Interviews – Page 76

(Photo: Ben Jackson)

Prolific would be an understatement to describe Montreal artist and chef Beaver Sheppard. His body of work is impressive, so much so that it is almost impossible to count everything he has ever painted or composed and recorded. He himself would have a hard time telling you. An eccentric and erratic character well known to a certain Montreal wildlife – and elsewhere – Beaver/Jonathan Sheppard is everywhere at once. When he’s not behind the stove at his little restaurant Oke Poke, the chef turns into a painter whose canvases are worth thousands of dollars, or into an outstanding composer with a golden voice.

We managed to catch him at the end of a long day’s work so that he could tell us about Downtown, a frankly amazing record on which the St-John’s native offers us a sound canvas on which he skillfully mixes colours. Whether it’s the irresistible “No One Knows”, a synthwave song with ’80s tonalities that has everything to become a hit, the very nice folk ballad “Full Moon”, the strange title track that opens the album, or the groovy “Chameleon” that concludes it, Downtown, marked by the author’s amazing voice, is not lacking for earworms.

PAN M 360: You have an impressive array of releases of all kinds, as much under your own name as with CO/NTRY, Drug Face, or the Germans Brandt Braueur Frick, not to mention all your numerous contributions to various bands or artists. A simple glance at your Bandcamp page reveals the full extent of your work.

Beaver Sheppard: I wrote my first songs in Grade 7 and I think my first record dates back to 2006, on a Baltimore label. But I’ve got a ton of stuff that I’ve never released. Oh no, wait, my first record came out in 1997. We were playing on pots and pans and plastic containers. At that time I was into a lot of stuff like Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana. A guy sent it to me recently and it’s pretty good, except for the lyrics… I think I’ll release it! In fact, I should throw everything I have on the web. It’s ridiculous, everything I’ve got on tape.

PAN M 360: You cook a lot, you paint a lot, you make music all the time… how do you manage to stay so prolific and creative?

BS: Um, I don’t know. I’m not really thinking about what I’m gonna do. I’m just settling down and creating something. That’s where the ideas come from. Especially for music, I’m always coming up with stuff. I try not to get too lost in the lyrics. I work on them, but never too much. If it takes me more than a few days to come up with lyrics, I’ll give up. It’s all there, the melodies, the arrangements, everything… except the lyrics. I’d say I’ve got at least 200 of these, all on four-track tapes. And I’ve got as many songs on tape as I’ve got in the back of my head. It’s kind of crazy.

PAN M 360: For your new album, you got an unexpected boost, didn’t you?

BS: Yeah, there’s this Warpaint girl, Stella [Mozgawa], who sort of allowed me to make this record. She liked my first albums and she offered me to record something like that. I thought she’d like my recent stuff more, like what I did with CO/NTRY, but she liked the messier side of my early albums. She wanted me to do something a little crazier. I told her okay, no problem, and I started digging through all my old recordings, and building on what I was inspired by in all those old tapes. I actually think the best things I’ve done have often come from nothing, from something simple. As soon as you start thinking too much, working the thing too much, it becomes… predictable. I like it to be messy and a little crooked. There’s a magic in that. I don’t like these fucking studio musicians who know every note by heart, who play perfectly on the tempo, it sucks.

PAN M 360: What you’re saying here makes me think a bit of the work philosophy of Billy Childish, who, like you, paints and makes music. For him, a work of art doesn’t have to take an interminable time to complete. It’s a waste of time for creating something else.

BS: Yes, I know him! I opened for him in Montreal. Wow, that was wild. I was pretty buzzed that night, I was actually pretty high at the time. I was on acid, before I even went on stage, and then I went backstage where I had a long and intense discussion with this guy. He’s got this kind of aura… I don’t know what he was on, maybe nothing, but he had this natural buzzed vibe, you know? I didn’t know him at all before. Then I learned he’s kind of the guy who reinvented garage rock. I found out that he had made a lot of records and I asked him why he was making so much music, and he said, “I have to, because if I didn’t, I would be dead.” That made a lot of sense to me.

PAN M 360: Back to Downtown, tell us a bit about how you built the album.

BS: I had a month to complete everything. So I tinkered with old recordings, different ideas and old samples. Take the first song on the record, “Downtown”, it’s from a jam I did with other musicians, 15 or 16 years ago. I thought there was something crazy and raunchy, with one of the guys playing the wrong note on a piano… I liked it, and I put it on a loop. Then I grabbed a saxophone and I improvised. Then I grabbed the microphone and started throwing out a stream of lyrics like that, spontaneously. I cut and pasted here and there, and added a couple of other things, and that was it. For “I Only See You”, I wrote the lyrics as fast as I could just so it wouldn’t drag on, and I moved to something else. (laughs). It turned out pretty nice in the end. I used a kind of Caribbean steel drum that I got at Christmas. I was a little bit inspired by Brian Eno’s [and John Cale’s] song “Spinning Away” for that track. There’s something playful and fragile in this song. For “Chameleon”, I used something we recorded with CO/NTRY, a long, raw 13-minute jam. I sliced the whole thing up and built “Chameleon” up with that! I think the guitar is sick on this track, it’s like “Cotton Eyed Joe”! (laughs). For another song, it was a something I did with Drug Face, my project with Thomas Von Party… The whole album was cobbled together from songs or sketches I had.

PAN M 360: We also find some more folk songs on Downtown (“My Oh My”, “Full Moon”), similar to the ones you recorded on your first albums…

BS: Yes, and I want to explore more of that kind of sound. What I find interesting with this album is that each song was recorded in a different place. Everything was finished in the same place, but each of the 10 songs comes from a different time and a different place.

PAN M 360: The song “No One Knows” is really good. It’s definitely something that could be a hit.

BS: You’re not the only one telling me that. In fact, we’re going to make a video for that… ah yes, and one for “Tornado Brain”, a remix that Ricardo Villa-Lobos made of one of my songs last year. But to come back to “No One Knows”, it’s a beautiful song I wrote a year ago, out of nowhere. I actually wrote a lot of good stuff last year, and I should release it… Come to think of it, Downtown is clearly the most diverse album I’ve ever done. It doesn’t cover everything I like to do in music, for example I’ve got a whole album of electronic music ready, and another one of totally fucked-up music, and then I’d like to do stuff more in the vein of Talk Talk, Neil Young and Arthur Russell, do songs about Newfoundland… and more contemporary art… if at least I had the time! But I like the idea of leaving behind a lot of stuff once I’m dead, thinking that people are going to fight for it… It’s something I think about a lot.

BEAVER SHEPPARD’S OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Photo: Trevor Naud

Protomartyr, through its singer Joe Casey – one of the most brilliant lyricists of recent years, punctuating his texts with historical, literary, and mythological references – is a master in the art of depicting a dystopian world in a noisy and claustrophobic post-punk style. Since their debut on record in 2012, the band has offered us a overview of everything that’s wrong in America, from white supremacy to patriarchal hegemony, endless wars, gentrification, and the opioid epidemic… On Ultimate Success Today, written a year ago while Joe Casey was fighting a strange illness, Protomartyr seems to have foreseen the coming of the global pandemic and the scourge of police brutality that is currently raging in the land of Uncle Sam.

A logical follow-up to 2017’s Relatives In Descent, which saw Protomartyr plunge headlong into the miseries of American life, Ultimate Success Today depicts a completely nightmarish universe, punctuated by dark and visceral compositions. But this new effort is also a sequel to the 2018 EP Consolation, for which the Detroit-based band invited Kelley Deal (Breeders) on board and experimented with various instruments that hadn’t been used to on their previous recordings. For Ultimate Success Today, recorded at Dreamland Recording Studios, a 19th-century church, the band did it again, this time with several guest musicians on board. Nandi Rose (vocals), free jazz legend Jameel Moondoc (alto saxophone), Izaak Mills (bass clarinet, saxophone, flute) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) appear here and there on the 10 pieces on the album. PAN M 360 reached singer Joe Casey at his home in Detroit, and he was kind enough to tell us about the genesis of this troubling fifth album, which marks a turning point in the history of Protomartyr.

PAN M 360: You’ve hinted here and there that Ultimate Success Today would be a possible noisy conclusion to a five-act play. What did you mean by that?

Joe Casey: If you’re talking about things ending, which is somehow the theme of the album because I was feeling pretty sick and kind of obsessed with mortality at the time, you really have to go to the end of the line. You can’t half-ass it. You have to really contemplate things being over… Being a band for a decade, it’s a way for us to wrap things up, not so much to completely end the band, but to move forward. So whatever our next move is, it will at least appear fresh and new. But then of course, this pandemic hits and it feels really like the end of something. So I’m gonna stop writing about things like that because they end up coming true (laughs).

PAN M 360: When you say you want to move on, it’s understandable that you want to change the themes in your songs, but does that also imply changing the sound?

JC: I don’t know about that. I just want us to be able to change what we want, as much as we want, if we continue. You have to move into a new house if you destroy your old one. It forces you to change. You know, when you release five records and people are still saying that we must be influenced by Joy Division or The Fall, you wonder when people are gonna stop saying you’re just some derivative of something else. It’s a way to force change.

