Baka, Beyond, Pygmies, Martin, Cradick, Hart

Baka Beyond — Rhythms of the Forest

By J.C. Tripp

Music has been a passage to many cultures for Su Hart and Baka Beyond’s leader, Martin Cradick. Sipping cafe con leche in a Cuban cafe on Manhattan’s upper west side, in town to promote their music, Cradick expels on the benefits of traveling as a musician. “If you’re traveling, then you’re a tourist. A lot of places people don’t understand what you’re doing because that’s just outside their comprehension. They couldn’t imaging just getting up and going around looking at places,” he said. “Whereas, as a musician you can turn up and play and you’re giving something to the people. And in virtually all cultures that’s an acceptable way to make a living. So, then you get accepted and can experience the culture from within.”

If crossing boundaries and uniting cultures is the basis of “world music” then Baka Beyond are its poster children. There is nothing quite like them, a melding of Northern European and West African musical traditions—a conglomeration of tribes, if you will. Their recordings piece together West African rhythms, Gaelic melodies, Breton Gypsy fiddle and the effervescent songs of their namesake, Cameroon’s Baka pygmies. Cradick and Hart, along with fiddle-maestro Paddy Le Mercier, form the core of Baka Beyond, with additional band members including master musicians Nii Tagoe, Seckou Keita, Pelembie and others.

Through all of their travels, Baka Beyond retain the spirit of the Baka people, with whom they are passionately attached. Cradick and Hart have been involved with the Baka since first traveling to Cameroon in 1992 and living amongst them in the forest, an experience which affected them profoundly. The adventure began with a BBC TV program on the Baka: “We were watching this program about the Baka, and what struck us was how central the music was to their lives,” explained Cradick in a soft Cornish accent. “At any moment it’s quite possible for all the Baka to sit down, start singing and playing music together. In England we really love just sitting around playing music, so to see this group of people where it was so central caught our fancy. We said, ‘we must go there.'”

As circumstances would have it, Cradick and Hart were destined to have their wish fulfilled. “A year after that program, I was running some percussion workshops and this guy came in with a very interesting drum that was from the Baka. He was an anthropologist and had lived near them. Suddenly we thought, ‘this could be reality’ and we soon discovered that the Rivers Museum of Anthropology in Oxford had a sponsorship for people to study pygmies. So, we wrote them saying ‘though we’re not anthropologists, we have experience as artists in communicating non-verbally. And they paid for us to go there on the first trip.”

This wasn’t the first time Cradick had crossed boundaries with his music. An accomplished guitarist and mandolin player, he’d been a member of the groundbreaking band Outback, which had done for the didgeridoo and Australia’s Aborigines, what they were about to do for Cameroon’s Bangombi (Baka Pygmies): give their culture and music a world stage. Outback’s two releases, Baka and Dance the Devil Away paved the way for Cradick’s future experiments.

Western Africa may have been a long way from London, but Cradick and Hart had their instruments and their music to connect with the Baka. The two went with little more than a tent, some instruments and recording equipment. They slept, ate and gathered as the Baka did and Cradick spent as many hours as possible playing with them, learning just how integrated the music is with their lives. “Sometimes they fish by building a dam and emptying out the river. There were some kids doing this, playing really. But when they’re emptying it with buckets, it’s totally in rhythm. And then you start hearing someone in the distance, singing along to the same rhythm. So, other people are singing along to it and all the activities in the camp are joined together. In a normal day, where there are people sitting around in a camp doing their jobs, they’ll almost subconsciously be doing it in rhythm, so that this music starts coming out of it. In playing music there’s always an element of telepathy and I’m sure they use music to enhance communication within the group,” said Hart. The rhythm of life, indeed.

But the music is fading, since the Baka, like most indigenous people, are threatened by outside forces beyond their control. The forests are being chopped down by logging operations, brought on by massive dept incurred by the Cameroonian government. “It’s changing rapidly. The forest is broken up and the intensity is going. That magic singing they do in the forest to make animals come so they’ve got food — they don’t do it anymore because of all the disturbance. As it breaks up, their whole knowledge and way of life is being dissipated,” explained Hart.

“The forest people’s situation is like the Aborigines. They had the land and lived in a natural way and then someone’s come in and taken it over. They have no land rights, even though they’ve lived in the forest before Cameroon was even a country. By law they’re not even allowed to chop down a tree or kill an animal, which has been their way of life for thousands of years,” said Hart.

But there is some hope, as futile as it may seem. Unlike many Western musicians who use indigenous recordings and samples in their music, Baka Beyond actually pay royalties to the Baka people. Their charity, “One Heart”, provides moneys and empowerment to the Baka. “The charity sends royalties back to them,” said Hart. “This helps them set up things to make their lives better. It’s made it possible to have the worst things in their lives changed – like not having identity cards. If you have a card then you’re a citizen, so now they can go into town without being arrested. What we’re trying to do with our charity is give them a choice, so they can have control over their lives.”

Their mission doesn’t stop there. Hart also runs a “Rainforest Workshop”, a one day multimedia session of music, dancing and performance that involves participants in the culture of the Baka. Working mainly with school children, the workshop engages and educates, and hopeful enlightens a future generation.

The spirit and sounds of the Baka have been an integral element of the music, but as the band’s title suggests, Baka Beyond is a continually evolving unit, embracing influences and musicians from Africa and Europe. And there’s a simple message in Baka Beyond’s music: everything is interconnected. “There is a sharing of simple things, each little thing given by somebody and it fits in,” explained Cradick. “Using that as the basis, you can bring in musicians from different places and it fits together. This is the Baka Way.”

Baka Beyond’s foray into world rhythms has resulted in several recordings, including 1998’s Sogo, a collaboration with Senegalese and Ghanian musicians. “Sogo” is a Ghanaian drum also called “the Lightening Pot” due to its use to call the lightening spirit in times of drought. For Sogo Cradick invited four musicians from West Africa and four musicians from the Celtic fringes of Europe to join Baka Beyond for an extensive tour. During this intensely creative time of playing together, new songs evolved that are a fusion of individual talents and traditions.

The departure of Joe Boyd from Hannibal Records brought to a close their relationship with the label and their most recent recording East to West is released on their own label, March Hare Music. It furthers Baka Beyond’s Celtic-African fusion, as well as their collaboration with the Baka. The opening track ‘Awaya Baka’, a song written by Baka guitarist Pelembie, features a chorus sung by Baka children recorded in the forest. The next song, ‘Braighe Locheil’, is a Scottish song sung in Gaelic augmented by Senegalese kora and Ghanaian balafon, while ‘Wandering Spirit’ is based on a dance that the Baka asked Cradick to take to the world seamlessly combined with an Irish slipjig.

