists, with pianists, with orchestras, with string quartets, with accordion players… My interest lies in both exploring ways and tools for building bridges of connection between worlds you thought there could not be a connection with, as well as further exploring my own tradition of the music from where I come from.

I would not want to name one specific musician I would like to work with, but simply build relationships with others where we can throw ideas at each other, challenge each other and move something forward. I am always very open, thinking, researching and studying other musical worlds in order to discover where the bridges might lie. And surely at some point possibilities and crossings will appear, though at the moment I am in a phase where I have still a lot to do  and to show that comes from my own background and my own music – at some later point I’m sure I will come to focus more on the crossroads that may appear on the path. I sometimes think about an album with lots of international guests where we could work on these ideas, say flamenco or a jazz musicians, wind or string ensembles, percussion, electronics… all in one single album. Just another idea that goes around in my head and hopefully one day there will be the time, and the funding to take such a project forward. In the meantime I keep doing what is realistically possible.

Q – Can you introduce us to the musicians of your ensemble?

A:

The trio on this tour is made up of Pablo Farhat, who comes from the province of Santiago del Estero, which is a very traditional province, and he is a very versatile violinist fluent in both the studied, academic side of music, and at the same time he has a great knowledge of the oral traditions of roots music of Argentina, and he can very well combine these two worlds, these two disciplines, the one of oral transmission of roots music and the academic, written down aspect of music. He has a great skill in improvising and in immersing himself into the sound world of my music - he is a really great violinist and I’m really happy to be able to do this tour with him.

The other musician in the trio is Marcos Villalba, a percussionist and guitarist with whom I have been working for a very long time. He comes from a family of musicians, and I have also worked with his brothers Gabriel and Sebastian (who has sung on most of my records, and has been on many international tours before.) Marcos is his younger brother and he is a very very talented percussionist, and we have been working together for a many years - he has a great power and drive. I think he is one of the best cajoneros in the world – cajon is an instrument from Peru, that is also used in flamenco and many other traditions, a widely used instrument nowadays –  and he is for me one of the very best players in the world. He also plays the guitar and sometimes sings as well.

I think this trio format really is very powerful and it’s going to sound great on this tour.

Q – What’s next for Chango Spasiuk?

A: 

‘Pynandí’ was my last international album, but since then I have released two more albums in Argentina: one recorded live in the Teatro Colon, called ‘Tierra Colorada en el Teatro Colon’, which is the most famous theatre in Argentina, for opera and classical music. We recorded a live album and DVD there, which hasn’t been released internationally yet. And only a couple of months ago another album was released in Argentina featuring a less well known side of my work, which is as composer of film music. Over the past 15 years I have worked on many Argentine film productions, with many different directors, so this album features my work for cinema, for documentaries, short films and TV. It’s an album with 16 tracks showing off this creative side of me – there is a lot of piano as I have worked with many pianists in this context, and there are many different musical textures -  it’s called ‘Otras Musicas’. It’s only been released in Argentina although I am looking at the possibility of an online release for the rest of the world - although there might not be a physical release people elsewhere in the world can download the album and listen to it. Back in Argentina I am working on promoting this film music album at the moment, and thinking about a new studio album for the next year that would once again have more of an international reach. The tour is not going to focus on any particular album though - it will present a broad range of my compositions and my way of interpreting the tradition of chamamé. 

Sending greetings and hugs to everyone and looking very much forward to coming to visit you soon!

On lost traditions, resilience, and leaf music: Q&A with Night

Q. How would you introduce the band for the UK audience?

NIGHT is a new-school Nepali folk band that focuses on using traditional and especially endangered Nepali instruments and tunes. Night is creating new sounds and reintroducing Nepali instruments to a contemporary audience.

Q. With your music you revive lost Nepali traditions. Can you explain why they are lost and how you revive them? 

There are many factors involved in why Nepali traditions are being lost. Economic and industrial developments, urbanization, increased migration are just a few of the factors that have led to deep and rapid socioeconomic transformations. People are heavily inspired by modern culture and trying to adopt their daily life style to it. From which after a certain time the traditions are either forgotten or abandoned.

Q. Can you describe some of the rare instruments you use in your set?

1. Paluwa is a fresh young leaf in Nepali. Leaf is found everywhere but only few can be played. Most commonly played leaves are cilāune (Needlewood Tree) and sāl. In Nepal people play the leaf at the time of cattle herding. But in the current time, this culture is becoming extinct. There are very few good leaf players remaining in Nepal.

2. Mahaali is a reed instrument, mostly used by the jugi community (tailor caste musicians). It is a conical bore double reed shawm. It is used in many religious moments and mainly the melody instrument of Navabaaja (ensemble of nine drums).

3. Pilrhu is a wind instrument made out of clay in the shape of a small bird. This instrument is usually played by children of the Tharu community imitating the sound of bird. It consists of 2 -4 small holes in the body.

4. Piwancha is a bowed bamboo instrument. The string of the Piwancha is made from the horse tail hair. This instrument became extinct many decades ago but it was frequently used during the Malla period (medieval period of Nepal which was from 1201–1769). It produces warm and low sound and is said to have been played by farmers of the Kathmandu valley.

