Interviews

Photo: Mariana Reyes

Meridian Brothers is the project that Colombian multi-instrumentalist Eblis Álvarez started in 1998, and which serves as a kind of musical laboratory to explore all kinds of Colombian and Latin American sounds, with a special affection for cumbia and salsa. Álvarez, who composes lyrics and music and generally records all the instruments found on the Meridian Brothers’ albums, is however accompanied on stage by other musicians. Like the eight previous albums, the latest from Meridian Brothers distills an experimental cumbia spiced up with tropicalism, salsa, chicha, and vallenato, forming a playful, avant-garde and often completely wacky mix to which are added elements of rock, pop, new wave, and electro. 

For Cumbia Siglo XXI, Meridian Brothers’ ninth album, Álvarez has taken a more electronic turn. After the resolutely acoustic ¿Dónde estás María? released in 2017, the mad scientist of cumbia, who’s active in Ondatrópica, Frente Cumbiero, and Los Pirañas, among others, has tried a new experiement, taking Fernando Rosales and Ramiro Beltran’s group Cumbia Siglo XX, well known in the 1980s for its futuristic vision of cumbia, as a reference, along with other groups such as Grupo Folclórico and 2000 Voltios, for example. Taking the work of Rosales and Beltran as a source of inspiration, Álvarez has somehow adapted it to the 21st century, its instruments and tools. Thus, several drum machines, guitars, synths and software were used in the creation of this new album by Meridian Brothers, on which are found various urban beats, synth grooves, and glitches mixed with all sorts of swear words and Colombian slang.

Stuck at home in his neighbourhood in Bogotá due to severe confinement, the versatile Eblis Alvarez was kind enough to deconstruct all this and explain his singular approach to us. 

Photo: Mariana Reyes

PAN M 360: Eblis, can you elaborate on the link between this new Meridian Brothers album and the group Cumbia Siglo XX?

Eblis Álvarez: When I started thinking about the style I wanted to give to this new album, I thought about this funky approach to tambor music that was mostly found in the area of Baranquilla, and on the Felito and Machuca labels, between the late ’70s and the mid-’80s. It was a trend where they mixed more traditional music such as bujerengue, puya, cumbia, fandango, and drums associated with traditional music, with funky bass and disco grooves. So I wanted to try that same kind of approach, but in the 21st century. So I simply called this record Cumbia Siglo XXI. But it’s not a 21st century cumbia record as we know it today, it’s a mix of different things.

PAN M 360: What’s the difference between this new album and the previous ¿Dónde estás María?

EA: Well, ¿Dónde estás María?, I would call that global song. Let me explain – it’s not a term you find in music books, it’s just a term I made up. For me, the best representation of global song would be the Beatles, a British band that has become known all over the world. So this rock, pop, folk sound with strings, brass and all kinds of other instruments, you can find it in Asia, in Brazil, in Colombia, with some traditional or typical elements from these different parts of the world, but with the same kind of style and structure as a Beatles song, for example. So I followed this approach and I applied it to the cumbia, but in a more acoustic way with a lot of strings, especially the cello, since I’ve been playing it for 20 years. So that’s what I’ve been working on for ¿Dónde estás María? As far as Cumbia Siglo XXI is concerned, I’ve been more into the spheres of the modern cumbia that you hear everywhere, made with synths and computers and mixed with electronic music. So by staying in the spheres of modern cumbia, the way it’s approached today, I tried to do something creative by crossing with this more typical cumbia approach, like bands like Cumbia Siglo XX were doing.

PAN M 360: I’m not an expert on Colombian vernacular, but I hear you using a lot of swear words and slang on Cumbia Siglo XXI.

EA: It’s another ingredient I wanted to add to the mixture, something censored. Because all the swear words are censored by myself on the record. You can guess them, but I replaced them with beeps or blips that blend well with the music. You can hear that on eight of the ten songs on the album. That’s another one of the rules I set myself for the album.

PAN M 360 : There are several styles of cumbia, which do you prefer?