PAN M 360: But you’ve already started to make some changes with this new album, haven’t you? It’s got strings and brass… Would you say it’s your most audacious album?

JC: We always want to change, every single time. And we definitely felt that this album was an experiment, that could or could not work, by bringing in these collaborators and these extra sounds. We thought it was kind of a big departure. It’s not just Protomartyr with some strings, horns and woodwinds on it… I feel that the music the band was coming up with was, to me at least, radically different than anything we’ve done before. The way that Greg [Ahee, guitars] was writing these songs, he was approaching them from a completely different angle than what he usually does. So we’re always trying to experiment, but this time I think it’s the most pronounced.

PAN M 360: Didn’t the Consolation EP pave the way for Ultimate Success Today?

JC: The Consolation EP was really a fun collaboration with Kelley Deal that went really well. So when she brought in extra musicians for the last song and we saw the result, we thought that it sounded like Protomartyr, but different. It didn’t destroy our sound, because we didn’t want to push so far that the thing doesn’t sound like us anymore… I know that for Greg, it was a big deal, because he had worked on an album with Matthew Dear, who is more an electronic artist, and he liked his approach, and kinda wanted to bring that to the album. So in a weird way, it’s sort of like an electronic album but without any electronics on it.

PAN M 360: There are several guests on the album, how did it go with them in the studio and why did you choose them in particular?

JC: Well, we wanted to have some jazz musicians on the album, but it’s easier said than done, they don’t magically appear in the studio. So we asked around to figure out who was available. And that’s the reason we picked the studio we recorded in, because it was close to New York, where there’s a lot of jazz musicians, so it would be easier for them to come over.

I’d say that of all the collaborators, Izaak Mills, who plays the bass clarinet, the flute, and the saxophone, was the biggest contributor because he was there the longest, he was with us in the studio for a couple of days. He probably had the heaviest hand as far as collaboration goes. As for Jamil Moondoc, who is an avant-jazz legend, we couldn’t believe he was actually showing up. He came in, did his work, and left. He gave us so much to work with. Just kind of like, “here, now you figure out what to do with all this” (laughs).

Then for Fred Lonberg-Holm, who plays the cello, he is on so many different albums! His list of work is amazing. So he was in for a day, and then Nandi Rose, who is on four or five songs, she didn’t even come over. She sent all her stuff through emails. At the time, it seemed like a weird way to do things, but now that’s kind of the new normal (laughs). She gave us a lot to work with! Now that we survived the experiment, we wish we would have used more. We could have pushed this a little bit farther.

PAN M 360: How did these collaborations shape the album?

JC: A lot! Greg had the idea ahead of time, and knew that he wanted to have these collaborators fill the role that his guitar pedals or synths usually do. So we were practising the songs ahead of time, and a lot of them were skeletons where Greg would fill some parts with synths where he thought the saxophones would do something, you see. So it was a lot of guesswork. The songs were not really formulated lyrically before the studio. I had to wait until the collaborators did their part to hear what they sound like. Which I liked, because it gave me something to do in the studio while the others were taping. So this time, I was more engaged in seeing how the songs were changing. For instance, “Process By the Boys”, the addition of the clarinet really makes the song. That allowed me to sing a little bit more urgently and keep the lyrics fresh, because the song was really coming together in the studio.

PAN M 360: I heard you wrote several of the songs once you got to the studio, is that true?

JC: Yes, but this is not freestyle rapping (laughs). For instance, for the song “Worm In Heaven”, they were putting the final touches, they were adding the beautiful flute that kind of blows through it, and I’m hearing that and start to work on the lyrics for two hours. Then I go in the booth, do the editing, and figure out the form. I’d say at least three or four songs were definitely written in the booth, as they were being recorded.

PAN M 360: You worked a bit like Serge Gainsbourg when he was in Jamaica, recording his reggae album. He had practically no lyrics written once in the studio, and the next day he had them all. He spent the whole night writing them.

JC: I guess it’s the best way to do it! A song like “Tranquilizer”, where I wanted to show how it feels in your brain when you’re in terrible pain and you’re thinking about that pain, that it’s gonna kill you… you’re not thinking rationally, your words aren’t poetic! So to do that properly, you have to do it at the last minute. You can get the idea early on but it’s gotta sound almost like somebody stumbling over his words to capture it correctly. It’s a little corny, but it’s sort of like method acting, where you have to get to the role or the mold of the song to do it right.

PAN M 360: I read somewhere that you wanted to give this album a sense of urgency, a bit like the one you feel when you listen to your debut album No Passion All Technique. Do you feel as revolted as you did ten years ago?

JC: Recently, we re-released our first record [No Passion All Technique]. It has flaws all over it, but it was recorded in four hours. Twenty-two songs in four hours! What I liked while listening back to that first record is that it sounds like people that are at the end of their rope. And we were. Now we can afford to stay longer in the studio, but do you know how boring and tedious the studio can be? Like taking two or three days just to do the drum parts… It really can suck the life out of things (laughs). I wanted to bring the urgency back because I didn’t want to get complacent. I’m always surprised when I read something like, “this is Protomartyr’s darkest record”… We never set out to make dark, depressive music! Life is full of joys and full of disappointments, and for some reason, the music pulls the disappointment out of me. I guess I’m just not very funny, but there are a lot of jokes on these albums, but they kind of get lost. I read in a review that we wallow in nihilism, but I almost feel that this is like the opposite of nihilism!

Photo: Bo Huang

Pivotal Arc is shaping up to be the largest project led by Quinsin Nachoff, 46, a Canadian who’s been living in New York for the past dozen years. First on the program is a three-movement violin concerto featuring Quebec soloist Nathalie Bonin, whose career is divided between Montreal and Los Angeles. The concerto’s instrumentation includes bassist Mark Helias, drummer Satoshi Takeishi, and vibraphonist Michael Davidson, joined by a wind and string ensemble under the direction of trombonist JC Sanford.

The album also includes a four-movement string quartet performed by the Molinari Quartet, as well as the title piece of the album, another major work featuring Nachoff’s trio, and the wind and string ensemble consisting mainly of Montreal musicians: Jean-Pierre Zanella, Yvan Belleau, Brent Besner, David Grott, Bob Ellis, Jocelyn Couture, Bill Mahar. Performed by musicians from New York, Toronto, and Montreal, these works highlight Nachoff’s compositional imagination, at the confluence of contemporary jazz, contemporary music from the classical tradition, and hand-picked non-Western music.

*Nathalie Bonin (Photo: Sophie Carrière)*

PAN M 360: When was the idea for the Violin Concerto, the most imposing piece on the program?

QUINSIN NACHOFF: We recorded it right after the concert done in Montréal two years ago, so it was two years ago at the studio Piccolo in Montréal… amazing personnel, a bunch of excellent mics, that made the whole process so smooth and easy. There was an important amount of recording material we had to get through, many different takes, many options. We had to find the time to sit, make the decisions, and edit it with David Travers-Smith, the amazing sound engineer and technician involved in almost all my projects. It took a long time indeed!

NATHALIE BONIN: Because we were in different locations, New York, Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, that was difficult to gather everybody and achieve this project. It’s also very hard to get money for this kind of project, but thankfully we had incredible support from the Canada Council. That being said, it took a lot of time to do the application, and we had to wait a while because there were no funds at the early stage of the process.

PAN M 360: In what context was the concerto developed?

NB: In 2001, I went to the Banff international jazz workshop, where Quinsin was teaching. I was just exploring improvised music, that was really new to me. And then later, I played a piece composed by the trumpeter Dave Douglas, previously done for the violinist Mark Feldman. Douglas asked me if I would like to play, so there was a cadenza where I could improvise. For me that was a big first time. Then I performed this music over a week, and Quinsin heard me playing. He could observe I had strong classical training. Then came the idea of collaborating and touring; we started working on his projects like Magic Numbers, Horizons Ensemble, etc. Seven years ago, we were backstage in Toronto, waiting to perform a concert, and I asked him almost as joke, hey! What about a violon concerto? We both laughed, and…

QN: Nathalie is super busy, but we kept touch about this concerto project and slowly put it together. Supported by the Canada Council, a first demo was recorded in 2014 in New York, there was also a fundraising effort, and we were finally ready to record the music in 2018. Because Nathalie was previously involved in two of my big string-focused projects, I had a good sense of what she was capable of, which was really impressive. Then, I wanted to push her in a different direction because I knew she was comfortable in my previous settings. That was the time to put her in slightly uncomfortable settings and see how she could react. And again, Nathalie did excel. She worked super hard to figure out how to be herself in that. As a composer and improviser, I love being able to showcase musicians for what they are really great at doing, and then challenge them, putting them in some zone where they don’t know what it would sound like.

NB: And we’re still friends ! (laughs)

PAN M 360 : Quinsin, tell us about your choice to live in New York and pursue your career there for the past dozen years.