Q. You are inspired by local traditions and songs – can you tell us something about these?

First of all we love local Nepali music and we love to create folk music and we are doing what we believe in. 

Our interest in local traditions was also born out of the increasing rate of their endangerment. Most importantly it has not only been about music and instruments. Our creative thoughts mainly revolve around village life of Nepal, the hardships of simple working class people and the inherent resilience of the Nepali spirit. There is struggle in the Nepali village life, but despite the apparent hardships, there is joy, contentment and certain warmth that always shine through despite the daily toil. Our music and lyrics celebrate this - both the joy and the struggle.

Q. Do you also find inspiration from other music from around the world?

We usually listen to many kinds of music around the world. …..

Q. You create a contemporary sound for a band with traditional roots. How did this concept come about?

We started out as an avant-garde metal band. As Jason travelled Nepal while working as a Chartered Accountant, he was exposed to lot of new music and the flavour of Nepali folk. With this new-found interest in traditional music and ethnomusicology, Night changed gears and started experimenting in producing contemporary music with traditional instruments.

Q. What would you hope the UK audience can learn from your concerts? 

They definitely will get to hear a new sound. From our music, we hope they will see a reflection of the current situation of Nepal, the stories of Nepali people. We built very special relationships with our audience when we visited England for the first time last summer. Though we sing in Nepali people somehow relate to our songs. Music definitely is a universal language. We are also learning from our audience.

About grass, goats and lost bagpipes: Q&A with Otava Yo

What does your band name Otava Yo mean? 
Otava is an old agricultural term, which in Russian means 'after grass' – during summer time if you mow the grass, after couple of weeks new grass (fresh and green) will grow on the same place. To be honest not everybody in Russia knows this word. (‘yo’ is simply the transliteration of the unique Russian letter ё)

Your music has been described as Russian Beat. Can you explain? 
This description was created during our tour in Mexico in 2010. We had just recorded our first album “Once upon a time” on which for the first time we tried playing famous Russian songs in very danceable style. At a press-conference at a big world music festival a journalist asked how we would describe our music style. So the answer came to my mind straight away: Russian Beat, as an analogy to Balkan Beat (everybody knows what does it means). We try to play modern Russian folk music, based on Russian traditional music, but transformed by our minds as cosmopolitan citizens. We are trying to play current folk music, not something reconstructed. And we try to keep it alive, and not hide it in an old cozy museum.

You are from the city of St Petersburg – Can you describe your favorite music club and the music scene there? 
St Petersburg is a very big city - there are a lot of music clubs and we have played almost everywhere. Like everywhere else music clubs are full of people who come to have fun. 10 years ago we had even more clubs and more people interested in partying in clubs. Now there are many more things to do in the city besides that, so clubs have to make more of an effort to attract their audience. I am not sure I have a favorite club in the city but there are couple of places where I like to play – the reopened “Aurora” concert hall and the “Waiting Hall” club in the old train station building. I have to admit I don’t go much to clubs unless I’m playing there.

You revive old tunes – what is special about them and why do these appeal to you? 
I really like to listen to traditional tunes myself. There is something special in them which has kept them alive for centuries and will keep them fresh and alive ever longer and longer. I suppose it is accumulated spirituality. Our forefathers kept those tunes for us, they loved them, played them, transformed them and as the result those tunes got a perfect form now. When you play such tunes with proper attitude you can feel something very important - these tunes make you feel better. And the biggest challenge for us as the musicians is to try and compose something which might sound like a traditional tune. I hope you can find this in some of our songs.

Humour is a big part of your show (you even received an award from the Bratislava Humour Academy!)– do you think the English will get your jokes? 
I hope so! The famous British sense of humour (at least our impression of it) feels quite close to us. I love Monty Python and all that black humour style. In our jokes we try to be understandable to everybody and in the same time to stay natural, not to pretend being just comedians. Our music is about much more than just the jokes, but of course we enjoy to make people smile and have fun - I think it fits folk music very well.

You play some traditional Russian instruments – can you describe them? 
First of all I would like to mention the gusli – the Russian village harp or psalterion. I love this instrument. It is quite simple, but in the same time it gives a lot of possibilities for a musician playing it. Also we have the zhaleika - it could be described like the chanter of a bagpipe [without the bellows]. We don’t have Russian bagpipes anymore, they are totally gone. But the zhaleika is very close to a chanter of a Russian bagpipe. Centuries ago shepherds used zhaleikas for communicating with goats and other livestock. Beside that our fiddler Dima plays an authentic Russian village style which together with the more classical style of our second violinist Julia gives a very interesting sound to our songs.

You have played to audiences all over the world – where is the best audience? 
To be honest almost everywhere we are well received by the audience. People in Latvia and Estonia are very responsive to our music (probably because we show them something which is totally different to what they were taught as Russian folk music during Soviet Union times), we had some great festival experiences in Western Europe, and of course at home.

Will you try to teach the English audiences some Russian? What do you want them to learn from Otava Yo? 
Russian is quite a difficult language to learn. Usually people catch simple words as vodka or privet (hello). So I don’t think the audience will remember any of the Russian words we might sing or say, but I don’t think this matters. What is more important: We want to show that sometimes impressions of somebody else’s music can be very mistaken. We know that all over the world everybody knows there is a very big country called Russia, but almost nobody knows anything about our real music culture, or has the wrong impression about. So our goal is to show the world that there is something else that exists in Russia and it is full of life and energy.