EA: There are three main branches of cumbia. First, international cumbia, which has spread to Mexico, Argentina, and Peru. Each of these countries has developed its own cumbia, depending on the different influences that have been integrated into it. Then there is the global cumbia, which is more modern, very electronic, and is found mainly in these same countries, but also in Ecuador and of course in Colombia. It’s from these two lines of cumbia that Meridian Brothers originates and feeds off. Then there’s a third branch, that of traditional Colombian cumbia which has spread its roots to different styles of music. That’s something I’d like to do, in other words, dive seriously into all these different forms of Colombian cumbia. So cumbia is a lot more complex than we think, it has ramifications everywhere, different sources and is very often mixed with other styles of music. And although it is said to have originated in Colombia, it’s mostly the ones from Argentina and Mexico that most people are familiar with. 

PAN M 360: What are you trying to accomplish in the long term with the Meridian Brothers project?

EA: I’m not necessarily trying to accomplish anything with this project, I see it more as my playground. It’s my way of occupying my time while I’m waiting to die (laughs). I mean, I’ve got to do something to pass the time, and Meridian Brothers is one of those activities. It’s a very personal thing that’s become a little less personal. But I don’t have any other intentions. I don’t have any political intentions or the goal of achieving public recognition, it’s just a consequence of the times we live in, I don’t see what else I could do. But basically, it was a project for me and my friends.

PAN M 360: You’re involved in various projects outside the Meridian Brothers, do you have anything going on right now?

EA : I’m actually always doing a couple of things at the same time. I’m working with Grupo Renacimiento, with whom I’m trying to reproduce, as faithfully as possible, the Colombian salsa of the ’70s [which the writer of this article invites you to discover, if you haven’t already done so]; I’m also doing a neo-perreo album with the Meridian Brothers right now, which is a kind of post-reggaeton; I’m mixing a new album with Los Pirañas in which there will be horns, and I’m thinking of continuing the Los Suicidas trilogy that I started with Meridian Brothers in 2015, so making a new album that would be like elevator music with a lot of organ… So yes, I have a lot of work going on right now! 

TJIW Photos: Ed Marshall Photography

Jeanty, Momin recalls, “was the first person that I met who was channeling electronics with this spiritual vibe. I’d never really experienced that. I’d only heard experimental electronics like blips and screech, or very much four-on-the floor techno in New York. So it was incredible to hear experimentation rooted in Haitian rhythms, and have it still be all digital.”

“Working with Momin has been exciting,” says Jeanty, “because in the Indian culture, the music is very spiritual. So, we have that connection instantly. And he’s also very progressive, pushing it as far as using triggers, using Ableton Live. That’s the stuff that I love. It’s just great to have similar aspirations as far as keeping connected to the culture, but working with electronic instruments.”

PAN M 360 corresponded with TJIW for more insights into what they do.

PAN M 360: When we posted about the video for your track “Our Reflection Adorned by Newly Formed Stars”, we took the opportunity to establish a new category in our database – drum music. The term doesn’t necessarily mean music that’s exclusively drumming, but rather, that’s centered around drums and percussion. Do you think the term is accurate in the case of TJIW?

Turning Jewels Into Water: Of course, lots of music ensembles out there, from Afrobeat to salsa, come with a large percussion section – which is necessary to propel the music. While the percussion becomes an essential component, it’s not the only thing that defines the music, as there are plenty of other melodic and harmonic elements in play. In a similar manner, I’m more inclined to think of our own music as “folk music from nowhere”, as we’re also taking melodic inspirations from global folk music traditions and blending them with Haitian, Indian, and other rhythms from underground dance music, such as kuduro and gqom.

PAN M 360: Because drums, beats, and percussion – the sounds of which a brief and pronounced, rather than sustained or extensively variable – are so fundamental in your music, it feels like there’s a strong sense of space, of the positioning of sounds within space.

TJIW: Indeed! To follow up to my point above, while we certainly derive musical inspiration from those melodic elements, we do write the tracks with the rhythms first, so what you’re saying makes sense. We’re also blending digital and analog elements along with samples and field recordings, which helps add a sonic richness and spaciousness to our sound.

PAN M 360: It’s mentioned that there is an aspect of ritual to your music, which I can certainly hear. Rituals have a purpose, an intended outcome. What are yours?

TJIW: Our musical rituals focus on using drones, repetitive patterns and ancient chants to take the listener on a musical journey through their subconscious realms. We hope to instill a reflection on the present state of things, and also hope to inspire change and positive action.