QN: I grew up in Canada, spent a lot of time in this scene there, I studied at Umber College in Toronto. So I really feel attached to Canada in a lot of ways. My family is still there, my sister lives in Vancouver. But I also enjoy being part of the vibrant, exciting scene in New York. It’s really challenging. For me, it was just the opportunity to get to work with people who are devoted to playing original and creative music. They’re just really driven and that resonates for me. And I don’t give up doing things in Canada, I get to work with amazing Canadian musicians all the time.

PAN M 360 : As for you, Nathalie, your career is divided between Los Angeles and Montreal. You can be found both in very pop contexts, either on the TV show The Voice where you are first violin in the string section, or in your “aerial violin” acts, or in the movie industry, where you’ve had success composing scores, not to mention these more complex and demanding music projects. Why such an eclecticism?

NB: I get bored easily. Being a steady member in a classical ensemble is like going into a monastery. So I need other challenges that inspire me. I like trying different things, for me it’s just life, it’s fun to live. So I embrace all that I can do, trying new things makes me discover new aspects about myself. I’ve never seen myself sitting down in an orchestra my whole life, I needed to play different music in different styles – jazz, world music, pop, entertainment, show business… I also started composing in 2010 and now, it is almost half of what I do, sometimes even more. So I can play great music, work hard on this concerto, or play on The Voice for millions of people – very different challenges, but still a challenge, and a different drive.

PAN M 360 : What is your appreciation of the Molinari Quartet in the context of this string quartet?

QN: That was Nathalie’s recommendation, it was phenomenal working with them for the first time. Great fit! Originally, I was going to do a workshop with them, with some of the material before recording it, but that couldn’t happen. So I brought them the music three or four weeks before the recording, and I didn’t get to hear a single note from them before the rehearsals. That was challenging, risky, and stressful. But when the musicians showed up at the rehearsal, they did an amazing job. They played the music even better than what I could imagine. They really got inside it! They were interpreting things differently and pushing the envelope, so they had an improvised feeling to it. You could tell they enjoyed the music as well. They were very open and really dug the rhythmic aspects too, having fun doing it. That was beautiful!

PAN M 360: To conclude, the title piece also merits consideration.

QN: “Pivotal Arc” was written in 2017-18. I was reading an excellent article in the New York Times about climate change, and I could see all these graphs illustrating global warming. Those graphics inspired a giant arc in me. Upright bass player Mark Helias has some solo commentaries at the beginning and the end of the piece, the saxophone plays at the peak of the arc. Mark is a tremendous player and soloist, he plays as well in jazz projects and classical music ensembles, large or small, he leads his own trio with Tom Rainey on drums, and Tony Malaby on saxophone. And we had such a great time with all those players. Every musician did their homework, when I heard all their preparation in Montreal, it was amazing.

PAN M 360 : Quinsin, your approach is rooted in both contemporary jazz and contemporary music of classical tradition, not to mention your love for tango nuevo and other global music. For your recent works, what have your inspirations been on the classical side?

QN: I definitely like the music of the first half of the 20th century – Bartok, Shostakovitch, Berg, etc. – but I also listened to more recent string quartets and chamber music, for example pieces composed by Brian Ferneyhough or Helmut Lachenmann. So I tried to expose myself to a lot of different music that’s happening now. I have pretty diverse interests in different styles and genres, and I try to find where things work well together. I avoid what doesn’t work between genres, and find areas where they have common elements.

PAN M 360 : Generally speaking, do you try to achieve a balance between written and improvised music?

QN: It just depends on the players I’m playing with. When I met the Molinari musicians, they made it clear that they would not improvise, so gave them some little aleatory things, something from their tradition. Playing with Nathalie is different – I know that she can improvise, she is particularly good at free improvisation. There are several moments in the violin concerto where I would give her start of a written cadenza, and the landing point of where the next section was. And then I just let her come up with her personality, and it’s going to be different every time. In other contexts, I can use the pianist Matt Mitchell, amazing improviser and reader, I can give him even more vague directions, just enough to kind of tilt the angle of improvisation… Or not at all. Sometimes I don’t give anything. Or very specific directions, very challenging with players coming from the jazz universe, where rhythms and chords are happening. So there are a lot of strategies, almost infinite ways. You just have to find what makes sense at the moment and serve your bigger purpose.

PAN M 360: For many of today’s music fans and musicians, the idea of “advanced” music increasingly implies the meeting of contemporary jazz and written contemporary music. Is it in this universe that the works of Pivotal Arc are situated?

QN: We must remember that most classical composers are improvising. They don’t do it in public, but that’s how they come up with ideas. Today, musicians and listeners who are more focused on contemporary classical music or universal performers, are also listening more broadly. “Serious” composers such as Nicole Lizée are not letting improvisation into some of their pieces, but they draw in a lot of popular styles of music, like rock, drum & bass, or pop. We are in between universes, musicians are now used to that. As I said, I try to find common elements of jazz and classical, African sources and occidental sources, where they work well together. I like to blend commonalities between them rather than forcing music worlds as a contrast. These are elements that we can weave in and out. Then we are never really sure – is it classical or is it jazz right now? It’s just not very important.

Photo: Vanessa Heins

PAN M 360: Your album has been getting good reviews here and there. How’s it going since the release ?

Daniel Monkman: I know I wanted to make an impact with my album because it’s been almost a decade since my last release. Every week, we find out something new, that someone loves the album. When I was doing music in 2007 to 2012, I wasn’t really social. It’s a big change, it’s been nice though.

PAN M 360: I feel your album is about a reconciliation between you and your native culture. Can you elaborate on that ?

DM: It just came at a point in my life where I came to a crossroad in my identity. It was either, I just keep going on with my life and be ignorant about my past, or I accept who I was and embrace it. It’s easy to go downstream, or whatever is easiest. But instead, I started an upstream battle. I knew the institutions were not going to be able to tell me about my past because it’s just full of lies and deception. This album is about me learning everything about my culture, and how it ultimately saved my life.

PAN M 360: You write about your healing process in such an open-hearted way. Would you say it’s about finding inner peace ?

DM: I would say that. It’s like truth and reconciliation. I was part of an AA program. I spent a lot of time in these support groups. I wouldn’t say I was addicted to alcohol, but I had behaviours once I started drinking, I felt really sad and would become dissociated. It was there that I learned to really show humility, rather than internalizing what I was feeling. I was encouraged to express it. They teach you not to have any real ego about it.

PAN M 360: The First Nations culture seems to belong in the past, in most people’s minds. Do you hope your album proves otherwise ?

DM: When I was learning about my culture in high school, they always seemed to make it past tense. I would be reading the textbook and say, well, I’m still here. I was putting out shoegaze and indigenous music back in 2007, no one really cared about listening or hearing the First Nations story. And that’s the big part of the reason why I left the music industry for almost 10 years. It wasn’t really trendy to hear indigenous stories yet. It was in 2015 […] that I started hearing about nêhiyawak, Whoop-Szo, A Tribe Called Red and Snotty Nose Rez Kids. I’m glad to represent indigenous people through shoegaze and dream pop.

PAN M 360: The word Zoongide’ewin refers to one of the Seven Grandfather Teachings. Can you explain what are they ?

DM: If you go to the AA program, they push the idea of God and praying. I felt a little uncomfortable about it because this Christian God has just tainted our family. I felt I wasn’t able to fully heal with this belief. I went to the rehab centre, I got out and started my journey. That’s just basically a First Nations version of the AA program. It teaches the same values, but in a more traditional way. They are like wisdom, love, especially humility, I learned a lot about that. Where I grew up on the streets, there are a lot of gangs, a lot of youth without father figures or mother figures. You learn to be a man on the streets. A lot of the time, that means that you don’t show emotions […], you always have to internalize it. Humility gave me this awakening that I can be very open. Being able to ask for help is just a human trait that we should be able to use.

PAN M 360: You also refer to the bear spirit. What does it represent to you ?

DM: It represents my mother and motherhood. The bear spirit Mukwa is the representation of Zoongide’ewin, of courage, and being able to talk less and listen. It is about sacrifice, and my mom sacrificed a lot to bring me up in the world. My dad tried to be there. Later in life I found out why he couldn’t, but my mom took full responsibility for my other four siblings as a single parent. She saw that I love music, and so she got me my first recording machine. She didn’t want us to live around the gangs. When I did this kind of rebirth album, I wanted to honour my mom.

PAN M 360: At the time of the recording, you didn’t have much equipment. But you manage to create an impressive shoegaze sound. How was the recording process?

DM: Very minimalist. I had one guitar, two guitar pedals, and an amp. When I first conceived the album, a lot of the songs were just acoustics. I knew I just wanted to make something bigger, a lot more textures. I borrowed the second pedal from a friend of mine, this kind of looping pedal that, if you record a riff and add lead on top of it, you can loop parts together. Just by luck, the first pedal that I had has a feature on it called reversed reverb. I would create the loop, different layers, and then I would send what I just made in the loop to the reverse reverb. It was a breakthrough. It was from there that I realised that I could make this bigger album that I wanted to do. There was no big production, no big studio, I did it all from my bedroom. It was a lot of luck.