In addition to East to West, Cradick and bandmates Nii Tagoe and Seckou Keita have formed a new project, EtE (translated: triangle in the Gha language) and released an album in that name. Tagoe is from a leading family of master drummers and dancers from Ghana. He originally came to Britain as principal dancer and drummer in the Adzido dance company. and has toured with Adrian Sherwood’s African Headcharge and runs the Frititi troupe. He has a deep knowledge of the diverse dance and rhythmic traditions of Ghana. Keita is a griot, descended from the founder and ruler of Mali, Sundiata Keita. Seckou is deeply influenced by his indigenous role as an historian, carrying his tradition in his songs. Mixing traditions, ancient and modern, from the U.K., Ghana and Senegal, EtE is an exciting extension of the Baka Beyond sound.

In this incredibly shrinking world, could Baka Beyond represent the future of “world” music? Their inspired collaboration has achieved both critical and commercial success with bowing to cheap cliches. And by channeling back some of the funds to the people from which the music is born – does this signal a new model for others to follow? For the future of the Baka pygmies and all indigenous people who’s cultures are threatened, let’s hope so.

Baka Beyond website

Baka Beyond Myspace

Cheb i Sabbah’s Devotion

“Music is the only thing I know. It has the power to liberate one from whatever one wants to be liberated from.” – Cheb i Sabbah

Introduction from various sources
Interview by J.C. Tripp

Cheb i Sabbah grew up Jewish of Berber (Amazigh) descent in Constantine, Algeria, so the idea of mixing cultures was, you might say, in his blood. He moved to Paris in the 1960s, and, more or less by accident, became a DJ. By the late 1980s, he was pushing boundaries on the dance floor, seeking ways to work African, Asian, and Arabic music into the mix. Then, as the “world music” movement unfolded, Cheb i Sabbah took the inspired step of recording traditional and classical musicians himself and using those tracks to create bold, new creations—effectively, music “composed” by a DJ.

In the late 70s, Sabbah became acquainted with the late jazz maverick Don Cherry while touring with the famed “Living Theatre” in Europe. Kindred musical spirits from the start, it was no surprise when Cheb i Sabbah re-connected with Cherry in San Francisco. Cherry became his “mentor,” insisting that Sabbah had found his gift to the music world and that he stay with his path of spinning international sounds on the dance floor. From there, Cheb i Sabbah developed his concept of recording his own base tracks, always aiming for great music, not merely ethnic flavor. His first record, “Shri Durga” was created from tracks recorded with Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, one of the most respected classical singers in Pakistan, and his four, enormously talented sons. Salamat had long resisted pressure to record popular and even semi-classical music to expand his audience at home, but somehow, Sabbah won his confidence in a far bolder undertaking. This groundbreaking work was followed by MahaMaya (2000) and Krishna Lila (2002). Each album has its own distinct character. On As Far As (2003), Sabbah marshaled his complete repertoire of techniques into composing music, spanning three continents and nine languages. His DJ mix includes songs by Egypt’s Natacha Atlas, Guinea’s Sekouba Bambino, alongside his remixes of Don Cherry and jazz legend Paul Horn. This ambitious album set a new standard for bringing world music eclecticism to young listeners.

With “Devotion”, Cheb i Sabbah returns to India and the music of indu, Sikh and Muslim religious and ritual music. For Devotion, he traveled to New Delhi and engaged six leading vocalists, together with top local players of traditional string and percussion instruments, adding keyboards, guitar, electric bass—and on one track, banjo—to the mix. Some of India’s pre-eminent singers are featured on “Devotion”, including Anup Jalota, singer of Hindu kirtans and bhajans.Each vocliast sings in his or her own religious tradition, accompanied by Sabah’s arrangement of Indian and western instruments, rhythms and textures. It’s the pure essence of India filtered through Sabbah’s sublime touch.

Cheb i Sabbah now enjoys a worldwide reputation as a producer and a magician of the dance floor. On stage, he improvises his show using pre-composed tracks and massive, projected visuals, interwoven and juxtaposed as the spirit moves him. Sabbah believes in presenting his one-of-a-kind works to audiences in person, just as he did in Paris in the 60s, with a stack of 45s in front of him. Sabbah remains a DJ at heart, but he is also something more—one of the most innovative forces in contemporary dance music today.

Mundovibes had the opportunity to speak with Cheb i Sabbah on his musical journey after the release of “La Ghriba”, an album of remixes of his seminal release “La Kahena”.

MundoVibes: Man, you’re always stepping up and doing bigger and better things!

Cheb i Sabbah: Well, we try to stay inspired (laughter).

MV: Absolutely. I’ve been listening to “La Ghriba” and the remixes are phenomenal, they’re all very interesting re-interpretations.

CS: Yeah man, I also feel very happy and blessed that all of them turned out like that. You know, all different kind of flavors.

MV: Are these friends and new collaborators?

CS: I would say they are all friends, some are newer friends, for example the rappers Tahar and Farid, who did “Sadats: The Sufi Sonic Remix” I met in Marrakech just walking around with my friend. And then my son being a rapper himself, he did a duo with them and then he did a couple of live shows in Marrakech with like 3,000 people outside. And they were like the happening group, you know in Morocco.

MV: And then you worked with the rap group Fnaïre?

CS: Those guys I met when I was actually recording “La Kahena” and then when it came to remixes, I like what they do because they call it “hip hop tradicionale” so they use stuff from their country and then they put their lyrics to it. But I always liked what they do and then I did a couple of shows with them and then I thought ‘man they should do a remix’. DJ Sandeep Kumar is a Bhangra DJ in L.A. and he opens for me when I do Bhangra parties in L.A. which I’ve been doing lately. It’s been very successful and it turns out that L.A. is the biggest South Asian following I have which is pretty big for not being South Asian.

MV: But you’re strongly associated with that.

CS: Yeah man, because of the previous album and because of those bhangra parties. So, who else? Well, of course, like Bill Laswell, those people I know. Yossi Fine I know what he did and he ended up working a lot with Karsh Kale’s latest album. He was in San Francisco and I was like ‘is there anything you like on La Kahena you want to remix?’ And he was really psyched and came up with ‘Jarat Fil Hum: The Chalice Remix’. Temple of Sound are old friends you know? With Natasha Atlas and the U.K. kind of underground, they are like family for me. Who else is there, Gaurav Raina is one of the Medieval Pundits and he’s my engineer also. And The Chakadoons is the main guy and remixer for Quincy Jones.

MV: So, this group is international then?

CS: I guess so, you have India, you have the U.K., you have America, Morocco, South Asian origin like Sandeep, Yossi is Israeli. I never thought of it that way but it is an international crew.

MV: Tell me about your feelings about the whole remix concept, because it really has become essential for a lot of recordings.