Q&A with Söndörgö

Your music focusses on the tambura (a mandolin-like plucked lute) – can you tell us more about the instrument?
This instrument, the tambura has come from Turkish Persian roots but what we use now is very much related to Hungary. Back at the beginning of the 20th century a Hungarian instrument maker tried to make a tambura sounding like a gypsy violin - trying to have a similar sound but in a picking style.
Now this tambura is a very famous instrument, widely used in parts of Serbia and even more in the Southern part of Hungary, and along the Danube river where Serbian and Croatian people live in Hungary. Hungarian people are now also starting to use this instrument because it goes well with any kind of music, both Hungarian and Balkan styles. It is especially common where we come from, the town of Szentendre (also along the Danube, about 20km from Budapest) as this town is home to the biggest Serbian community since 300 years ago, so this culture is very much at home there.
We also use this instrument because of our family – our father is also a musician so we grew up with these instruments always around the house and we just had to pick one up, and try and do something. Especially me, as I play the lead tambura or tamburitsa: I was 5 when my father bought me a tambura. It was a master’s instrument so he told me, this is your instrument, but you can’t touch it yet, we will put it on top of the cupboard and you can only touch it if there are musicians around from our ensemble who can show you how to use it. So I was always very interested in this, eyeing up the instrument on the top of the cupboard.
So it’s worked out pretty well: my father told me he didn’t want to push us to become musicians, we could just do whatever we liked. But me and my two brothers we all became musicians so my father knew pretty well how to get us started.

You play in your band with your two brothers, a cousin and a school friend - how does it feel to play in a band with your closest family?
In a way it’s a very good thing, especially musically. We don’t have to have words to know what the other wants to do on stage, or just musically thinking, so it’s a very good way. On the other hand it can be quite hard too. I am the oldest brother, then there is the middle one, my brother Benjamin, and the youngest one, Salamon, so it’s not easy sometimes but anyway it has worked very well. We have a special relationship not just because we are a family but we also spend most of our time together, so it can be really hard for others, the other parts of our families. We are touring a lot, we are playing a lot, so we spend much more time together than we do with our wives or children. So it’s not easy from this perspective, but it is working pretty well on stage, I do think so!

There is more family history, your father is a very well-known musician too.
My father is a member of a famous band called Vujicsics, this name comes from a man called was Tihamér Vujicsics. He was the biggest collector of Southern Slavic music in Hungary. He was of Serbian background, but not just a folk music collector, but also a composer, and a pupil of Zoltan Kodaly. He then went on a trip to collect folk music in Asia and his plane crashed and he died, so my father and his brother and some others decided to take on his name and continue what he started.
My father grew up in Pomáz, a town very close to Szentendre, where also lots of Serbian people live. So they started to play for dances and other community events, started playing in a natural way, and then this became a stage performance because they also studied classical music at the academy. But they decided to do just this, trying to arrange this folk music for stages and concert halls, and this is what we try to continue. For us when we think about our father and his ensemble, they are the biggest masters, or biggest idols for our music.

So your music is primarily dance music. Can you describe the dance that goes with it?
It a style of circle dance called kolo (which means round dance). The Southern Slavic tradition is one of couple dances, but with many people in a big circle, and it has asymmetric rhythms – it looks like it is very easy but it’s not. It looks like – oh they just take a few steps, one after the other – but it’s not like that, it’s not so easy to keep up with the music. We started playing for dances when we were young, when we started the band, we were playing for dance houses, and also the local community events around Szentendre and the surrounding country side.

What does the folk scene in Hungary look like today?
I think the scene is really strong, and today a lot of young people are involved with folk music and dances. Hungary is a special place for folk music - it has a very strong tradition. Sometimes it’s too strong – you have to open the borders a bit and sometimes the folk music borders can be too big sometimes. But it is very good that there are lots of young bands doing the folk thing, not just Hungarian folk music but also Balkan music in general is going strong.
We also teach, myself I teach at the Music Academy, I teach the tamburitsa so I have some students who are really talented and I’m really happy that people are getting involved with it and trying to be professional with it. So it becomes not just music for the dance house, it’s about getting to international stages too and about rethinking this music.

What would you like to leave the UK audience with on this tour?
That’s a hard question…. maybe it’s about the energy of what we can do on stage. I think this music has very very special energy, and live it is a totally different experience. Listening just from a CD or recording is really not anything like the experience it can be live. People keep talking about how our brotherly connection is working on stage, and again it’s a special thing – people like it when they see how much we like what we do. So it’s not like, OK, we are professionals and doing this tour for a living – we love to play, and we love to show to the audience what we feel when we play. Sometimes we joke about this – that we enjoy even more than the audience what we do on stage… it’s funny but true!