PAN M 360: One cool thing about percussion-based music is it allows a lot of room for other musicians to get on board, so to speak – and dancers too, opening up even wider creative possibilities. What can you us tell about the collaborations on your record?

TJIW: We strive not to simply be performative of our individual cultural identities. I’d approached various guests and remix artists who were challenging norms in their own way.

Iranian singer and daf player Kamyar Arsani, based in Washington D.C., is just as comfortable with punk rock as he is with traditional Iranian music. Mpho Molikeng, a master musician of South African indigenous instruments, based in Lesotho, also works with electronic musicians. Producer Laughing Ears is based in Shanghai, and is as influenced by Buddhist chants as she is by footwork. EMB is a producer and drummer from Réunion Island who combines her African heritage with techno and other electronic music as well.

We’ve also always worked with different types of dancers in live performances as well as video shoots, to further highlight the ritual aspects of the music.

Above (clockwise from top left): EMB, Mpho Molikeng, Laughing Ears, Kamyar Arsani

PAN M 360: I’d like to zoom in on the first track, “Swirl in the Waters”, to find out more about it, and about Kamyar Arsani’s involvement.

TJIW: Kamyar runs a broad range of music, as mentioned. For this track, I’d specifically asked him to create lyrics based on the importance of water for human beings, without giving him further guidelines. He ended up with a beautiful poem in Farsi, which focused on the contrast between the vastness of an ocean and the shrinking timeframe for addressing climate change. The driving percussion, which is the focus of this song, is a blend of Iranian rhythms and vogue beats. 

PAN M 360: “Kerala in my Heart” is a particularly fun track. In an odd way, it makes me think of the big beat genre of the late ’90s, Fatboy Slim, Propellerheads, and so on. What can you tell us about that track?

TJIW: Rhythms from Kerala collide with chopped and spiced vocals, while melodic fragments of the kombu, an ancient wind instrument only found only in South India, harmonize with vintage synths to capture the spirit of the street festivals of Kerala that exists in my heart.

PAN M 360: Art Jones’ video for “Our Reflection”, mentioned above, speaks to the story of the Siddhi, an Afro-diasporic community in India and Pakistan. I think their story merits some mention.

TJIW: the Siddis are believed to have descended from the Bantu people of the East African region who first came to India in 628 A.D. They were merchants, sailors, mercenaries, and some even rose to political power within Indian territories. Their population is currently estimated to be around 350,000, mainly in the states of Karnataka, Gujurat, and Andhra Pradesh in India, and Makran and Karachi in Pakistan. Siddis are primarily Muslim, although some do belong to other religions as well. They have been marginalized and are not considered a part of mainstream societies.

As the Black Lives Matter movement rightfully gains prominence in the world, it’s important to note that anti-blackness is embedded in most Asian and Arab cultures as well. Siddis have had their histories erased, and as a child growing up in Mumbai, I never learned about Janjira, Malik Ambar, the African Hashbi Sultans of Bengal, Sidi Saeed, or other luminaries.

We all have a responsibility to address the anti-blackness that is systemic and deeply rooted across the globe as well, before meaningful structural change – and regime change – will be possible.

PAN M 360: Looping back to the topic of terminology, another descriptor I’m inclined to use is “supernational” – transcending formally recognized borders. There is, appropriately, a marvelous international movement, predicated heavily on drums and electronics, addressing this idea musically. Strongly rooted, but also fiercely forward-moving. TJIW strikes me as very much part of that.

TJIW: I don’t think I could have said it better than this. For sure, I’ve always sought to create “music without borders,” even with past projects I’ve led such as Tarana. In TJIW, I’ve still preserved those aspirations, and I hope to create a music that can be cerebral and body-shaking simultaneously.

PAN M 360: A common feature of this musical movement is an inclination to create music for a sort of imaginary “somewhere else”. I wonder how much this reflects a restlessness, a dissatisfaction with where one is at any time. What do you think?

TJIW: It’s not so much restlessness as it is a reflection of our hybrid influences.  Especially given that we live in Brooklyn, New York, which is truly a meeting of all races and backgrounds.  That dissatisfaction to which you refer can stem from the frustration with a world presently focused on artificial borders, and denying the human history of constant migration.