CS: Yeah, it started like maybe 10 years ago it was like any innovative artist would see the use and the advantage of having a remix done, which is a different interpretation of their song but maybe more geared toward the dancefloor. And to me, because I am a DJ also, I’m not a musician in terms of having a band or I sing or I play an instrument. So, being a DJ I’m always on the dancefloor anyways, sometimes three or four times a week. So I have this ability to test everything right away. I don’t have to wait until whatever you know? I’ll tell you a little story. This happened a few times where my friends would play with their bands like somebody from Senegal or whatever. And I would be part of their show, opening or closing for them. And I would play one of their tracks and speed it up eleven percent. And they would hear the track, they would see everybody on the dancefloor and they’d go ‘God, what is this? I know it’s my song but what happened’ you know? So, they’d come in the DJ booth and go ‘what is it?’ and I’d say ‘it’s no big deal but it’s your song sped up 11 percent. They’d go ‘fuck man’. (laughter). Because, you know, with CD players the key doesn’t change you know? It doesn’t sound like chipmunks but it’s a faster BPM. So, from there I think people realized that to have a different interpretation that is more geared toward the dancefloor is another way of looking at that same song.

MV: And La Kahena is not really a “dance” recording.

CS: I would’t say that! It all depends, yeah if you play a club where it’s all house heads maybe it’s a little too esoteric but even then, what is dance and what is not dance? So, I think ‘La Kahena’ is fully dance, but then again it’s fully dance for some and not for others. It’s like, trance works for trance people because it works. I think all music works but it depends on what kind of environment, what kind of chemicals people might be on or not (laughter). So all of that ends up where ‘is it dance music or not?’ Nobody is there to say what is dance music and what is not. Of course there’s traditional elements but besides the traditional elements the beats are there, the bass is there. So, is that not dance music? Why? In Morocco it’s certainly dance music.

MV: Right. I guess, as you said, from a house head’s or some body who is all about the four-on-the-floor beats it’s different. But that’s really who you are, somebody who works with a lot of elements to create a mix.

CS: Yeah, and go there and record those musicians. I don’t take a little Arabic sample because it’s fashionable and it’s cool and then build around a little sample. It’s another approach, I think ‘La Kahena’ has what 43 musicians on it altogether. So, it’s that kind of effort to actually keep the tradition alive but give it a modern approach.

MV: Many of the vocalists for “La Kahena” were Moroccan?

CS: Yes, Moroccon, Algerian and Yemenite.

MV: And that’s quite a diversity within that region.

CS: Yes. The thing is, in Morocco you have some many different styles of music and some of it is greatly influenced by West Africa. Because of the history of bringing in slaves to Morocco from where we call Equatorial Africa. So, Morocco has a lot of those rhythms from West Africa plus it has a very complicated history starting with the Berbers and the Jews. Way before the Arabs and the Muslims. For example, if you take the Tuareg or what we call the “blue people”, a people that traditionally used to cross the desert with salt and bring it to sub-Sahara, which is Mali and Niger, all of those countries that are right below the desert. So, Morocco is very rich that way because of this whole history of people going in and out and leaving, staying. So, this is what you have now. So, for me Algeria wasn’t as easy to just go there and make a record but Morocco was a lot easier than Algeria. So, I ended up going to Morocco, althought I do have some Tuareg singing in there. I have Cheba Zahouania, she’s the biggest rai singer from Algeria. And, this is the best I could do. Of course, one album is really limited to try to represent many styles and I think that’s the strength because if I were to make an album with just Cheba Zahouania then to come up with eight tracks with her is more of a challenge, although the challenge with La Kahena was the records and artists I used is pretty raw, playing and recording and all of that. Because they are not people that go in studios every day or are session musicians. So, that was the other side of the challenge. At the same time, each song is such a different style — I think that’s what worked.

MV: Now, for you, is this kind of going full circle? Going back to Morocco and Algeria, since you had left there.

CS: As a teenager, yes. But I can always go back to India, I could go back to Mali and make a record. Time and money is always limited, that’s always what we lack the most. But in eight years with Six Degrees there are now six albums, you know? There’s only so much you can do.

MV: That’s very prolific.

CS: I also think it’s good when things happen one at a time and slowly because then there’s more for the future than all of it happening at once. It’s a different attitude but I think this one works for me.

MV: It’s beautiful material. Your DJing is such a central element in who you are and I’d like to ask you some questions on that. First of all, your history in San Francisco and Lower Haight and Nickies, what is the significance of that?

CS: There’s a little story about me being a DJ again in San Francisco, because I had been a DJ twice before. So, this was the third incarnation you know, as Cheb i Sabbah. I was working a Rainbow (San Francisco health food store –ed.) and I was the buyer of homeopathic remedies and Chinese herbs. So, I’m working at Rainbow and I made tapes, you know? So, I had this one tape I made of Raï music from Algeria. So, this tape was blasting at Rainbow on Mission. And then this guy is shopping and listening to the tape and goes to the counter and says ‘what kind of music is this?’. He is directed to me and says ‘hi, my name is Brad. I have this little place in the Lower Haight called Nickies. This is really cool.’ If you want to come and spin you can come on Wednesday night and try it out’. Cause I told him I had been a DJ. So, I showed up on the first Wednesday night which I think was a week before Christmas and that was sixteen years ago. And three weeks later there was a line outside. And Brad (original promoter of Nickie’s on Lower Haight and a pioneer in San Francisco’s acid jazz/world music scene –ed.). was at that time the person where every night the sound was what no one else was doing. And that was the cool thing about Nickies and from there I became a legend. So, that’s how I started.

The other thing that happened is that Don Cherry moved to San Francisco and I had known him for like 20 years. I met him when I was working with the Living Theatre, he came to a show and after the show I went to his hotel room. He was touring Italy with Naná Vasconcelos and so from there we became friends and we’d see each other whenever, in Paris, here there. And when he moved to San Francisco he asked me if I could be his manager, so I did that too. And then he lived on Divisidaro and Haight so every week he walked to Nickies and he was the one that actually helped me stay there because to tell you the truth I was like ‘yeah, this is OK but it’s nothing like Paris. The money or whatever.’ And he said ‘no, man, you’ve got to stay with it.’ And so helped convince me that I should stay with it. And from there I started to produce concerts from all over, Iraq, Morocco, Algeria, Guinea, whatever. And then I was on KPFA for like ten years, so it was a combination of being a DJ, being on KPFA and producing live shows. And then it wasn’t long after that DJs started to produce music. Because we might not play an instrument but we have an ear — we know what we want to hear. As opposed to musicians, DJs don’t play just their own music, they play every one else’s music. Anything that’s rhythmic, we are always hungry and looking for new sounds, you know?

So, the combination of all that, I started to produce and then I did a couple of remixes here and there. And then I started ‘Shri Durga’ on my own, with a credit card. And then I met Six Degrees and they heard like half of one song and said ‘no problem, we’ll put it out’.

MV: So, San Francisco has really given you a lot of opportunties with the scene there.