Q&A with Namvula

Your roots are clearly important in your music – could you say something of your particular mix of Scottish and Zambian roots?
My mother is Ila-Lenje from the central province of Zambia, and my father is Scottish of Glaswegian parents. His parents moved to Malawi when he and his siblings were still children, and my parents eventually met much further down the line when they were both teaching at the University of Zambia.
Although we moved a fair bit as I was growing up, we always went back to Zambia every year; it has been an anchor in my life, one of the few constants, and feels more like 'home' than any of the other homes I've had. So it's perhaps natural that it would become a big part of my artistic journey, my creative exploration, and my expression as a singer and a songwriter. But, being a child of the diaspora, I've also imbibed from many creative wells, expanding my curiosities, and the ways in which I want – and feel able to – express myself as an artist.

London and its cosmopolitan influences are also clearly a big part of your music – your music is also described as Afro-folk – how does that get reflected in your music?
I've now had an on-off, love-hate relationship with London for 14 years. A big part of the love side of the affair has been what it has to offer creatively. The city has allowed me to explore and delve into different, exciting sonic worlds, from Afro-Cuban, to jazz, to Brazilian. It's allowed me to meet, share with, and learn from incredibly talented musicians. It's allowed me – as a child of the diaspora – to voice myself using different colours, all of which have been part of my growth as an individual and an artist. My love of jazz, of folk, of African music, all gets reflected in my writing and my sound. The fact that I can pick up the phone and call a marimba player, or a kora player, or a jazz saxophonist, or a Ghanaian guitar maestro, and get them into the studio to record on an album is an incredibly special thing, and offers an amazing amount of creative freedom to explore and work with. Some of the edginess of London, its uncertainty, its flux, its grit, is also within the album. At the same time there's the softer, more soulful, more lyrical side of folk music also within my music, the side that's interested in recounting stories, and at the moment these are largely African stories.

You’re a photographer and involved with film too. Does this feed back into your music?
My love of photography definitely impacts the way I write, which is often very visual. Before embarking on my singing career full steam, I first worked as a photographer, and it taught me invaluable lessons: attention to the detail of a moment, editing the unnecessary fearlessly so that you expose the core of what you are trying to show to the world, speaking my truth and how I see the world, using fragments and captured moments and shaping them into a story.
My relationship to film is slightly different, in that I worked in a curatorial capacity rather than being involved in the creative process, but again the strength and power of imagery, of the story, that is central to film, is essentially what songwriting is also about. Actually, one of my favourite songs on the album, Maweo, was inspired by a film that I watched during the selection process of the film festival I co-founded and ran for a few years, so in that sense yes, it has fed back very directly into my music! Essentially, we are all telling stories, and trying to pull people into the emotion of the stories we are trying to tell.

The politics of immigration is all around us – your music is inclusive in its influences – can music be a healing force?
Music has the ability to touch the very core, the very essence of us as human beings. In so doing, it offers us a space in which we can shed the weight of preconception, of prejudice, of difference, and be reminded of our essential humanity, and, by extension, our essential commonality. Be reminded that we all feel – be it joy, sorrow, fear, uncertainty, love, hopefulness; that we all weep and laugh and muddle our way through this life as best we can. In this way, it expands our capacity to love. As clichéd as it might sound, we are all immigrants, and we are all temporary visitors on this earth; the borders that we attach so much importance to and the flags that we swear allegiance to are man-made and upheld by man-made laws; music, art, in its ability to hold so many different cultures and worlds within itself, in its ability to speak to the heart of another, has the capacity to allow us to lay aside, to forget, those walls that we build and those differences that we construct. It offers us a space of contemplation of the things that make us human; a space of conversation: what would I do? How would I react? How do I feel? - it allows us to dance the dance of the present, and feel the extraordinarily simple beauty of a shared moment of togetherness.

Your debut album Shiwezwa came out last year - can you say something about how it came about.
I'd spent six months in Zambia back in 2012, healing from a broken heart, and with the vague thought that I'd devote some time to learning traditional music. In so many ways, the album was born then. I spent time with an aunt, Maureen Lilanda, who is a local singing legend, and who became a musical and personal mentor and gave me the courage to explore my Zambian roots as part of my creative process. That was a big turning point for me as a songwriter, and in my identity as an artist. I also had the time to reflect on and witness life (in a way that the hectic pace of London often-times does not allow); I wrote a lot, and started recording what I intended to be an EP. When I got back to London, Liran Donin, the bass player who is also a wonderful and sensitive producer and who produced Shiwezwa, encouraged me to record a full album. I think of Shiwezwa as a homecoming of sorts, a homage to the places I am from (emotionally and creatively), and an attempt to forge a closer link with my mother's culture.

Perhaps you can introduce the musicians in your band and discuss their contribution to the music?
I'm surrounded and supported by an incredible group of musicians – my band of brothers as I like to call them! Their fantastic musicianship, their sensitivity to the music, helps carry each song to another plane. They've each added their own spice to the mix, and as we've toured, the arrangements have shifted and taken on new colours, making the live show an incredibly dynamic experience. There's a lot of room for improvisation in the show within the arrangements, which is exciting and makes it a lot of fun. Liran Donin (mentioned above), fierce yet tender bassist, and as m.d. and producer of the album has played a huge role in shaping the music and the arrangements; Chris Williams, probably one of the best young saxophonists on the circuit, brings a palette of colours that transports - both are Mercury-nominated musicians; Mamadou Sarr, master Senegalese percussionist (he also tours with international star Baaba Maal amongst many), creates fire and magic; Jack Ross, guitarist of grace and incredible virtuosity; and Yuval Wetzler, one of the most sensitive drummers I have ever had the pleasure of working with. I should also pay tribute to Ghanaian guitar maestro Alfred 'Kari' Bannerman, who isn't part of the live band, but was central to the album.