PAN M 360: The song “Was & Always Will Be” sounds more like a beautiful meditative mantra or prayer. How did you write that song with Rishi Dhir ?

D.M: I’ve always been a big fan of Elephant Stone, maybe since 2009. When I wrote that song, it wasn’t even supposed to be on the album. I was going through my machine and came to this really hypnotic acoustic song that had ten acoustic tracks with a chord progression. I just started adding hand drums and other percussion instruments that made it almost like a fusion of Indigenous with ’60s psychedelia and indian music. I wanted to bring it as a joke, two ‘“Indians” together. Colonial people called Indigenous people Indians, that’s not correct. That’s still alive and well, but Rishi is the real Indian. Adding the sitar gives it a really nice touch. It was one of those last-minute songs. But with Rishi coming in, it was perfect.

Photo: Elizabeth Smith

PAN M 360: Let’s start with the title, The Emigrants. Using the word “emigrant” obliges a consideration of uprooting and relocation from the other side, what’s given up or left behind, rather than what awaits.

George Lam: I chose The Emigrants as the title precisely because I wanted to explore these individuals’ stories from the perspective of what they left behind, and in turn, why they decided to stay in NYC. I am an immigrant/emigrant myself; I was born in Hong Kong and stayed there until I was 12, then moved to the United States to go to school, and just now I’ve moved back to Hong Kong to take up a teaching position, some 28 years after I left. I think musicians in particular have always been open to new opportunities in different places, both locally and globally. I learned a great deal from interviewing these seven amazing musicians on why they chose to leave, and what they left behind.

PAN M 360: The music you’ve composed is, to my ear, full of conflicting emotions. The same can be said of the voices of the interview subjects, if perhaps more subtly. There’s also a definite sense of urgency present. What would you say you’re trying to express?

GL: By looking at both what lies ahead and what is left behind, there is already an inherent drama in the story, and that is very much what I tried to express in The Emigrants. In particular, I wanted to highlight the drama of the spoken words through repetition and by connecting the speech rhythms with the cello and percussion. I think your description of “urgency” is especially apt here, as uprooting and re-rooting takes a lot of time. For all of us, how many such moves can we make in our lifetime while we are still able to be productive and make art?

PAN M 360: On a more technical note, it’s notable how your music, and the recorded voices, the interview passages, fit together comfortably, neither imposing on the other. Making them work together must have been an exacting process.

GL: I have had a lot of experience in working with words as an opera and art-song composer. With my ensemble Rhymes With Opera, I was able to workshop different composition approaches with our fantastic ensemble of singers, and to explore my interest in recitative. I am especially interested in recitative because of how both the words and music are informed by natural speech. For The Emigrants, I similarly approached the spoken words as a kind of recitative, and where the words can create their own conversation with the cello and percussion of New Morse Code.

*Above: The voices of* The Emigrants – Alvaro Rodas, Duo Yumeno, Rafael Leal, Chris Yip, Harold Gutierrez, Nivedita ShivRaj

PAN M 360: The interview subjects whose words and voices you use are all musicians living in Queens. What more can you tell about them, and why they were chosen, or chose, to participate in this project?

GL: When I first talked with New Morse Code about a new piece, I knew I wanted to do a “documentary” work that’s also a piece of chamber music. We talked about different potential subject matters, and ultimately settled on individuals who moved away from home, since it’s a theme that hits close to home for both me and the performers. At the time, I was living and working in Queens, and originally wanted to focus on Queens residents in general. However, as I thought more about how to approach the work, I wanted to hone in specifically on emigrant musicians in Queens, since I have never written a piece “about music” before.

I reached out to a lot of different potential contacts, and tried to find people who are from different places, different cultures, and working on different genres of music. I was very fortunate to be able to include Rafael Leal, a percussionist from Colombia who is also a published author and teacher; Chris Yip, an NYPD officer and pianist engaged with community outreach; Duo Yumeno, a cello-shamisen duo based in Queens; Alvaro Rodas, a classical percussionist and music educator who founded an El Sistema-inspired strings program in Corona; Harold Gutierrez, a composer and teacher living in Queens; and Nivedita ShivRaj, a Carnatic musician and teacher also living in Queens.

For the world premiere of The Emigrants at the Queens Museum in December 2018, we also featured Rafael Leal and Duo Yumeno as performers as part of the concert. All of the interviewees are fantastic musicians, and it’s been a truly rewarding experience to work with them on this piece.

*Above: New Morse Code (photo: Tatiana Daubek)*

PAN M 360: The Emigrants is performed by the duo New Morse Code. Can you tell a bit more about them?

GL: New Morse Code is Hannah Collins, cello, and Michael Compitello, percussion. They are a fantastic duo who focus on new music in general, but also on developing new repertoire for cello and percussion through commissioned works. I know Michael from my time at the Peabody Conservatory, and was very excited for the opportunity to get to work with him and Hannah on The Emigrants.

Working with New Morse Code has been one of the highlights of my career as a composer thus far; to work with professional performers who not only perform on such a high level, but who also care a great deal about how to connect their audiences with new music, has been especially rewarding. For example, supporters of their Kickstarter project “New Morse Connections” not only helped to create The Emigrants, but also the opera project *dwb*(driving while black) with soprano Roberta Gumbel and composer Susna Kander, and the consortium-led commission of Catharsis by David Crowell.

PAN M 360: Yourself, as well as Hannah and Michael of New Morse Code, and several of your interview subjects, are educators, or involved in pedagogical projects. Do you think this involvement in teaching and learning informed the creation of The Emigrants?

GL: I think our role as teachers, and in particular with higher education in both the U.S. and Hong Kong, absolutely informed our work with The Emigrants. Our experiences very much resonate with most of the interviewees who support their performance careers through teaching. In particular, the second movement of the work, titled Études, features interview excerpts related to teaching and learning, and how both are integral to the musicians’ own growth as performers and teachers.

PAN M 360: What are the plans for The Emigrants, and as well, what can you tell about your project Haptic, with Michael of New Morse Code?

GL: We’ve just released The Emigrants as an EP on all streaming platforms and Bandcamp, and will continue to publicize the piece so that hopefully other performers would be interested in performing it as well – once we can get back to live performances in the near future! For Haptic, this is a new percussion duo that I first developed with Cisum Percussion in 2019, and subsequently worked with Michael Compitello on a revision and a mockup recording. I’m trying something new with the piece’s development; I made the score and recording available on my website and I’m looking for “beta testers” who might be interested in trying out the new piece and giving me feedback. I launched this effort earlier last week, so we’ll see where it goes!

Photo: Yuji Moriwaki

Minyo Crusaders and Frente Cumbiero are two groups “that come from very similar places,” says the latter’s band leader and bassist, Mario Galeano.

“Our focus is on music, not on commercial gimmicks. We are record collectors, and have an interest in digging into our roots, into traditional music. These are all things we share. Also, we have a common heritage, our ancestors crossed the Bering Strait tens of thousands of years ago and populated the whole continent. That is part of our native heritage. It’s like meeting our long-lost cousins.”

Guitarist Katsumi Tanaka, who founded Minyo Crusaders along with singer Fredy Tsukamoto in 2012, was seeking to hybridize, revitalize, and liberate minyo, the rich tradition of Japanese working-class folk music.

“One of the factors we thought was necessary to bring minyo back to life with a new approach,” Tanaka says, “was to not lose its fundamental vitality. Minyo was originally the music of ordinary people, but over its long history it has gained prestige, and been taken into the fields of art and traditional performing arts, and away from the people, because it has been treated too reverentially.”

The cumbia connection was already established for Minyo Crusaders with “Kushimoto Bushi”, from their 2017 album Echoes of Japan. Other songs on the record drew on boogaloo, reggae, Ethiopian jazz, and more, and the international re-release on the U.K. label Mais Um caught a lot ears worldwide.

“I think cumbia continues to maintain the vitality that minyo once had in the past,” says Tanaka. “They haven’t forgotten that it’s people’s music. That’s what minyo originally had. Different countries do not make a big difference when people try to have fun. It’s a simple and powerful feeling shared around the world. And when I replaced the shamisen phrase in ‘Kushimoto Bushi’ with a guitar, it had the same feel as cumbia. I immediately heard the guiro rhythm.”

*Above: Minyo Cumbiero rehearsal (photo: Yuji Moriwaki)*

The two band’s time together was a mere two days of activity, but it’s a time neither will soon forget.

“We are always learning, in each interaction with musicians,” says Galeano. “In this case, I have to say we reinforced the concept of how much of a difference it makes when the vibe is in the right place. When people are happy, and faced with the challenge of communicating, the most beautiful things will happen. If in collaboration with someone else, you want your concept to prevail, it’s going to be tough. There is very little space for egos, you need to flow with the group.”