CS: Yeah, I think it was a case of ‘the right place at the right time’ but it’s what San Francisco is known for. It’s always been one of the places where you can do this kind of thing. This whole trajectory I’ve had, if I’d been in Paris 16 years ago trying to do that it would have been looked at as ‘huh, what is that thirld world shit’. Now it’s huge and it’s big but then it would have been looked at different.

MV: Well, you were definitely a pioneer in this, along with some others.

CS: I guess you could say that, yeah. I started a Nickie’s with vinyl and then I had a SONY walkman professional because I played cassettes. And then CDs started to come out and then I went throught at least six or seven discman professionals. So, I would have two turntables, one discman and one walkman, playing that music. Later on I became world music buyer at Ameoba in Berkeley. Trying to promote and present this kind of music and San Francisco is a good place for that.

MV: And it still is?

CS: Yeah, I feel it’s becoming a little bit saturated because what we are witnessing now is like everybody and their grandmother is producing now. Which is cool, there is room for every one but at the same time San Francisco is not New York, it’s not L.A., it doesn’t have millions of people living here. So, it’s somewhat saturated but the test is time, to see who will continue and who will not. And also, what DJs realize at the same time that without producing something well, you might have gone to Nickies and gone ‘man, this is great’. But someone in New York has no idea. Whereas when you start producing music then it goes out to the world. And that’s what brings the name out, by producing music.

MV: Well, now you an international superstar (laughter). I’m sure you are well known throughout the world and that must feel good.

CS: I feel like a rock star without the rock. I think the albums that were put out is what brought the name out. It’s the way it happens, it can’t just be from DJing at Nickie’s. It was good and it was the starting point for me again. Because if you asked me 20 years ago, what would I do in 2006 I wouldn’t have known man. I wouldn’t have said ‘I’m gonna be a DJ and producer’. You just don’t know.

MV: What are doing with your audience when you DJ? You’re not just entertaining them, you’re setting out to do something?

CS: I fuck with them man (laugther). First of all I’ve always felt that you spin and you play with the dancefloor, you don’t just do your thing and that’s it: ‘here’s my thing, you like it or you don’t like it’. I’ve always played with the audience and I think that comes from my theater background anyway. So, it’s always different, I never prepare any sets. I always try to bring new stuff in, play some of the old and the new. One of the flavors of this kind of spinning is that you’re dancing one song one continent and the next song is a totally different continent, differrent language and all of that. But at the same time it’s all very sophisticated dance music in the sense that it’s got everything that other dance music has. The bass is there — we have subwoofers too you know? (laughter).

MV: What other clubs did you DJ at that played a role in the scene in San Francisco?

CS: Club 1015, I have known Club 1015 and Ira Sandler the owner all those years. I used to do Sunday nights at 1015, I had my own night. I also used to spin in the front “gold” room on Friday’s, it was called “Martini”. So, I knew Ira all of this time but at the same time those kind of big clubs, the house clubs, the trance clubs, they don’t really give us a chance to play this kind of music on a bigger scale. But at 1015 there’s a crew here called “Dhamaal” which I’ve been working with since day one and I think we’ve done five parties every three or four months called “Worldly” and it’s on a Friday night and 1015 opens up for us like five rooms. I have headlined all of those shows and you know when you play that kind of music for 1,500 people in the main room with that kind of sound system. People who have never heard this kind of music, they always go ‘I didn’t know this kind of music existed!’. But at the same time I play small to medium sized clubs. And then after that it’s like festivals, it could be 10,000 people it could be 30,000 people that I spin for. But when it comes to the clubs with the big names with the two most-played styles, which we’ll call house and trance, I don’t know what it is. They think, what, world music is like this lower denominator? It’s like ‘fuck it man, I don’t play world music’. What is world music anyway? I never wanted to call it world music, it’s the worst. It’s like ‘do you play “world beat”‘. No man, I don’t play “world beat”. So, this is where we are and here and there you hear big name DJs, the really big name DJs. And they hear your stuff and actually like it but are they stuck in that one style and they don’t know how to get out of it? Or is it because they’re such big names it would be accepted because they’re playing it? But if you were to play there as an opening act, no that’s not really it man, we want the headliner because we know what that’s about. If the headliner played something you play, then it would be accepted. So, we’re still dealing with all of this ghettoization of ‘this style or music, that style of music’ you know?

MV: It seems to be even more so now.

CS: Yes, and I think it reflects the world, which is in a lot of trouble. But it’s a reflection of all those separations you know? There are a lot of things coming at us that we’re not in control of. But when it comes to music it does cross barriers in that mindset of clubs. I mean playing for 30,000 people at 1AM in Morrocco and everybody’s there, from kids to whatever, and everybody’s jumping is one thing. But, when it comes to those trance parties, those big house parties, they don’t allow us to come in and see what happens. But maybe it’s better, I don’t know. I’ve had some great opportunties to play like opening the Asian Museum or playing the Getty Center for 4,500 people or Summerstage New York where I’ve been twice opening for someone. So, those shows do come in all the time during the year. And I still haven’t touched Europe yet because the stuff I’ve done so far has not been well-distributed in Europe. Now it’s starting to come in so it’s like OK, when it wasn’t happening one could be depressed and say ‘oh, how come I’m not playing anywhere in Europe’. But, then again, I’ve played America and Canada, East Europe. If it’s going to start to happen in Europe then we do that now because I think it’s better to space it out. If things start to happen in Europe then fine. I mean I did play in Moscow, I’ve played in a few places in Europe but not like I play here and in Canada.

MV: That’s interesting because for a lot of artists they have to go to Europe to break out and then come back to the states.

CS: Right, and it’s also understandable that Europe already has a lot of South Asian and Arabic music. You know, the whole South Asian underground, and the whole Arab scene in all of the capitals, mostly Paris but also London. Everywhere man. A big Turkish thing in all of the German speaking countries. So, there is a lot more there than here. But then everybody’s different you know? I don’t think anybody does anything new, really. I think everybody’s taking something they’re inspired with and they put a new stamp on it. I don’t think anybody’s like ‘ohh, I’m the first one to do any of it’. I don’t believe that, you know?

MV: So that’s how you view yourself as well?

CS: Of course, it’s like you’re inspired by some sounds or some voice or something. Or by a style of music and then you do your own interpretation. But to say I’ve invented something is like ‘No, nobody’s invented nothing really.’ I think the main point is really, Don Cherry used to say it a lot, which is to really hear, you know? To hear what people are doing and hopefully the other people are hearing and that creates harmony. But the main thing is to hear. Hear and now.

Free MP3 song from “Devotion”

“Qalanderi” (mp3)

from “Devotion”

(Six Degrees Travel Series)

Buy at iTunes Music Store

More On This Album

Cheb i Sabbah website

Cheb i Sabbah Myspace

Eric, E Man, Lorie, Caval, Deep, Sea, New, York, house, music, It’s, Yours, Clark, Jon, Chez

by Lorie Caval

“What makes you journey in to the night and take flight in a pursuit of musical bliss? Chasing beats through ghetto streets to a dungeonous temple left by our soul descendants in a quest for peace energy and light. If you were to find this temple, would you have the knowledge to enter the temple? Do you want it? And if you had it, would you flaunt it? It’s yours!”