Could you describe Lusaka – your Zambian home town?
I was born in Livingstone, a small town that borders the famous Mosi-oa-Tunya (the Victoria Falls), a small sleepy town that hasn't changed too much over the decades. But I now spend almost all my time when I'm back in Zambia in the capital city Lusaka, because of friends, family and music. When I last left it, at the end of August, the jacaranda trees lining the streets were beginning to throw out their purple haze of flowers, softening the stark bright red petals of the flame trees. It's a pretty relaxed, often dusty city. The city centre itself, with the usual hustle and bustle of traders, street vendors and bus touts, is small and architecturally uninspiring – it was built as an administrative capital by the British colonialists. Most people live and work in the sprawl of the suburbs, which is where you'd also find most of the restaurants and social life. The traffic is atrocious, churches are on every other street, the middle class is re-emerging en force, big money is pouring into the city - though only for some, and the poor stay heartbreakingly poor. The young are pushing change, creating new spaces of artistic dialogue and expression; the young diaspora is starting to come back, realising that there is more space to create a good life for yourself in Lusaka than in, say, London. It's nowhere near the artistic explosion that Nairobi or Accra have seen in the past few years, but it is a time of change. And this includes the music industry, which – though there is still much to do - is seeing a new lease of life, propelled by amazing talents like Mumba Yachi and James Sakala.

Where do you find inspiration for your songs?
All around me. In stories that I hear, events that I witness, frustrations, sadnesses and joys that I feel. I've written songs based on parables, songs about migration, street children, African identity, songs that speak to our current condition as human beings, songs about love or loss, songs inspired by the flight of birds! I've found inspiration in the worlds of jazz, African music, rock, folk, Brazilian... so broad and deep each of these worlds are! And so much life to sing about! At the heart of it all, though, it simply has to be something that moves me, enough to feel that I must speak to it and try to find expression for it in the truest way that I am able.

Q&A with Mariana Sadovska

Q. In your home country you’re known as the ‘Ukrainian Bjork’ – is that a fair comparison? And what would you say you have in common with Bjork?
Sometimes, I think, such comparisons are needed to help people to find an orientation, to name a ‘shell’; a label to put on somebody.
I do love Bjork and I had a chance to meet her in New York few years ago - I love the honesty in her voice, and I love her braveness in risking new sounds. But for my own work I could find much easier connections to the work of Diamanda Galas or Eva Bittova.

Q. You collect traditional songs and stories from the Ukraine – how important is it to keep alive these folk traditions?
Somebody once said, that if you try to conserve the tradition it will die. There is nothing more moving and changing than tradition. I think it will be such a pity to lose all the richness and variety of our different cultures; it will be so horrible to awake one day in a world of unified fast food culture. In this sense, I think it is very important to study traditional art, in my case the Ukrainian tradition, to keep it alive. Not through conservation, but more through development and dialogue with it. So that tradition can be a powerful source of energy and inspiration, but not a cage, not a prison of new ideas and possibilities.

Q. Can you describe how you first came to hear village singing?
Once, when I was 18 years old, I was in the Carpathian Mountains in the Ukraine for a vacation. We were backpacking through the mountains and we stayed for a rest in a small, remote village up in the hills. We asked for water at one house and sat there for a moment talking to the old lady, who lived there. She sat with us, just relaxing and then suddenly she began to sing. It was not really for us - it was just because she wanted to sing. Her voice was not ‘clean’ and perfect, it was somehow rough, full of mini-ornaments. Everything was part of her song - breath, sigh, sounds of the birds, whisper of the wind, the warm sunlight, the whole nature around us...something in her voice was like she opened a gate to a connection to ancient times. I was mesmerised and I started to try to write down the notes, trying to catch it. This was the first impulse for my whole future work, travels and expeditions, and first step towards singing myself.

Q. How do you update traditional songs and music for a modern audience? Why is it important to do this?
Imagine this situation: one woman is singing you a song, then, in another village, just 5km away, another woman will sing you the same song completely different. Even more, the same singer will perform the same song differently each time, with small nuances, details, pauses, melodic changes. Fedir Rozdabara from the village Kriachkivka once told me: ‘You have to love a song like your beloved. You carry it so long in your heart, till you know how to sing it...’
This is how I work, I’m not trying to change, to arrange the song. I am trying to carry it in my heart and to hear, how I can sing it? I cannot avoid all the influences of contemporary music and today’s sounds. Plus, I am working with strong musician partners coming from various music scenes - jazz or electronic, rock or new music. So all this enters and influences how my song will sound like.
But I must repeat - it is the music, which tells you, how she may be sung. The ‘update’ is coming from inside, from the heart, not from the wish to make it more accessible to a modern audience. This is a very mysterious and amazing creative process.