“Through music, I was able to meet many people in Bogotá,” says Tanaka. “Mario and Frente Cumbiero, their community of friends, welcomed us with the best team spirit. Everyone was serious, emotional, and creative. I think that it’s an ideal example of taking full advantage of local characteristics, and working independently.”

Easier said than done, when over a dozen different musicians are involved.

“It was especially tricky from a technical point of view,” Galeano recalls, “but our engineer Dani Michel did a great job. We basically divided the chores between instrumental groups – the horns, the percussion, the harmonic base, the singers. We already had made arrangements prior to our encounter, so it was basically, get in the studio and start playing. After maybe an hour or so of developing the idea, we were confident, so we learned the parts and were ready to record the next day.”

The four-song EP’s first teaser track was a Colombian contribution, which of course earned an injection of Japanese flavour.

“It’s a classic originally recorded by Pero Laza y sus Pelayeros,” Galeano explains, “a cult band from the ’60s who put out some very nice cumbias that are classics today. The original name is ‘Cumbia del Monte’, so it just made total sense to extend the title to ‘Cumbia del Monte Fuji’.”

The most energetic, accelerated number on the EP is “Tora Joe”, in fact a festival song from centuries ago.

“The history of ‘Tora Joe’ is very deep,” says Tanaka, “and there are various theories about it, from the origin of the song to its content. It’s said to be the oldest festival dance song in Japan. Its original title is ‘Na-nya-do-yala’ – ‘nanyadoyala, nanyad nasalete, nanyadoyala’, repeated in the song, doesn’t make sense in modern Japanese. They’re like the words of a spell or incantation.

“Some believe that local dialects transformed it. The lyrics encourage people who are struggling to make ends meet by saying, ‘let’s do anything we can!’, and express the misery of the common people with, ‘I don’t know what is happening in the world.’ There are certain theories that the song is about a woman seducing a man by saying, ‘do as you please’. There is even a theory that it’s a song about Jehovah and David, in Hebrew. In the northern part of Japan, where this festive dance song became popular, in some areas they dance around a cross, which they call ‘the tomb of Christ’. It’s a very mysterious song.

“When you look at the lyrics, they use phrases like ‘Tono-sama (lord)’, ‘the most beautiful woman in town’, ‘celebratory food’, and ‘bright umbrella” – standard phrases often used in Japanese festival songs, which are stories about celebrities, famous incidents, ordinary people’s longings, and wealth, told by ordinary people. It’s said that people of various occupations, who didn’t normally interact, could participate in the nighttime festivals together. The lyrics would create a trigger, an opportunity for those people to be in the same place and release their everyday worries. Therefore, the lyrics have changed depending on the situation, and the wordplay has changed depending on the times. In minyo, there are many songs whose lyrics have been accumulated and passed down to the 100th version.”

“Opekepe”, meanwhile, is in fact a prototypical rap song. The Minyo Cumbiero version goes even further with it, deep into a dub style.

“The song isn’t exactly minyo,” says Tanaka. “It was written in the late 1800s for comedian Otojiro Kawakami to sing on stage. He used the stage name Jiyudoshi, meaning Freedom Kid, as a pseudonym for his anarchic, politically charged art. And at a time when repression was severe, he sang what he wanted to say in the lyrics of ‘Oppekepe’. He was put in jail dozens of times.

“The song has no melody, the rhythm and tempo of the narrative are important, and the lyrics are said to have been improvised and altered, a form similar to rap. Like ‘nanyadoyala’ in ‘Tora Joe’, ‘opekepe’ is also unintelligible, a strange word, like an incantation. Some say it means ‘throw it away’ or ‘let go’.”

The Minyo Cumbiero project is exemplary of a subtle but convincing increase, in recent years, of mutual cultural curiosity between Asia and Latin America.

“After the Second World War,” says Tanaka, “Japan tried to incorporate cultures from around the world as its economy developed. In the 1950s and ’60s, only certain people could access foreign culture. Even the educated musicians in Japan had no choice but to learn about foreign music by listening to U.S. military radio stations, and the vinyl records they obtained from soldiers. They had an excellent musical education and played Latin music with great dexterity, but with such limited access, every Latin band in Japan had to make ‘Besame Mucho’ part of their repertoire. Latin America was really far away.

“They presented foreign culture as a commodity to the Japanese populace, but I think they forgot to try to introduce Japanese culture outside the country. With the Japanese economy booming, domestic business was probably enough for them.

*Above: Minyo Crusaders in Bogotá (photo: Yuji Moriwaki)*

Tanaka happily observes, however, that times have changed.

“Now, not only certain wealthy people, but also the general public, can instantly exchange cultures and convey their feelings with people abroad on social media. Japan should delve into its own culture and present it to the world. I think that sharing the same feelings and emotions, rather than a one-way information intake, will create a new culture. Frente Cumbiero’s work so far is a great example of this.”

Galeano is enthusiastic about any uptick in interaction between the two continents.

“That would be amazing,” he says, “because we have, for the last centuries, been having to mediate our relations with Asia through Europe, so the more direct connections we can have, the better. There is quite a big underground, invisible, spiritual link between Asia and Latin America, as I say, because of our blood bond. Many melodies sung today by the indigenous Americans are originally from northeast Asia and Mongolia. There is even stronger proof that Chinese ships arrived on the coasts of Peru. The music of Peru and China are two sides of the same coin.”

It seems the same can be said of Colombia and Japan!

PAN M 360 thanks Megumi Furihata for her translation assistance.

*Below: Fredy Tsukamoto and Mario Galeano. (photo: Yuji Moriwaki)*

Photo: Hendrik Kussin; masks: Carol Almeida

PAN M 360: The theme of your new EP is mythical lost continents, and you’re releasing it under a different, or perhaps subsidiary, name, DNGDNGDNG. Musically, the tracks are simpler, more skeletal, than your Dengue work. You’ve been reaching beyond nuevo-latino sounds for a while now, but in this case, it feels like you’ve created an update, with modern technology, of “roots music” from places that never even really existed… or did they?

Dengue Dengue Dengue: Yes, this was exactly the approach. Trying to imagine music that came from a lost place, made with ancient technology. We’re always trying to create and fuse rhythms, this time we really tried to push it further, while also keeping a minimalistic style of composition.

PAN M 360: Each of the lost lands that you refer to deserves a little mention, to educate our readers. We’ll start with “Lemuria”, which is supposedly in the Indian Ocean. This lost land is very important to followers of Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy… one of those weird, artisanal American religions which is kind of a soup of everything, and makes no sense.

DDD: We read a bit of her work but at one point, as you said, it makes no sense. But the names really have nothing to do with it, these names and concepts were proposed by earlier archeologists, historians, and philosophers. Originally, it seems that Lemuria was hypothesized as a land bridge, now sunken, which would explain certain discontinuities in the distribution of species and ecosystems. It was later adopted by occultists and new-age philosophy.

PAN M 360: “Hiperborea” comes from Greek legends of a land far to the north, a cold land of giants and eternal sun. One would think they meant Sweden, but actually, they were talking about Transylvania – in Romania, today – which doesn’t have any damn giants, just lots of vampires.

DDD: Actually, I didn’t see any vampires in Romania, but maybe that’s because Peruvians eat a lot of garlic? Each author who described Hyperborea located it in a different place; some thought it was in between the Transylvanian alps, others in the Artic ocean, and others in the Ural mountains.

PAN M 360: To be serious for a moment, “Atlantida” and “Mu” both refer to places connected to the racist ideas of so many Europeans, that the indigenous peoples of the Americas must have had help from aliens or “the ancient ones” to accomplish the incredible things that they did, pyramids etc. Thoughts on this?

DDD: Just to be clear, we don’t follow these fringe theories blindly, these are concepts that we like to investigate with an open mind, but they are not more than theories. Atlantis was described by Plato originally, in Timaeus and Critias. Maybe these lost continents are an idea connected to ancient, antediluvian civilizations, or more precisely, a global, pre-Younger Dryas, technologically advanced human civilization. A way to represent the pre-cataclysm era. After the disappearance of these lost lands and the massive damage to the rest, humans founded different civilizations that rose from the survivors of that cataclysm. The buildings and monuments they found in ruins got repurposed for their own religious practices. Maybe that explains some of the advanced engineering techniques that were used in the making of some artifacts and monuments in ancient times. We are not saying that everything was built by other people, but rather the same people – back in time.

*Dengue Dengue Dengue covers by Davide ‘Dartworks’ Mancini and Tania Brun*

PAN M 360: Your releases and merchandise have featured illustrations by Davide ‘Dartworks’ Mancini, whose drawings seem like a cross between legendary metal artist Pushead and psychedelic “visionary” art – beauty and horror at the same time! Can you tell us a bit about working with him?

DDD: Actually, the album Zenit & Nadir, released last year, is the only project on which we had the pleasure of working with Davide. We were on tour in 2018, and in Davide’s hometown in Italy, we played at a very nice festival where he was also participating, showcasing his artwork. We immediately approached him and bought a few of his drawings and asked for his email contact. A few weeks later, we contacted him and started working on a concept for the album. We love his stuff and we are definitely gonna keep working with him on future projects.