– from “It’s Yours,” Jon Cutler featuring E-Man, Chez Music, 2001

Possessing a 6’6″ frame, a winning smile and a larger-than-life personality, Eric Clark graduated from North Carolina’s Johnson C. Smith University, where he majored in communications and played small forward on their basketball team. After graduation, he went back home to live in the New York suburb of Mount Vernon where he grew up. But Manhattan’s electric art, music and nightlife scene of the ’80s beckoned him, and he came running. Eric became a regular at nightclubs like Paradise Garage, the Mud Club, Save the Robots, the World, the Saint and the Ozone Layer, but he was most impacted by the Loft. “When I landed at the Loft, fucking fugetaboudit, that was my shit, I almost didn’t miss any Saturday for five years – rainstorm, sleet, anything.” Eric explains enthusiastically, “The music [Loft founder and DJ, David Mancuso] was playing… It was beautiful to hear somebody who was so confident in his playing, he didn’t even have to mix [the records], he didn’t have to worry about if a record was rock n’ roll or soul or black or Latin or anything.”

Landing a job as a bouncer at the legendary Ritz concert venue, Eric became exposed to then underground bands like the Red Hot Chilly Peppers, Bad Brains, Fishbone and Kid Creole and the Coconuts – some of whom he would remain friends with throughout his life. Dreadlocked and usually donning a leather jacket covered with band patches, buttons and signed by scenesters like Keith Haring, would get his first DJing opportunity at the Ritz. Eventually, he would find himself bouncing, DJing or just hanging at most of New York’s hot spots — his face known in just about any place.

While bouncing around, a friend offered him a job as a security/production assistant on the movie set of “The Super” starring Joe Pesci, and after that, on many other films like “Home Alone,” “Crooklyn,” and “Die-Hard 2,” in which Eric even made a cameo appearance. Though Eric had found a new interest in the movie business, he still longed to be a part of the music scene. In addition to working on music videos, he landed a job at Tommy Boy Records promoting artists like Queen Latifah, De La Soul and other ground breaking hip-hop groups. It was at Tommy Boy that Eric would take on the nickname “E-Man” – a name that would stick, although the job did not. After leaving Tommy Boy, Eric continued to work on films and TV shows and still found time to moonlight as a DJ and after moving to Manhattan’s Lower East Side, he found more time still to promote parties with friends.

During a stint as a PA on the Fox TV show “New York Undercover” in 1996, E-Man was DJing and producing his own party, Hot Buttered Soul. At the time, I was working at Paper magazine as a nightlife reporter. He approached me about reviewing his party (which I did) and eventually propositioned me about throwing a party along with him. Our friendship eventually turned into a five-year-long romance, and our party producing turned into lifestyle. Since 1996, E-Man and I have created many events, but none as well known as our underground house event, Bang The Party, which started in 1997 and still takes place now on a weekly basis in Brooklyn, New York. Bang The Party became a showcase for E-Man’s DJing skills and a testing ground for his musical curiosities. As E-Man and/or guest DJs played underground house tracks to an enthusiastic dancefloor, E-Man and his old friend, Sweet Sable (house music vocalist best known for “Love So Special”) would talk, scat, sing and otherwise bullshit on the microphone. Their mic games would turn serious when we all took a trip to Chicago in 1999 to throw a special Bang The Party. E-Man and Sable met up with producer Daryn “DJ Quad” Brandon and created the single “Day By Day,” which was signed to HipBone Records. E-Man cut his teeth at HipBone and quickly released a second jazzy track, “The What,” but that would not be the only label who would jockey for his attention for very long.

Returning to Chicago for another Bang The Party stint in 2000, E-Man met up with Brandon once again to produce a cover of Steely Dan’s “Caves of Altamira,” on which E-Man provided the harmonious vocals. Promo copies were quickly charted by the likes of Tony Humphries and even E-Man’s DJ mentor, David Mancuso (the single was then signed to Nervous Records, remixed by Michael Moog, and eventually released in 2002). In 2001, Chez Music owner Neil Aline, approached E-Man with the idea of a collaboration with producer Jon Cutler. In an almost miraculous 20 minutes, E-Man penned the lyrics to “It’s Yours,” and almost over night, the single he performed spoken word on raced up international top ten charts and became a bonafide modern house classic.

In a few short years, E-Man has put out an impressive number of underground house singles, including “Where I Live” – the “Brooklyn” song, on Kerri Chandler’s Sphere Records; “I Am The Road,” with Markus Enochsen, on “Little Louie” Vega’s Masters At Work label; “Respect The Music,” with Romain on MetroTracks; “Musical Prayer” on Francois K’s Wave Music label; and “To Be With You” on Underground Collective. Not to mention the work that has not been released yet.

The success of the records of the Brooklyn-based DJ, who had never traveled outside of the US, would result in invitations to DJ all around the world. E-Man’s first overseas gig in 2001 was in Prague, an old city that blew him away with its beautiful landscape and architecture. Since then, the DJ who can usually be seen wearing a custom-made jacket embroidered with Bang The Party logos has played gigs in Stockholm (“best meatballs,” he says), Montreal (“best home away from home”), Toronto (“they know house music”), Ettenburg (“the home of the single malt”), Leeds (“with the most intense and fun party promoter”) Moscow (“the furthest I’ve been from home”) and Cancun (“best overall…warm, beautiful and fun.”).

With all of the traveling, we have had to enlist two new resident DJs at Bang The Party (Julian Bevan and Serge Negri) to fill in for E-Man while he’s gone. When E-Man is in town he still loves to spin and gab on the mic for his homegrown crowd, and the dancefloor gives him a great, sweaty reception. Chasing beats through global ghetto streets in pursuit of musical bliss, E-Man has pursued his love of music, and now that he’s got it, he’s gonna flaunt it all over the world.