Q. What would you like to tell an English audience about your music – do you have a message?
In many traditions there is this idea of your own song. In the Ukraine very often somebody will tell me “now I am singing you my own song”. Usually this doesn’t mean that this person composed it, but that the song has become a powerful part of their life, like a talisman, which supports them and helps them to get through the good and the bad times.
Further than that, I am also very interested in the ritual function of song; how people believe in influencing nature and life though the voice, communicating with ‘other words’: where simple words are not enough, poetry and music helps. I love this idea - sometimes I would say I am singing for Ukraine, about Ukraine, I am singing Ukraine… going through a very hard time at the moment...

Q. Would you introduce your partner German percussionist and electronica specialist Christian Thomé?
I met Christian Thomé few years ago, when I was looking for a musician partner to try out something new for me, something not yet explored. When we started our first rehearsals we both didn't know in what way our common music would develop. I was curious to try not to use Ukrainian traditional songs, to work in a more abstract way. Christian was interested to explore possibilities of dialogue between percussion instruments and the human voice. Very soon we both felt how much we can share between us and how much we can open our own borders and perspectives to each other.
What I really appreciate about Christian’s music is that he is not just looking for sound effects, but he is going deep into the meaning of the songs, and trying to find his own answer, his own connection to it. What fascinates me most is how Christian balances on the border between manual and digital sounds. A bit like a master acrobat on the tightrope. Working with him is real challenge for me, it is exciting, and I feel there are lots of possibilities of development ahead of us.

Q. Can you describe your home town Lviv in Western Ukraine?
If you visit Lviv for the first time, you may find a lot of similarity in atmosphere with Prague, Krakow or Vienna. The city was founded in the mid 13th century by a Ukrainian prince who build it for his son, Lev (which means lion). So Lviv is the city of a Lion. We do have lots of stone lion sculptures, and after the legend, they come alive at night and take care of the town. Lviv is a city built by Italian architects, where Mozart use to perform, where Armenian, Jewish, Polish and Ukrainian people use to live together, and where Leopold von Sacher-Masoch used to write. Is this enough advertising for all of you to come and see it with your own eyes!?

Mariana Sadovska (photo by Kluczenko)

Q&A with Trio Da Kali

 
Q. Could you describe for your English fans what your home town is like?

A.    All three members of the trio have their homes in Bamako, the capital of Mali which has grown enormously in the last 20 years.  There are probably around 3 million inhabitants and like in all large cities, it is divided into small districts, each with its own character.  Hawa lives on the edge of ACI 2000, a modern ward with new hotels and office buildings.  Her home is in the more traditional housing area with connections to the zone leading directly to the River Niger.  There are many artisans in her area producing metalwork, carpentry and clothing.  There is a well-organized football school nearby that has over 1,000 boys playing under supervision at weekends and during school holidays.

Mamadou lives in Banconi, one of the first areas to attract people arriving from the countryside as they built houses, often in places determined by space on the rocky outcrop to the north of Bamako.  The area is now very densely populated.  It has many musicians living in the area and Mamadou has started his own studio which is very popular with young musicians making their first recordings, as well as others that are already well-known.

The area of Yirimajo, to the south of the River Niger, is the subject of one of Lassana’s recent songs that Hawa sings on the Trio’s new EP.  It has grown since the huge 26 March Stadium was built there for the African Nations’ Cup matches in 2000.  Now the area has been divided into lots on a planned street grid and there is much modern building and Lassana’s new house is among these developments.  Most of the families in this area are very young, and there is a large population of children and youth – who include many musicians you can see on motorbikes, carrying guitars, Kamalen Ngonis and huge Bobo balafons, as they drive to rehearsals and performances.

Q.  Hawa, you have a beautiful voice! Who has influenced the way you sing?

A.  Thank you.  It is really important to me to know that I am playing in the Mande tradition.  Of course, it is my father Kassé Mady Diabaté who is still my main influence.  He is known now as one of the most important singers in the tradition of the griot singers of the Mande area.   But he was influenced by his aunt, Siramory Diabaté who also showed me the way to sing the huge repertoire of their village, Kela, in the way that the whole Mande world felt was right.  This area spread over most of West Africa, including what is now Guinea Bissau, Guinea, part of Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and parts of other countries.  I try to follow their tradition and spent some of my childhood near their village, where everybody knew the traditional Mande songs and was quick to tell me the right way to sing them.  Now I am trying to teach my own daughters to sing in the same way.

Q. What was it like for you to play at the BBC Proms in London?

It was quite a challenge because this was the Trio’s very first public concert, and especially the first for Hawa as solo vocalist.  Plus we all come different kinds of groups: Hawa mainly with accompanying musicians (including her husband, Demba) at open air wedding parties, Mamadou as one of the 4 ngoni players in the Ngoniba group founded by his father, Bassékou Kouyaté, and Lassana as virtuoso balafon player with some of the most famous musicians in Africa and beyond.  Some of the audiences for Making Tracks may remember his part in the UK appearances by Afrocubism – a remarkable combination of Cuban and Malian stars.  The Proms Concert in the vast Albert Hall helped convince us that we really are an ensemble.  Thanks to this great experience in London, we gained confidence and resolve to maintain our pledge to perform our art at its best – the meaning of Da Kali.