Another amazing artist, who designed our first two albums and a few EPs, is Peruvian artist Tania Brun – you should definitely go check our her work.

PAN M 360: Just before Continentes Perdidos, you put out the three Humos EPs, as a kind of retrospective of your first 10 years. I imagine that digging into your archives for this, especially the early material, was like opening a box of old love letters – or maybe visiting old crime scenes. What was that process like?

DDD: To be honest, it was a very quick and logical process for us. We still play all these tracks in our sets, maybe some more than others, but they are definitely always in our digital record bag. All these tracks, for some reason or other, didn’t fit into the albums or EPs we were working at the moment, so we never found a proper home for them, but they were still really meaningful for us – they define certain periods of the project and, were really easy to identify.

*Above: Jahel Guerra & Daniela Carvalho; masks: Twee Muizen*

Photo: Geneviève Bellemare

For Jordan Officer, the COVID-19 pandemic was an opportunity to realize the extent of the damage caused by the dramatic decline in revenue from physical and digital recordings.

Sales no longer mean much, streaming has become the norm for good, but it still needs to be made economically viable and sustainable for the musicians, creators, and performers who fill the platforms every day. For the moment, streaming revenues are negligible for artists, with only a small minority of them benefiting from it.

“Has my status as a musician declined with streaming? Yes, that’s for sure. Back when you were releasing an album and you could sell thousands of albums, you could plan your life based on one income from performing and one from recording. That doesn’t exist anymore. My fellow musicians and I are all used to that.

“Gradually, we saw the recording as a tool to make ourselves known. But since the COVID-19 crisis, we’ve realized that it doesn’t make sense to accept the disappearance of income from recording. Right now, we can record albums while waiting for shows to resume… and that could certainly be more profitable.”

Make Streaming Sustainable is the headline of a petition launched by Officer, which collected more than 6,000 signatures before being presented to the House of Commons in Ottawa. Already, Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Canadian Heritage, has shown his sensitivity to the demands of the signatory musicians, who have been mobilized by several Facebook posts by Officer on the issue of streaming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqdtgbKtMWc

How to explain this situation to the Canadian Heritage department?

“I had a first connection with Steven Guilbeault when he was president of Équiterre, because our daughters were enrolled in the same class in elementary school. In addition, my sister-in-law is a lawyer and knows him well. We had virtual meetings with him and his team, we also participated together in a panel discussion on Pénélope McQuade’s show. I found it really interesting that the Minister of Canadian Heritage was listening. I was then able to discuss this with a lot of people, and I am still in conversation with some very committed musicians on this issue. I am thinking in particular of David Bussières, Ariane Moffatt and Laurence Lafond-Beaulne (Milk & Bones).”

Any short-term results?

“It gave visibility to the issue, but not much happened,” says Officer. “Since the pandemic, we’ve been in crisis-management mode a lot to help musicians. As far as streaming is concerned, it’s a longer-term project, we’ll have to change laws, but we shouldn’t wait until later to start doing it. This subject must remain in the news.”

Awareness of this issue is recent for many artists, although others have been reporting on it for years. So why is a Jordan Officer lighting up in 2020 rather than 2010?

“For everyone,” he answers, “the challenges of digital technology are difficult to grasp, it’s still a new reality that remains abstract. For my part, I took the time to understand the streaming issue in order to offer a credible, honest and thoughtful voice. As I researched the issue, I realized that if I brought my voice to the debate, it could help.”

Thus, Jordan Officer has launched a 6,000-name petition that is gathering new members every day, to become one of the leading musicians in this vast issue:

“We’ve tabled the petition in the House of Commons, we’re waiting for the official response… In the meantime, we’ve seen other emergencies, that of accompanying musicians and technicians, not all of whom are eligible for assistance programs. I, for one, am fortunate enough to be able to apply for grants and propose projects. Generally speaking, it’s difficult, whether at the provincial or federal level. Elected officials are doing their best, I think, but…so much is happening at the same time.”

We know that the Canadian government is relying on a much-awaited OECD report on the issue of streaming. Ottawa could then clarify its position and affirm it on the international scene.

“In Europe,” Officer recalls, “there are laws in place to collect royalties on smartphones, computer hard drives, and anything else used for permanent or temporary storage. Other countries have started to find solutions to the issue of GAFA taxation but… every country is afraid to act first, fearing retaliation from the US government.

“Already, however, the Justin Trudeau government could correct the Harper government’s mistakes, among others, on the private copying regime – which provides for levies collected on the purchase of blank media, CDs or cassettes, which are then redistributed to rights holders. However, this regime has not been updated for digital equipment manufacturers. The regime should normally be adapted to new technology media that allow information to be stored or streamed. Tens of millions of dollars could then be paid to artists.”

So this is a very complex problem overall, still far from being solved. Officer is well aware of this.

“I don’t know if there’s an easy solution to submit. For example, streaming sites don’t make a lot of profit, contrary to popular belief, but it’s still very profitable for other players in the industry, including Internet Service Providers who sell their services at high prices. So we are selling these Internet accesses for culture, but we avoid the responsibility of paying the artists. It seems to me that when these companies have profit margins of around 50%, we are entitled to demand royalties. Even in the context of the pandemic, we don’t always see how the money from new government support is getting to the artists. We want more transparency.”

Collective rights societies (SOCAN, etc.), artists’ unions (UDA, Musicians’ Guild, etc.) and other organizations such as Regroupement des artisans de la musique (RAM) are multiplying the number of performances to win their case.

Jordan Officer sits on the Board of Directors of Artisti, a Quebec collective management society representing performing artists. However, on the issue of streaming music, he is more or less going it alone, speaking on his own behalf and leading the petition file tabled in the House of Commons.

“I think the RAM is doing a very good job on this issue, but I’m not directly involved with this organization or any other organizations speaking out on this issue. Will I? At the moment, I feel that I have more impact and credibility by speaking out as an individual, as myself. I may be wrong, but that is my impression at the moment. But I certainly want to collaborate and contribute to moving this important issue forward.”

Photo: Geneviève Bellemare

Normally based in Montreal, Jordan Officer was reached in Tadoussac, where he was completing the construction of a cottage with his family.

“ I love this place! We’ve been here since the quarantine in mid-March. The albums were recorded in February, just before all this…”

At the beginning, says the musician, the idea for the three albums came from questions others had about him. How should we label him? Jazz? Blues? Country?

“It annoys me a bit because these three styles are the pillars of mine. For a long time, I’ve had this desire to mix these influences, and develop a language of my own. But I’ve also often felt that I was depriving myself of going deeply and completely into the repertoire of each. By doing so, it would also be a way of explaining and clearly expressing these three paths within me.”

Officer even sees it as a statement.

“If I go all the way through those three genres, I can get away with it and then do what I want, and not have to explain myself. I want to be prolific, I want to do collaborations, I want to make instrumental albums, I want to express who I am as a musician. Making these three albums also means opening the door to several different projects.”

This justifies in particular the titles of the releases: Blues Vol.1, Country Vol. 1, and Jazz Vol. 1

Drummer Alain Bergé (Jean Leloup, Youssou N’Dour, etc.) and keyboardist François Lafontaine (Karkwa, Marie-Pierre Arthur, Klaus, etc.) take part in the blues and country recordings.

“I’ve been playing with Alain for five or six years, we have a very strong connection as friends and musicians. He’s a force of nature on the drums. It’s like John Bonham playing Bob Wills! Alain suggested I work with François Lafontaine when I performed at the Montreal International Jazz Festival last year. I knew François, I knew he made great music, but I wouldn’t have spontaneously thought of him for my music and… it was an incredible thing, that night. I was surprised and charmed by him in our blues and soul interpretations, but I was also impressed by his organ playing in the country style, a bit cheesy, a bit old-fashioned. It was magical! We wanted to work together again, and I wanted to integrate him into this project. »

Local Americana veterans were also invited to this celebration of excellent American music:

“Stephen Barry plays bass on the blues album because he is a friend and mentor. He’s my father’s age, 73. He has been very important to my career. Michael Jerome Brown also plays the harmonica. He was Susie Ariloi’s second guitarist for a while. We know him as a guitarist, but he also plays the harmonica so well! He releases solo albums and tours with bluesman Eric Bibb, for whom he’s the main accompanist. I met him at the time at the G Sharp, now Barfly.”

This is an opportunity to recall Officer’s immersion in this fascinating world where playing and composing are part of an almost musicological approach.

“Michael Jerome Brown and I both have this tendency. I remember his apartment before it burned down in the late ’90s, it was a museum. Michael had thousands of LPs. He used to make me tapes, and I’ve got suitcases full of them. He fed me so much blues, he’s an incredible resource! I was lucky enough to know a few people like Michael. I also think of Bob Fuller from Hillbilly Nights at the Wheel Club. I used to go there every Monday with Stephen Barry. We would sing and play there. Like Michael, Bob has mountains of vinyl records. His girlfriend was forced to store some in her backyard under a tarp (laughs)! Today, I understand my mentors for having accompanied me in my discoveries, because it’s very exciting to be able to transmit this passion and this musical richness to younger people, which is what I’m doing now.”