Lorie Caval is a writer, musician and artist in addition to being a co-founder of “Bang the Party” with DJ E Man

DJ mixes by E Man

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Groovedis, Dirk, van, den, Heuvel, distribution, 12″, dance, vinyl, groovedis.com, dance, music

BY JOHN C. TRIPP

Since founding Groove Dis in 1999 Dirk van den Heuvel has been at the leading edge of dance, electronic and world roots music. Originally from NYC Dirk moved to the Chicago area to go to college at Northwestern. A radio DJ at Northwestern’s WNUR-FM Dirk founded the “CLUB BEAT” program in the late 80s. Every Saturday night he would play the best in industrial dance and new wave along with the hottest new import dance tunes. At the time it was the first (and only) radio show in Chicago to showcase the kinds of dance music being played on the northside of Chicago in clubs like the Smart Bar, Neo, and Medusas. Leaving Northwestern Dirk found a job managing a new (but ultimately unsuccessful) CD store named Van Clybourns which just happened to be only a few blocks from Cargo Records America, a well known and respected indie rock/industrial dance importer. After getting the job running the (one man) dance department at Cargo Records Dirk continued to work there for 9 years rising to be Operations Manager and ultimately General Manager. When Cargo Records America went out of business at the end of 1998 Dirk decided to start his own company and in January of 1999, with some help from his friend Nick Wilson and some money from his father and grandfather Groove Distribution was born. Concentrating “solely on dance music, especially electronica, big beat, trip-hop, and drum & bass” Groove Distribution shipped its first order in March of 1999. Nearly ten years later Groovedis is still surviving in a radically changed music market. With many vinyl record shop closing their doors and other distributors succombing to digital death Groovedis has become America’s premier importer and distributor of downtempo, leftfield, nu jazz, and broken beat records and CD’s. Groovedis carries a large selection of jazzy and deep house, drum & bass, import hip hop, neo-soul, and rare grooves, as well as select DJ gear, magazines, and record bags. Although a wholesale distributor, they also provide a mail order service at retail prices to DJ’s and music fans across the U.S. and around the world.

Mundovibes: You’ve been in the music industry for a long time, right?

Dirk van den Heuvel: I was really heavily involved with music in high school. My turning point was hearing XTC’s ‘Living Through Another Cuba’ on WBAI in New York. And, of course, the DJ didn’t backsell his set, so I didn’t know who it was. I just heard the song and loved it and at that point I didn’t know anything about “new wave” music or anything. So, I called up the radio station and couldn’t get anybody on the phone there. I went around to all the shops, and finally I went to Record Runner on 42nd Street and they looked it up in this big massive book and they found it and they go ‘Yeah, it’s this group XTC from England.’ So, I bought their album and I loved it, and I bought another album. And that was the floodgates: all my money pretty much went to music, from then on. I used to hang out all the time at CBGB’s and the Peppermint Lounge and I was really into new wave and a lot of the club culture music. Back then you had a real melting pot, especially in New York where you had rap, and pre-house house music, and new wave. So, I was really into that.

Mundovibes: It was all so new then and anything seemed possible. When did you get into DJing?

D: I came to Northwestern for school in the theater department and they were having this big freshmen mixer, and the general manager from the radio station was doing the music. She was in one of the production studios in the basement of the school playing the music and they were piping it out to this freshmen mixer for all of the school of speech students. And I was just playing name that tune with my friends, and every single song she played I knew. And so they were like ‘You should go and try and get a show’. So, I went downstairs and I talked to her and I applied for a show and I got one Saturday mornings. Then, for various reasons I left school and went back to New York, came back a couple of years later, started getting involved in the radio station again but times had changed and the rock show at NUR was in this kind of heavily ‘cooler than thou’ phase, where it was all about guitars and Husker Du, and things like that. Which I liked, but not to the exclusion of indie pop from England and stuff. And I also had gotten more interested in industrial dance music like Wax Trax and things like that. And there was no place for that on the radion station there. So, I struggled along for like six months on the rock show until I finally just got so fed up I quit. I didn’t want to do my show one day and I tried to get someone to cover for me and no one would cover. And, so one of the freeform DJs, this guy Chip, was bugging me to play Ted Nugent. You don’t really play Ted Nugent on the rock show on NUR in ‘86–that’s not nearly cool enough. But I was like ‘I don’t care’. I made a deal with him, I said if he could find me Judas Priest ‘You Got Another Thing Coming’, I’d play his Ted Nugent. So, he goes into the studio and he searches and searches and he finds it and brings it back. Long story short, my final rock show was thirty minutes non-stop of heavy metal music, at which point I quit. I wrote at the end of the log ‘I quit’. Which worked out fine because the rock producer was going to fire me as soon as he got back to the office anyway.

Mundovibes: At that time it seems nobody knew what to do with dance music, especially college radio which was so rock-oriented.

D: Exactly, which is why I took over the Saturday night program at NUR for a show called ‘Club Beat’. The idea was to have somewhere on the radio where people could hear ‘white club music’. Because there were plenty of places to hear the club music from the South side, if you went to the Warehouse, if you went to any of those places. But if you went to places like Neo or Smartbar, or Club 950 or any of those clubs on the North side of Chicago, there was no place to hear that music. And that’s what the idea for the show was, so we were playing Front 242 and Ministry and those types of bands. And as music in England, especially, started to change we changed with it. And so, we were the first place in town to play people like S’Express and M.A.R.R.S. and we just kind of folllowed that trend into it.

Mundovibes: How did you go from radio to the distribution business?

D: I became friends with a lot of labels and distributors through the program. So, I became friends with the people at Wax Trax, I became friends with a couple of guys who worked at a distributor, Kaleidoscope, which a lot of ex-NUR people would work at. And some of the key people at Kaleidoscope started a distributor, Cargo records. I tried to get a job at Cargo but I had never actually worked at a record store. I had worked in retail for years, especially in New York, and I knew lots about music but I had never worked at an actual record store. And, for some reason, that was the litmus test to get the job. So, I kind of fell into a job running a record store, which coincidentally ended up being two blocks from Cargo. One of the guys at Cargo went to be label manager at Wax Trax. And he had been doing most of the industrial dance buying at Cargo, so they didn’t have anyone to replace him with. So, I kept going over there, shopping for my store and going ‘you have nothing, you have no records. You should have me do it.’ So, eventually they relented, because now I had record store experience and I started working part time there. I’d work there every morning, while the owner of the record store would run the store. And then he would go to Ditka’s to bartend and I would run the store. I did that for three or four months until Cargo offerered me a fulltime job. So, my job at Cargo at that point was to run the non-existent dance department. So, you’re in this indie rock company, which admittedly carried some industrial dance stuff. But it was really an indie rock company and you had this little enclave at this point of one person, me, doing dance music. So I would buy dance music from all over England or Europe and then I’d call stores in the afternoon around the country and try and sell it to them.

Mundovibes: How did you turn people onto this music, which must have been so strange?

D: The main way you sell most big dance records is to play stuff for people, so nobody had any high tech things then, so you’d just take the phone and put it in front of a speaker. So, all the indie rockers, especially the shipping manager would hate it when I’d play the dance music on the speaker. It was just a very unpleasant experience at the time. But, the department grew and I hired more people and there’s almost like a who’s who of Chicago people who worked in that dance department. Rob, who runs Guidance was my assistant. Josh, who works at Gramaphone. Both the guys who do the buying at Dr. Wax on the South side. Chuck, who now owns Choke distribution and who is like the king of ska. He had actually worked with me at NUR. He was my assistant on Club Beat, and then he took over running the shows when I left. He ran the dance department at Cargo for a while, he worked with me. A lof of people came and it was a good experience for some. Some would have fond memories of it, some maybe not so fond. A lot of people went through there, and it was really a key place in the early days for certain kinds of records. From there I moved up to being the operations manager, and then at some point one of the owners of the company had to leave and I took over as General Manager and ran the company. When I started Cargo was seven people, and in the end when it closed in ‘98, we were up to 35 people. So, it was a pretty big company.