Q & A with Pascuala Ilabaca

 Q - Is this your first visit to the UK?
Yes it is, and we are feeling quite emotional about it! Much of the music we have been listening to since childhood comes from this country, and we are excited to get to know the place where rock music is pretty much part of the local heritage. At the same time we are thrilled to bring you our own music, a music that expresses the youth of Latin America: I really enjoy helping to revitalise the image Europe has of Latin American contemporary identity.

Q – Maybe you could describe for the UK audience your home port city of Valparaiso.
Valparaiso is an old city, bohemian, diverse, and very vulnerable to the thieves of beauty. It’s like a big ship where some are finding inspiration and some are looking for treasures to steal…We are on this same boat, nomad musicians, defending our city, singing to it, looking for spots that are on the verge of disappearing and raising the alarm. Everyday life in Valpraiso is very pleasant, alleyways climb up and down, there is a lot of wind, and sun, and birds, and every night you can find music and wine somewhere around town. There are many great singers from Valpraiso and we are part of this free family of itinerant musicians. We always pay tribute the old singers because we want to make people fall in love with our city and our culture, so that it can be better protected and not just disappear.

Q. You spent time in India and Indian music is an influence on you – are there links to Chilean traditional music?
Music that comes from an ancient origin generally shares the concept of modality, of more open musical forms, and in that sense all folk music has something in common. When I studied in India I was very interested in the concept of constructing melodies out of ragas, and later I found that there is something very similar in the intonation of mapuche melodies (an indigenous people in the south of Chile). Or maybe my blood is so mixed that I’m as ready to sing an Arabic tune, as a Mapuche, or Mexican or Indian melody. This is what we younger generation have to take advantage of in this moment of time, these windows of globalization…

Q. Perhaps you could describe some of the traditional Chilean dance rhythms you use in your music?
We use a lot of rhythms from the north of Chile, like huayno, trotes and caporales; these are the rhythms used in traditional fiestas. I love the desert carnivals in Atacama, they are very simple and those attending are real devotees so they dance and play music for hours on end. I’ve been to watch and dance at these carnivals since I was a child - these rhythms have a joy that often blends with minor-key harmonies giving them a very special feel, that of a profound and melancholic celebration…. I like trying to transplant this feel into my own music; I firmly believe that danceable music can have a lot of substance too, there is no reason to divide music into music ‘for listening’ and ‘for dancing’, implying the latter one not having much substance at all. We also incorporate modern rhythms like drum and bass, which I think blends very well with music of Chilean origin.

Q. Violeta Parra has been described as your biggest inspiration. Could you say a little bit about her influence?
Violeta Parra was a very powerful woman - in a macho country like Chile there are very few women that have venutred into the world of arts. What interests me is to re-vindicate her image that was very badly treated during the dictatorship and later in democracy it became overused but without the value it deserves. I have given myself the mission of bringing Violeta back to the present, simply by always singing her, especially her lesser known songs, increasing awareness in her work and above everything treating her music with kindness after it has been so maltreated for so long…

Q. Fauna are your fantastic band – maybe you could introduce the musicians?
La Fauna is my family - we started when we were very young, just beginning our music studies. Jaime the drummer is my husband, and together we have travelled to many places exploring carnivals, and he also writes some great songs for La Fauna.
After all this time in the band we are all like brothers and sisters, the band is a collective that is based on the friendship we have for each other, above everything else. When we started out we played rather badly but we liked each other a lot… and well, this gives me a lot of inspiration, everything that we have lived through together makes us better every day.

Q. Do you have any recommendations for young Chilean artists we might not have heard of?
Chile really is full of music! Here are 5 songs and 5 artists I would really recommend you try and check out – it’s a little melancholic songbook to make you think about the Southern Pacific…
Ojos de Miel – Demian Rodriguez
Hermanos Maravilla – VariosArtistas
Los Celos - Juga di Prima
Siempre que hago algo – Camila Moreno
Vamos los dos – Chinoy

Q&A with Debashish Bhatacharya

Q. Your album Beyond the Ragasphere features several guests; jazz guitarist John McLaughlin and bluegrass musician Jerry Douglas among others. What was it like collaborating with these great musicians?
A. It was full of challenges, musical and artistic, working over seas, coordinating with different time zones , real time studio to studio - composed each number and arranging keeping in mind my collaborators' musical repertoire- not easy, OMG! But you know I did it - with success.

Q. How important is it for you to collaborate with musicians from different musical cultures?
A. I want to share things with other musicians as well as learn and act creating a new territory of music. Living on the edge. If you see my albums I did only exclusive collaboration albums and each one is different- except one Indian raga music album of my own. Collaboration is an exercise between knowledge plus taste plus culture of music and awareness of artistic challenge to recreate something tasteful, enjoyable and attractive. In collaboration you can't hide.

Q. Are there any musicians you would love to work with?
A. Jerry Douglas, Tomani Daibete, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Bela Flek, John McLaughlin and Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, Jake Shimbokuru, top Irish Celtic musicians, as well with The Philharmonic Orchestra of London. And with my Hawaiian band.

Q. You have your daughter Anandi with you in the band. What is that like?
A. Working with her is great fun, she is very composed and super talented... She knows me musically very very well - you will see that on stage.