(Photo: Maya Fuhr)

Clearly, the golden age of the “Montreal sound” is far behind us. The hipster generation is in its forties, Arcade Fire and the rest have toured the world, we’re two decades later and… here are new residents with big dreams, more inclined to R&B than indie rock. Busty & the Bass have the firm intention of conquering the global soul-pop market, this time blending with hip-hop, electro, and jazz.

“I’m from Washington D.C.,” says Johnson. “When I was 17, I came to Montreal, almost nine years ago, to study music at McGill, where I met all my friends in the band, and I decided to stay. Montreal is a great place to be for everything I’m interested in.”

The new album from Busty & the Bass was built around a concept: Eddie. Johnson offers an outline.

“Eddie‘s a fictional character. The record as a whole is a kind of mixtape, conceived as a message for our young selves, a kind of beacon that serves as a light at the end of the tunnel, that helps us get through the difficult moments and the uncertainty that overwhelm us, that helps us reflect on what we have been and what we have become today.”

For Johnson, Eddie represents an important and even decisive advance in the development of Busty & the Bass.

“It’s certainly a huge step forward, after a long and winding journey. This new album is a kind of pinnacle of our pop output, and a dream in terms of the characteristics we were able to achieve on this record. We went into the studio and used it more as an instrument. We did a fully fleshed-out recording process there, done by real, live musicians. When you express that through eight musicians, incredible things come out of it. A lot of lushness, more maturity acquired in writing, in the instrumentation and in production. So, yeah it’s a big step in that direction. In addition, we have diversified the musical genres even more, you’ll hear more jazz and classical influences, for example, chamber-music sections have been woven into pop songs. I think it’s a wonderful encounter that comes across beautifully.”

From the very beginning of their recording career, the musicians of Busty & the Bass were able to work with producer Neal Pogue, whose resume is impressive – Outkast, Anderson Paak, Janelle Monáe, Tyler the Creator, Nicki Minaj, and Earth, Wind & Fire, to list a few.

“Neal is originally from New Jersey, he worked in Atlanta for a while producing and mixing, and then moved to Los Angeles. I think it’s really cool for us to work with someone of that stature, who was involved in the music industry even before the digital era, because many recording practices from before get lost. The nature of production used to mean working with a group of instrumentalists, whereas nowadays, most of the time, producers create the track and the singer goes on top. Neil has worked with big bands like Earth, Wind & Fire – here with us in the studio is someone who helps create the sound and facilitate our musical journey.

“I think the most interesting part is going through a second full-length album process with the same producer. It’s just beautiful working with somebody who knows all the personalities, and is able to get the best out of us. Pogue has really helped us all grow as individuals and musicians. He always says that for him working with us as a band was like having eight kids. That was such an honour to collaborate with amazing artists and elders in the music industry.”

It should also be noted that Pogue’s network includes Verdine White. The legendary bassist of Earth, Wind & Fire participated in the production of this album.

“Verdine got involved with us after seeing a couple of our shows in Los Angeles. He and Nick had meetings in L.A. about our recording sessions, he’s been a great supporter, providing feedback on our songs, thinking about the best selection, and he and Nick have done some writing together for us. Pretty unbelievable, actually! When I was a kid, I was going to give my dad a record as a birthday present, I bought this Earth, Wind & Fire compilation. Then I played bass along with this music.”

In addition to Michigan rappers Illa J and Jon Connor, Busty & the Bass had a special guest. The legendary George Clinton, one of the founding fathers of psychedelic funk, expressed himself on the song “Baggy Eyed Dope Man”.

“George Clinton is one of my living idols. Just for his ability to create his Parliament-Funkadelic universe, and also his side projects. Musically, visually, conceptually, he’s such a legend, we are so indebted to him for everything he’s given to the music. So yeah, we got the idea of having him featured, we developed the song around that so we also put in a doo-wop section, reminiscent of his early days. We were super lucky to have him.”

Another guest star on Eddie’s programme is the singer Macy Gray, who enjoyed a heyday at the turn of the 2000s.

“Our relationship with Macy Gray goes back a while because we covered her stuff at our early beginnings as a group. With this song ‘Out Of Love’ developing, we had suggested her feature… we thought it was hilarious and would never happen. Neal had also worked with her, it was just a lucky line in. I really love what she ended up doing on the track. Incredible musical and writing abilities, such a pleasure to work with her on this.”