MV: What were the biggest challenges then with music. You were talking about new genres, like industrial music. You were there in the beginning, how did you change and grow?

D: The one thing I noticed was that whatever the trend or hot thing was, one of the things that was consistent with Cargo and with Groove, is we champion records that were cool before they were trendy and before they actually made any money. At the point they actually made money, they kind of moved past us. So, for example, with maybe the one exception being industrial, industrial we got there at the same time and some of it moved past us. When I was working at Cargo in the early days we were selling stuff like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry and Front 242. And then near the end of that whole scene all of those bands were on major labels. They didn’t go through indie distribution anymore, so we didn’t have any piece of that anymore. One of the things we first championed in the dance department at Cargo was American techno records, because back in the mid ‘80s you couldn’t find an American techno record in American stores, you could only find them overseas. The main people who were selling those were people who were exporting them to Germany and England. So, we were one of the first companies to actually take those records out of Detroit and sell them to stores here in America. So, we were doing stuff with Underground Resistance and Plus 8 , and all those guys before anybody really knew about them. And techno became bigger and bigger and bigger and once again, at a certain point it just passed us by. Both musically and in a business sense. The labels were making deals directly, they were getting licensed. Plastikman was on mute rather than on Plus 8, you know? We lost it, and we would constantly have to find the new thing to replace that and so we were the very first people to sell Portishead in America. One of our suppliers was friends with Go Beat in England, and we got white labels of Portishead’s ‘Sour Times’. All it said was P stamped on it. And in the early days it wasn’t an easy thing to sell. We were trying to convince people ‘this is fantastic, you need to get on it’. But it was kind of bluesy and the only kind of reference point was Massive Attack, but it was different. We pushed it and then we got the next single and we helped break Portishead at the early stages to a lot of stores and then it blew up. And, of course, once it blew up it was on London and Polydor and once again we were shut out.

MV: So, you don’t get the credit you deserve, then, or is it the money aspect of it that is the issue.

D: It’s a combination. I don’t know who exactly I would complain to but it is frustrating to know that you were supporting these bands in the early days when no one really gave a shit. And then when they come to town and play big venues, there’s no sense of any kind of connection to them, you know?

MV: You’re just there on the sidelines.

D: For most of them, they don’t necessarily know we had anything to do with it. And it wouldn’t be so bad if it only happened once or twice but it happens constantly. We used to be only one of two companies that dealt with Acid Jazz, the label, directly. So, we had a really good relationship with them and we sold tons of their stuff. And I remember the very first Jamiroquoi single, with the digeridoo on it. It was not an easy sell and we would push that, and Jamiroquoi got signed to Sony and sells hundreds of thousands of copies and we don’t get an invite to the show or anything. It’s frustrating in a way that you never can follow these bands all the way and have any kind of relationship with them. The other thing that’s frustrating-in one way it’s frustrating and in another way it’s cool-is that you always have to find something else. Because whatever you have, as soon as it gets popular or big everybody goes after it and usuallly you lose it. The only way you don’t lose it is if it doesn’t get big. If it stays kind of moderate then you’re cool. If it gets so small that you can’t even make any money on it, then you’ve got to drop it. And that happened with us like when we first opened one of the things that we really wanted to champion was overseas hip hop. And, so, if you were looking for hip hop groups from England or Germany or France we had them all, you know? If you were really into that music or knew about it, you would know certain labels and you would have them. But the problem was nobody bought the records. We would push them, but we couldn’t even sell literally 15 or 20 copies of these records.

MV: Because people were suspect to overseas hip hop?

D: Because people weren’t open to it and finally the straw that broke the camel’s back with us, when we first opened at Groove, for a couple of years we didn’t have accounts with some of the biggest hip hop stores. We finally got accounts with all of these stores, and we thought ‘if anybody can sell these hip hop records it’ll be them.’ Not that they’re going to sell tons, but at least there’ll be somewhere, that if somebody reads about these records and they want to get them, here’s a place that will champion them. They couldn’t care less-not one of them pretty much would support it. And, so, as a genre we had to give up and throw up our hands and say ‘we just can’t do it. We can’t just bang our head against the wall and have these records that never sell’. As much as we tell people they’re cool and try and convince them. We still carry a few records but there wasn’t enough and now, honestly, the other thing that’s in danger of going is some of the two-step. Two-step for a while was really good for us, we sold it really well and it got really hot and everybody was like ‘it’s the next big thing.’ But it didn’t really become the next big thing. And had it become the next big thing we probably would have lost it anyway. It probably would have gone to bigger labels and bigger distributors. So, instead, it kind of imploded and a couple bands made it past there but now we’re in the same boat. The stores that were interested in buying two-step a year ago don’t care and we’re close to throwing our hands up with that as well.

MV: In dance music, which tends to be fickle, that’s got to be one of the biggest challenges, not being too stuck on one genre where you can’t move on.

D: That’s especially hard for us, because unlike our competitors, we have a genre kind of misson. There is a certain kind of sound that kind of defines what we do. Something that has either a jazz or soulful base-and it can take different kind of slants. We carry some drum’n’bass but the drum’n’bass we carry is either really jazzy or really atmospheric. We carry some house, but most of the house we carry is really deep or vocally or soulful. So, we can’t just go with whatever trend is there. If gabber techno became the next big thing again, we wouldn’t go there. It doesn’t fit what we do.

MV: It’s a certain quality.

D: And that makes it hard is how close do we stay to that? And admittedly we have certain genres we pick up that don’t really fit that. Like, we do a decent amount of mash-ups, we do a decent amount of electro-clash. I don’t think anybody’s going to say that’s really jazzy and soulful but the other mission we have is to represent genres and labels and artists that are under represented, that fall through the cracks. Which is kind of what the dance department at Cargo did-stuff that doesnt’ fit what everybody else is doing, we were the place you would turn to. If someone does some bizzarro record that somehow would appeal to the dance people, the place to find it was us. And that’s the other thing. So, we gravitate towards the stuff that hasn’t gotten big. Because that’s the hole in the market. And if we do it well enough that nobody else can get in, that’s great. If we don’t then other people come in, and if the niche becomes much bigger then it moves past us.

MV: What are your general feelings about the state of the music business?