For the jazz part of the triptych, Jordan Officer chose to express himself with a trio.

“Sage Reynolds, who’s been playing with me for several years, could have been the bassist for the jazz project because he’s a great musician. But this project was also a great excuse to record with others than my regular band. That’s why I chose Morgan Moore on bass, an artist who really inspires me. I love everything about him. Like drummer Rich Irwin, with whom I’ve always had a great connection, we have a mutual appreciation. It was a perfect opportunity for this collaboration. As for pianist Torey Butler, it was such a great fit! There are some incredible jazz musicians in Montreal, it’s hard to choose!”

The songs and pieces on the programme are mostly classics composed in the previous century. Old music? Officer confirms, and adds nuance.

“The repertoire of these three albums is to tell my story through these versions. I wanted it to be a kind of musical autobiography. Also, a tribute to all the musicians and composers who have been part of my career. I’ve been playing several tunes from these three albums for a very long time, and they come from very special moments in my career and my life. Notably ‘Pennies From Heaven’ and ‘Honeysuckle Rose’, which I did with Susie Arioli during those years when her band was my main activity. In blues, I cover ‘My Baby’s Gone And Left Me’, which I’ve been singing for 25 years. I also play the music of Clarence White, a bluegrass guitarist who joined the Byrds and died very young in a car accident. I also pay tribute to violinist Harry Choates, a Cajun musician who was also very Western swing in his improvisations. His version of ‘Jole Blon’, often referred to as the Cajun national anthem, is great!”

Officer is totally embracing his old-school side. Nevertheless…

“I’m not trying to recreate music from another era. I still want to be me in 2020, and express myself as I am, like nobody else. I listen to music that has nothing to do with my music but that has influenced me in another way, in the arrangements, in the approach, in the space. That’s part of my playing. I try to be myself when I improvise in blues, country, or jazz. On these three recordings, I played with the same guitar, the same amp, no effects, just to show that it’s really me all the way through. I don’t feel like I’m making a switch from one style to another, jumping from one universe to another, it’s all connected. For me, it’s a source of pride. I don’t imitate anyone, I’ve always been attracted by subtlety and the use of space, emotion, nuances and also extravagance, virtuosity, a certain aggressiveness. These qualities can be felt in my role models, such as Ti-Jean Carignan, Charlie Christian, or Django Reinhardt.”

It must be deduced that Officer is not so much a traditionalist as a “classical” artist of American popular music, the foundations of which are perfectly familiar to him.

“When you listen to contemporary jazz or country music, they can be considered very separate. Yet these styles were invented side by side, there were a lot of mutual influences at the beginning. That’s why I’ve always had a hard time listening to artists who have gone through all three styles. You listen to 78 rpm records and you discover certain songs which you don’t know whether they’re country or jazz or blues before the middle of the performance. Let’s take the example of Bob Wills, whose song ‘Playboy Chimes’ I play on the country album – his Western swing was so jazz! That connects to what I’ve become.”

The second half of our interview with Jordan Officer appears on Saturday (July 25th)

Photo: Milos Jacimovic

Moving from Hamilton, Ontario to New York in 2017, Lanza had to come back from her European tour at the start of the outbreak, but was unable to return to her home. So it was in the San Francisco area, where she was in quarantine with her lover, that PAN M 360 reached her.

PAN M 360: Did your new life in New York – you’d always lived in Hamilton – have any repercussions on your music or on yourself?

Jessy Lanza: It affected my life in really good ways, but it was tougher than I’d thought. I didn’t handle it very well and found that I was homesick, and felt really isolated and disconnected. So a lot of the songs for the record were written while I was feeling that way. But at the same time, I started doing this residency at The Lot Radio in Brooklyn, which is a really great radio station in a shipping container. After I started doing this monthly show there, I started meeting people, inviting some artists to the show and that opened up a whole world of producers and DJs that I always admired but never met. So it was a huge turning point for me because I felt much more connected and that felt really nice.

PAN M 360: On this album, like your previous ones, you refer to difficult feelings and anger – can you tell us more about that?

JL: It’s not very apparent because the songs are mostly joyful, with catchy hooks and bouncy basslines. But I think it’s a tension that runs through a lot of my music. I’m really always writing to try to drag myself out of this pit of feeling depressed. It’s so easy for me to get pissed off and be sad (laughs). But making music is what helps me get out of those feelings. So I always try to make music that is the opposite of how I feel. I think with always that in mind, that’s how I approach the songs.

PAN M 360: Is the whole album informed by that kind of mood?

JL: Yes. I think the problem for me is that I feel really angry about a lot of things a lot of the time, but I don’t want to be an angry person (laughs). So I think that’s why I’m always working through that opposition in the songs. Because I want to work my way out of feeling that way. So it’s all over the album, but it’s definitely not apparent.

PAN M 360: You’ve been collaborating with Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys) since your very first record, Pull My Hair Back (2014). How do you explain this longtime complicity, what brought you together?

JL: Jeremy is my favourite person to work with. He did all three albums with me. But this time it was a bit different because we were not living in Hamilton together. So I drove back and forth from Hamilton to New York quite a few times over the last two years for this album. Jeremy doesn’t get precious about ideas, he’s very curious and loves experimenting with equipment, and so do I. And so we’re really getting into the fun aspect of doing a lot of takes, editing stuff. I don’t know what he likes about me, though (laughs). I think we both love songwriting, despite the genre. It could be a Loggins & Messina song, or a new Don Toliver number, or some new R&B stuff. What we both have in common is that we really like hooks and pop music, whatever genre it’s been put into.

PAN M 360: You’ve often admitted that you have doubts about your vocal abilities, that you’d like to have that big voice that some R&B and soul singers have. Is that why you prefer to pass your voice, however delicate and pleasant, through a whole range of effects?

JL: I think it comes down to a personality thing. I’m a bit of a spaz. I have trouble getting to the point. It’s in my nature. Even if something in a song is fine, I just cannot resist the temptation to fuck around with it (laughs). And also I have a lot of fun with effects. It’s fun to experiment with a new pedal that I got or a new bunch of plugins that I wanna use. But yes, I do have trouble leaving things alone. Maybe it’s because I’m impatient? That’s the best way I can explain it (laughs).

PAN M 360: Plans for the near future? Even though it’s hard to have plans in these strange times…

JL: I have a bunch of remixes I did for a few friends, it should be coming out in the next few months. There will be some remixes for the new album that should also come out in the next few months. Since I’m not going on tour, I might as well work on some new music, so I might put something new out, maybe pretty soon, because there is not much else to do!

Tragic, funny, disturbing, strange and sometimes even moving, the ineffable performer Bernardino Femminielli leaves no one indifferent. Although he left to try his luck in Paris in 2019, it was in Vancouver that we located the colourful character, in quarantine with his wife, muse and collaborator Thea and their dog Poulet. Back in Canada for an indefinite period, the Montreal artist spoke at length about the reasons for his move to Paris, his worries and questions, and his mini-album L’Exil, four experimental French songs that serve as a kind of prelude to two other albums to be released in the coming months.

PAN M 360: You recently returned to Canada – what was your experience of the COVID crisis in Paris?

Bernardino Femminielli: We were in Paris during the whole lockdown, without ever leaving the city. I found it really intense, but we lived it well because we stayed productive. We were able to finish a lot of the stuff for the album, edit videos… It gave us a break from the Parisian drive, and a lot of other things too. It gave us a break from the Parisian drive, and a break from the rest of the world as well! We’re in Vancouver for a while, but I don’t know for how long. The idea is to go back to Paris, but our plans are still a bit vague. We’re keeping one foot here and one foot there.

PAN M 360: Tell us a little bit about L’Exil. Although it’s a prologue to two other albums that will follow, it’s not quite one itself. And is it a mini-album or an EP? Because, although there are only four songs, it’s still 40 minutes long!

BF: Let’s say it’s a mini-LP rather than an EP. It’s a pre-conclusion to a trilogy and not a prologue, because the two other albums, which haven’t been released yet, were recorded before L’Exil. I was looking for what to do with these two albums, and it wasn’t easy with this transition between Montreal and Paris. I wanted to find the right angle, the right way to present these two albums. So L’Exil became both a gateway and a conclusion to the whole process. It’s all based on new sessions of Plaisirs américains, on which I’ve taken a different tone and lengthened. I gave myself more time to tell a story, in a more personal way. I think the four tracks on L’Exil corresponded well to what I was looking for, in terms of emotion. Something dense and visceral, but also something with good sound quality, songs that the listener would have no trouble getting into.