Busty & the Bass choose an approach reconciling neo-soul, R&B, hip-hop, and jazz groove mixed with electro and the legacy of legendary combos such as Earth, Wind & Fire, Parliament-Funkadelic, Tower of Power and Average White Band. The brass and reed arrangements are reminiscent of Roy Hargrove’s work for D’Angelo… 

What’s up? Retro-nuovo? Not quite, Johnson suggests.

“With us, it’s a constant effort for a new combination of sounds, we’re really lucky to have come up just being very aware of our musical history, the legacy that we’d learned from and our walking through the lineage of. So it’s a never-ending process, there’s always a new way of recontextualizing stuff that we’ve already learned. We are interested in a massive scope of different music that have been produced, even in the last five years, but we also have a connection with music from the previous decades. 

“Everybody writes in the band, we’re trying to blend so many different voices, to keep them unique but also not water them down. We stay true to the history, but we also try to create something new. Moving forward, we’re constantly building upon a foundation that we handed down to us. It is one of the most exciting drivers for us.”

Respect for the past, openness to the future… necessarily marked by the digital environment. For an octet made up of university-educated instrumentalists, this is another ecosystem to be mastered in order to avoid redundancy and nostalgia.

“We’re instrumentalists, but many of us are producers in our individual side projects. Many of those projects are very influenced by electronic music, from techno to dubstep to electronic jazz. One of the super exciting things in this band is being able to bridge those two worlds. There’s not a ton of overlap, but you’re able to express so much with so little. You can now take an acoustic piano and make it sound like anything you want. I think that there’s so much freedom and opportunity in a studio production context, especially when you’re working with such beautiful recorded material. Yeah, we aim for a beautiful blend between instruments and an electronic approach.”

As for transposing the material to the stage, it has to wait a while, pandemic and all. Nevertheless… more revisiting is yet to come.  

“When you try to recreate a record for a show, it doesn’t really do justice for what you are as a performer. The fun of transitioning from the studio to the stage is rather in finding what can surprise the audience. A live show is its own experience, its own piece of art. And there are eight voices in the band, it presents so many possibilities of music and layering, especially in a live sense, and I think that live show experience is something that people don’t get now, very rare in these days. So it is important for us to build on that legacy.”

PAN M 360: Some people, because of the pandemic, freeze up, but you seem to have done the opposite.

Barrdo:  I must say, I was already in the beat of doing a lot of songs, the album out on August 21 was recorded in April 2019, L’éternel retour came out in February 2019 but I’d already started this one in January 2019. I was very inspired by my colleague David Bujold, with whom I play in Fuudge, who is inspired by the Ty Segall way of getting stock out quickly and regularly.

PAN M 360: Your forthcoming album (les) méandres de la soif seems to me your most ambitious – there are a lot of strings, the arrangements are rich, and I had the impression that you had put a lot of thought into this one. But now, you’re already working on something else, you never stop, you’re always composing…

Barrdo: That’s kind of the rhythm I’m trying to get into. But at the same time, the new album seems thoughtful and ambitious, but I think the stars have aligned well because it could have gone wrong. I’ve got the Beatles approach, as I say, when recording in the studio I’m not totally ready. I’ve got the songs, the structures, the chords, the melodies, but the lyrics are still to be fine-tuned. That’s the thing that takes a lot of time to get perfect, that I find satisfying. And when we went into the studio for this one, there were a lot of songs where the lyrics weren’t there, some of them didn’t even have a melody. Some of them were pretty much all there, just lacked a bit of work on the lyrics, but there were others where we recorded the rhythm section without knowing what the string arrangements would be, or the melody of the voice and the lyrics. We ended up doing the arrangements, and it all came together, and I think the result is really cool, but that’s it. Sometimes when I go into the studio, I put it like “in God’s hands”, in the sense that I bring the tunes and hope that the magic happens.