Q. How do you enjoy playing for e British audience?
A. I think UK audience is one of the best so far I've experienced in 30 years of traveling the world.

Q. You play the lap steel guitar, an instrument associated with Hawaii and US country music. How did you come to play this in India?
A. My musical parents and their ancestors never played any instrument - they were all singers, my father got a Hawaiian guitar from a friend before I was born. I got it in hand at the age three and loved the sound and till today the relationship is uninterrupted, musical and loving. I’m trained in Indian classical music and used the lap steel guitar to express my art as lap steel guitar is closest to human voice - it's a singing instrument. But it was hard on me; in order to achieve the wholesome performing style I had to create at least twenty different things in skill and designing a new lap steel guitar of my own and had to patent it to protect the identity of this newborne instrument. I've had to bring it up to the standard of the classical Indian music instrumentally, technically and most importantly, musically.  I always get to see people talking in India - they can't believe themselves that Raga music can sound so perfect in the way my guitar makes it sound. It is hard though to make living on playing ragas on guitar in India. But humbly I did it- by taking the hardest way of challenging my ability and feeling responsible - if I didn't do it no one else would.
The Hawaii connection: I've researched the route and the musicians responsible for bringing Hawaiian music and guitars to India and found them: in 2004 I met Tau Moe and his daughter Dorian Moe who was born in Calcutta. I honoured him with playing a full concert just for him in his village Laie before he passed away. I since recorded a full length album with Hawaiian musicians and played their Hawaiian steel guitars. This made the full circle from the Hawaiian to the Indian guitar. (For ranges of my guitar refer to debashishguitar.com)

Q. Can you say something about some of the music you will play on the tour – are the songs traditional or contemporary
A. It's a journey of my musical life traditional to contemporary. Raga to Beyond the RagaSphere.

Q. Who are your musical influences?
A. Nature , beauty, painting, perfume, food; my parents, my grand father,Ustad Allauddin Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar Ustad Ali Akbar, Ustad Alla Rakha, Pandit Kishan Maharaj, Pt Nikhil Banerjee, Ustad Vilayat Khan, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan , Ustad Ameer Khan, Pt Shiv Kumar Sharma and Pt Brij Bhushan Kabra and many others. B.B.King, Ray Charles, Paco De Lucia, African music from Mali, Blue Grass, Hawaiian melody, Chinese pentatonic music, Irish music, Mozart, Bach and other Western classical composers, folk music of Eastern Europe - all influenced, awakened and helped me to understand what actually music is and what it does to the performer and audience and helped me to stand where I'm today.

Q&A with Mokoomba!

Q : Zimbabwean music has a long history in the UK – going back to the Bhundu Boys, Stella Chiweshe, Thomas Mapfumo & the Four Brothers. Were you aware of their success and do people in Zimbabwe recognize how popular they were here?

A.Yes,as Mokoomba we are aware of the success that these Zimbabwean music icons had in the UK because they did pave the way for the Zimbabwean musical history, and these are also the bands that we looked up to when we were still young.

Q. The Bhundu’s played chimurenga music with rock and roll, disco, country, and pop influences. How is your music different?

A. Our music is different from that of the Bhundu boys in the sense that we classify our music as Afro-Fusion, which is a mix of our Tonga, Luvale and Nyanja ways of playing percussions and singing, fusing all this with other modern genres of music like Soukous, Rock, Funk and Reggae.

Q. Who are your biggest musical influences?

A.Our Zimbabwean artists who made it big, namely, Bhundu Boys,Stella Chiweshe,The Four Brothers,Oliver Mtukudzi,Chiwoniso Maraire and also other African artists who have made an impression, like Salif Keita, Youssou N’Dour, Habib Koite.

Q. Can you say something about your home in the Victoria Falls region of Zimbabwe? Can you describe it for a UK audience?

A. Victoria falls is a small town. The mighty Victoria Falls is one of the wonders of the world, and the town is also is rich in different musical styles because it’s a border town to several African countries which makes it a melting pot of different cultures in and out of Zimbabwe.

Q. Your first and breakthrough album, Rising Tide, was recorded for a Belgian record label. How did you meet them?

A. We met Poney Gross, director of ZigZag World, during the Music Crossroads Competitions in 2008, which was a youth empowerment through music programme.

Poney sat in the jury for this competition and was then in charge of organising our first European tour. Since then, we are working with ZigZag World as our management agency as well as our label.

Q. What are the songs that you are performing on this tour about?

A.The songs we are going to perform on this tour have different themes but mainly focussing on songs of our culture, from the Tonga and the Luvale traditions, and on songs of Hope and Love. It’s an acoustic set, brand new, and we will present it for the first time !

Q. How did you all meet when you started the band?

A. The six of us in Mokoomba we all come from the same home town, so we went to the same schools and played together at an early age. We had the same passion for music, so we have been a band together from childhood !

Q. You’ve been on TV in the UK and played at several festivals. Ahead of this UK tour what do you think of the UK?

A.The UK is a great place for us, the audience here is amazing and we are grateful of their support. The response of the UK audience to our music is really exceptional. We feel very lucky and proud to play live on TV for ‘Later with Jools Holland’ and to play at some of the great British festivals.

Interviewed by Mike Gavin at EditionPR