Despite the experimental or abstract side of these songs, there’s something seductive and bewitching about them. It’s a lot less glamorous than Plaisirs américains. The album has a very political and personal tone. It’s practically the diary of someone who’s relearning to live on a daily basis, and who wants to deprogram himself for having suffered the misfortune of a corrupt system. The album takes stock of my past life and the despair I was experiencing in order to achieve artistic success. I talk about success but I’m aware that success is not something palpable and immediate. I learned to look at success as a struggle to become a better person, one who understands his abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. I fought to get my lucidity back, and I hope I will keep it.

PAN M 360: This exile from Montreal to Paris is the basis of this album – it was not an easy start. You had problems with the American legal system, your adventure in the restaurant business (Bethlehem XXX/Femme Fontaine) ended badly, and maybe you felt misunderstood as an artist here?

BF: This album is like a synthesis of many traumas. It’s the story of an entertainer who’s starting to lose his mind because his restaurant is sinking, he’s being screwed by everyone. He’s naive, he lacks experience, but he’s cunning. Except he’s too generous and people take advantage of him. His livelihood is doing his one-man shows, performing, touring, which allows him to exorcise his demons. I named this character Johnny. He’s a bit of a clown, a tragi-comic character. So, this Johnny, it’s a way of dividing myself in two and being able to express my life from another angle. It can also be a fragmented projection of myself and my problems. So, his life goes adrift and at one point he decides to run away with his wife. This exile is also a mental exile.

But the important thing behind all that is to learn to make peace with yourself, with your demons, with your frustrations with the music world and the capitalist world. Bethlehem XXX was originally an anti-restaurant. It was a place of experimentation where one could freely invest oneself in the form and thought of performance. Then big financial problems killed the Beth, but not the spirit, whereas for La Femme Fontaine, it was gradually the spirit that was poisoned by business and pretension. Despite the efforts you want to put into it, to have a restaurant or a business in Montreal is to live amid organized corruption, theft, mediocrity, sabotage, and indifference. A lot of big talkers, small doers… I believed in community, but individualism always takes over. It was time for me to take a break from all that. As I’ve always loved Paris, as I’ve always been welcomed there, and people there seem more receptive to my work, that’s where I chose to settle down. It’s also more convenient for me to travel around Europe and present my shows, make contacts, create opportunities. What I want is to be able to live from my art as I see fit, without having to make compromises, and in Montreal, that was impossible. Anyway, I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t do that!

PAN M 360: What is the borderline between derision and sincerity in your work?

BF: “The ideal is to have a poetic relationship to life, to everyday life, and not to need a stage to practice it.” I find this quote from actor Denis Lavant very inspiring. I play with grotesque stereotypes – the pathetic, oppressive macho man and the debased, giggling, intoxicated gigolo dancer. The audience is invited to laugh at these characters and ultimately condemn what they represent. I try to explore the character from the outside to the inside. I like to bring the style of the double act in my performance: the grotesque contrasts with the sympathetic character, where both make political and social statements to the audience and one shows the other, even though I’m alone on stage. I try with all my strength to always be as convincing as possible. I think that what people feel is something honest and frank.

For the fourth time since 2011, the year of her arrival on the international scene while working in the New York studio of Sufjan Stevens, who had recruited her for his label Asthmatic Kitty after the release of her EPs Sanguine (2006) and Florine (2009), Julianna Barwick is releasing a new album, Healing Is a Miracle, which follows Will (2016), Nepenthe (2013) and The Magic Place (2011).

PAN M 360: During the last four years, after Will’s release and before Healing Is a Miracle, you’ve been working on different projects. Tell us about the music you composed for dance.

JULIANNA BARWICK: I had just moved to Los Angeles in 2017, after living in New York for 16 years. I was then asked to make music for the Ballet Collective, kind of a side project by dancer and choreographer Troy Schumacher of New York City Ballet. He wanted to have me on stage performing with the dancers, and I’ve never done that. I had worked with dancers before, but I had never created original music, in this case a 35-minute piece. At first, I told Troy that I would love to do the music but there was no way I would play it live.

The dance company just scared me too much, because all of the ballet dancers were in the New York City Ballet, I was way too intimidated. But they asked me to try rehearsing with the dancers. I’d been encouraged to try, my friends told me that would be a memorable experience, and I tried it and we ended up giving three performances in New York. That was an incredible experience! It was kind of nice for me. It was a real challenge for me to move to Los Angeles, but I was very happy to be often in New York in 2017.

PAN M 360 : In 2018, still in New York, you worked with artificial intelligence to carry out a very special project: music constantly renewed by ambient sounds, captured in real time. Tell us about it.

JB: I composed music for the Sister City Hotel, with the Ace Hotel and Microsoft teams. On the top of this hotel, there was a camera reading information from the sky. Those images and sounds – birds, airplanes, or whatever – were filtered through a Microsoft artificial intelligence program. This program triggered the sounds that I had made previously and generated an ever-evolving score, nourished by its environment. Then we took some inserts from that and we created a recording of it, and then we released, in 2019, an EP called Circumstance Synthesis.

PAN M 360 : You grew up in Louisiana before moving to New York to study and live for 16 years – why are you now in Los Angeles?

JB: For so many reasons. First, I love the weather. Also there are a lot of composers and musicians out here. I have a little house here and it’s so quiet – I can record without sound irritants. In Brooklyn, there was always noise from outside, but I miss walking around the city. I need to walk… it is just the magic of New York. But L.A. is more quiet, the nature here is insane… forest, mountain, ocean, redwoods, desert… so much inspiration around here.

PAN M 360 : Last year, you started making music again for yourself, but also with artists who are friends. Let’s start with Jónsi de Sigur Rós, tell us about this collaboration in the context of your new album, for the song “In Light”.

JB: I did record in Iceland in 2012. Jónsi and I became friends, then I toured with Sigur Rós. I was, and I still am, a huge fan of Sigur Rós and his solo work. The best voice ever! Jónsi lives in L.A. now, I asked him if he wanted to sing on my record, so he agreed. I sent him a music demo, and then he told me that I would have to write lyrics. Once again, I’ve never really done that. So I said okay… anything Jónsi asks me to do, I answer yes. I sent him back this song and he recorded his part with his own production. It came out as an entirely new, wonderful collaboration. But it made me very nervous and it took me out of my comfort zone. You know, I like one take, do kind of improvisation and piece the parts together, I don’t spend too much time on it. So it was a huge learning experience for me, I’m so proud of the song that we made together.

PAN M 360: You have also worked with Nosaj Thing, an excellent producer, DJ, and composer of electronic music and experimental hip hop, based in Los Angeles. He’s released some very interesting albums on the Innovative Leisure and Alpha Pup labels. How did you connect?

JB: He and I had been in touch when I was in New York. We exchanged emails and infos, and I finally met up with him in L.A. Initially, I imagined working with him on this entire record. But he was super busy – he has his own label, he also DJs, he works with so many people, on and on and on, so it was very difficult to work with him a lot because of his schedule. Anyway, I sent him some music, same kind of deal with Jónsi. I brought him the stuff and he added some beats on it, and I put some keyboards over it in the studio. So that was a similar process, but this time I didn’t have to write lyrics.

PAN M 360: Originally from Asheville, a small town in North Carolina that’s become an important hub for neo-folk and neo-folk-rock, harpist Mary Lattimore has released five albums since 2013. She’s worked with Thurston Moore, Jeff Zeigler, Kurt Vile, and Steve Gunn, among others… and most recently, with you.

JB: Yes. Mary and I are very close friends, we both live in Los Angeles and we toured a lot together. I also did a remix of her record, a couple years ago. She is so amazing, I always wanted her playing on my records. I made that song “Oh Memory”, then she came over to my home studio, we did around ten takes of her playing along with that song. She’s classically trained, she did amazing things for this song. That’s how that happened.

PAN M 360: Even if one observes a tangible evolution in your music, don’t the original basics remain the same?

JB: Yes, we are in the same country. Some songs on the last album are of the same type as those of my debut. But on the other hand, Healing Is a Miracle has totally different songs. For example, what I did with Jónsi is very structured, almost pop, close to the song form. So I feel like it’s a sort of mixed bag.

PAN M 360 : To fully understand Healing Is a Miracle, one needs to know the basics of your work, so we have to go back to your professional beginnings. Tell us about it.

JB: Okay. In 2005, I started recording, after tinkering around with electronics, electric guitar, loop pedal, and my voice. I started feeding those loops and recorded it on my four-tracks recorder. I made my first master, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just worked with what I had, and I released my first EP in 2006. Then I got a computer and I bought Garage Band software. I taught myself and went to SoHo for free Apple Store Garage Band workshops. I released a second EP, and after that, I recorded on Asthmatic Kitty.

Instead of doing a bedroom recording as I did before, I used Sufjan Stevens studio while he was on tour. There was a piano, a drum set, other instruments… that was The Magic Place! And next thing I knew after this, Alex Somers sent me an email to record my next album with him in Iceland. So I had to get out of my comfort zone, and recorded with guests and other people watching me. Alex had an amazing home studio and we also went to the studio where Sigur Rós recorded. That was a huge 180 for me. So every record has been a step for me, in one way or another. That’s been my journey.