Recorded at the famous studio B-12 (Klo Pelgag, Hôtesses d’Hilaire), the album features the same musicians as L’éternel retour – Olivier Benoit on percussion and drums, Nicolas Ferron-Geoffroy on guitar, David Bujold on bass, keyboards, vocals, and more, and of course PA on guitars, vocals, and all the rest, plus a string section. They were lucky enough to be able to immerse themselves in the making of the album for a week, and the experience made PA want to get back into the same state of mind for the album that would follow, (les) méandres de la soif, which was recorded a few days after this interview was conducted, this time at the legendary Studio Wild with the equally legendary Pierre Rémillard at the board, and with the same musicians.

PAN M 360: How does it feel to work with David Bujold, who is also a band leader, when it’s time to work on Barrdo?

Barrdo: We’ve developed a good efficiency together and we don’t think too much about our roles. I also contribute to Fuudge, maybe not as much because David is very autonomous, but when we get to Barrdo, he really understands what I need, he comes up with ideas, he questions others, but I’m the one in charge. And he’s so versatile, plays bass, keyboard, does super-good backing vocals, and he’s also a producer. Having him on the team makes me feel really confident that I’m going to get the results I’m looking for.

PAN M 360: So far we’ve had the impression that Barrdo was mostly a studio project, was it intentional or did it just happen?

Barrdo: It’s true that the pace I set in the studio didn’t leave much time for the stage, and we don’t feel like we’ve been around too much. But with L’éternel retour, it still changed, we signed with Doze Management and the summer of 2019 wasn’t bad. We’ve had six or seven shows, cool shows, not huge but for Barrdo, it’s something. Summer 2020 would have been pretty good too, if there had been shows. But it’s true that there were more songs recorded, more albums almost, than there were shows.

PAN M 360: You’re still prolific. You get the impression that the songs never stop coming out and it’s never in the same niche, it’s very versatile. Do you give yourself a guideline?

Barrdo: No, there’s no guideline, but I feel like over time it’s kind of created itself. There’s a consistency. I compare it to eclectic artists, Zappa for example, you listen to some albums and there’s some weird stuff, but if you take a step back from the general work, you see that there’s stuff coming back, that there’s a coherence. On the three albums, some things come back, spirituality and existential questions are very present, it’s a form of coherence. Eclecticism is a kind of coherence in itself. It’s when we put together everything we do that we realise that there are things that will be classifiable, but since we don’t give ourselves directions, it’s the final result that does. It all depends on the compositions at the beginning. On this album, there are different styles, like pop, orchestral, folk, and I think we went a little bit more classical, some moments more classical music…

PAN M 360: …and a little bit of prog, which you can always feel there. It’s not Yes, but it’s there.

Barrdo: It’s not Yes, but it’s often there, especially in the song structures.

PAN M 360: Is it something you think about when you’re composing, when you think, I’m not going to do the same thing I’ve done before, or do you leave the creation free and at some point, you have enough songs to go in the studio and it gives you an album?

Barrdo: I don’t put stylistic barriers up, I see songs as children, seeds that you plant and watch them germinate. I’ve got a month’s free creative time where I record my ideas, and when I come back to it later, it’s like children who’ve developed their personalities, the songs define their style. It also depends on what I’m trying to do, whether I’m trying to emulate something or someone. On the last album, there’s a song where I tried to do something in the Herbie Hancock style during the Sextant period, I wanted to do something more fusion, more jazz, like Bitches Brew. It’s not pastiche, but it’s inspired by. Sometimes it’s Gainsbourg. It’s all influences of the moment that I’m using.

PAN M 360: You’ve signed up for bookings but you’re still independent for the albums, have you tried to get a label, or would you rather be independent?

Barrdo: I tried a few times to be on a label, but I always arrived too late in the process, everything was done and the labels answered me that they didn’t know what to do with it, that the time before releasing an album didn’t fit with what I had decided. I was ready to release, but it was too fast for them. It would have been especially handy for grants, because as an independent artist, it’s hard to get funding. And even what exists, we didn’t get it. I pay for everything out of my own pocket, in fact I pay for the choices I made for the project. It’s not ideal, but that’s also my responsibility.

(les) méandres de la soif, by Barrdo, available on August 21.

The audio version of this interview is available in PAN M 360’s Podcast section.

(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.  

(Photo: Ben Jackson)

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.

(Photo: Ben Jackson)

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.

Photo: Trevor Naud

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.

Photo: Bo Huang

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!

Molinari Quartet

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.

Molinari Quartet

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.

Above: masks by Jumu

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.”

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