D: (laughter). I think there’s a lot of people that might slam the music business musically. Like ‘well, the reason people are stealing music or that stores are closing is because there are no good records.’ I don’t believe that for a heartbeat, I think there is lots of good music. I think the problem with the music business, to a certain extent, is access to it. When I was growing up there were radio stations, there were clubs, there were ways for you to be exposed to music and there were also ways that you could get music cheaply. All of my money in high school went to music but that was a time when you could buy an album at Tower for six bucks. I could go, and for $5.99 I could buy the new Talking Heads cassette. And if you really liked a band you could collect their entire discography for less than $50. Those days are over and beyond that because radio was much more album oriented than singles oriented, when you decided to buy a record you might have already heard three or four tracks off of the album. So, you knew that there was enough stuff on there that you liked, and even if there wasn’t, it wasn’t a great financial risk. And I think that makes such a huge impact now in terms of music. I think that music has gotten really expensive, there isn’t a lot of critical information as to whether it is good or not. And you don’t have a lot of opportunities to hear it. If you get to hear it, you get to hear one single and you hear it over and over again. Which would be great if all you wanted to do is buy the single but if all that’s available is the album-and they do this bait and switch all of the time. They’ll play the single to death, but the single is not commercially available, so if you really want that single you’ve got to go and buy the album. But you don’t know if the other songs are any good. The only people that seem to get past that are the mega-stars, where they pull so many singles off the album that by the time you get around the buying it you’ve heard four of five singles. I remember that with one of the Janet Jackson records I bought. By the time I finally bought it I’d heard half the record because everything had been pulled as a single. But for most people, you hear one song and you really like it and you’re like ‘well, is the rest of the album going to be any good?’.

MV: You end up paying fifteen bucks for one song.

D: Right, and that has a huge impact on people downloading music and copying discs for their friends. But I think there’s a hunger from people to hear music that they connect with and go buy it. On the business side, besides the pricing of records and not being able to hear it, is you have a real problem. I think a lot of indie stores should take a clue. Our whole plan is we take the stuff that people are not doing well and we try and do it well. We don’t try and reinvent the wheel, we don’t try and sell the stuff that other people are selling really well. I think indie stores should take a clue from that as well, and not necessarily try and go head to head with the Towers and HMVs of the world, but to provide them with the stuff they can’t get there. I think that’s one of the saving graces for a lot of DJ stores here in America is because they’re doing vinyl, and alot of them do imports. And those are two things that most of the big chain stores have absolutely no desire to do. But doing those things doesn’t mean you can’t look at what the bigger stores do well. And I think sometimes the indies stores don’t necessarily steal ideas from the bigger chains as effectively as they should. In terms of having listening posts, doing end-capping, having promotions, having a physical space that’s well laid out and condusive to browsing, having parking. The list goes on and on, or having competitive pricing. So, given that I think the state of the music business is in bad shape. I’ve got a lot of stores that buy from us that are on hard times, that don’t have a lot of money. And a lot of that is trickle down from the economy being in bad shape anyway. But I do think it hurts even more beyond the economy when you have something that is so easily traded and stolen as music.

MV: On any level there’s definitely that impact.

D: Here’s a concrete example of what I was talking about. If you have an underground record like the stuff that we sell, if you were to send that to the big chain stores it would just sit in the bin, and maybe one out of a hundred people would actually know who it is. They wouldn’t be able to hear it, there wouldn’t be anybody on the floor to tell them what it sounds like, but maybe one out of a hundred would say ‘you know what, I’ll take a chance and I’ll buy it. I read about this in some magazine.’ Now, if an indie store just does the same thing-just takes that record and sticks it in a bin and their staff doesn’t know it, and there’s no place to listen to it and they don’t play it on the stereo-then the only thing you’ve changed is instead of it being maybe one in a hundred people know who it is, maybe it’s one in ten. But, what if, just for arguments sake, the store actually had ways for you to be able to listen to that record, or played it in the store, or the people on the floor actually knew the product and their customers well enough to match them together. Now, there are stores like that, but unfortunately there’s not nearly enough. And so you’re faced with these products who’s only chance is at an indie store, and if they indie store would embrace that and run with that it would give them something effective to compete with the other stores. Because people want this music, they just don’t know that they want it.

MV: They need to be educated, and as you said radio has failed the listener. It doesn’t do what is was originally doing, which leaves us with the internet.

D: The internet is hard to because it’s so fragmented. I think the other problem with some of these things is there’s just not a real big tie-in between presenting you the music and you actually being able to purchase the music. There’s a split between people who hear the music but can’t find the music that they hear to go buy. And so they turn to things like Napster or whatever file-sharing thing or they turn to their friends that have it. And if the people who actually were turning them onto the music also said ‘and here it is, right here for you to buy’, I think they’d be much more likely to pick it up but there’s not a lot of people that are taking up that challenge. The way I always thought of selling records in the indie world, whether it be at a distributor or record store, is kind of like hooking up your friends. If you found some really cool records and some friends of yours came in from out of town and came by your house, you’d be like ‘dude, listen to this. Check this record out.’ All your doing is just taking the next step, and when they go ‘wow, that’s really cool, I want to get it, you go OK, here it is buy it.’ That’s the kind of relationship I think indie stores should have with their customers, and that’s the kind of relationship we try to have with our customers. That’s what we’re all about, we’re about saying ‘hey, we think this band is really cool, check them out. And here we’ll sell it to you.’ And the idea is hopefully they will turn around and do the same to their customers and go ‘hey, this band is really hot. Like, have you heard of Bent, this is the cool shit, you need to buy it. And we’re going to play it for you, we’re going to show you the reviews. And once we convince you it’s the cool shit, we’re going to sell it to you.’ And everybody’s happy. And that’s what I see as the way forward but unfortunately there’s not a lot of people that seem interested in doing that

MV: Are there shops that you work with that are doing that?

D: Oh, yeah, there are a few but there’s not nearly as many as I’d like. Which is the main reason we have mail order. If I relied on all the shops I deal with for people to be able to find this music, there’d be a whole helluva lot of people in America who’d just be out of luck. There’s whole states that we don’t have any wholesale customers in. And even if I have a wholesale customer, whether or not they decide to pick this record or that record is completely up to them. And there’s a lot of stuff we carry that some of our stores don’t pick up. And it just seems a terrible waste to have to say to everybody ‘yeah, I’ve got the records right here. I wish they were at your house, but because none of the stores in your town wanted to deal with us and carry these records, you’re just out of luck. So, that’s why we have a mail order business. We try to do it in a way so that we don’t compete with our stores. That’s why we don’t advertise it, that’s why we don’t have super low prices, that’s why everything ships late in the week rather than the beginning. The whole thing for our mail order business is not so that there’s an advantage to buy from us. The way I tell it to some of the staff is we are the store of last resort. We don’t want to take the business away from our existing accounts, but if the choice is you don’t get the record, or you buy it from us? We want you at least to be able to buy it from us. And that’s why we have these wack open-to-the-public hours. I mean, we’re open a whopping six hours a week at very inconvenient times, we don’t make any exceptions. And we do that, so if somebody really wants the record they can get it, you know? It’s not going to be super-easy and we don’t get tons of business that way, but that’s not the point. The point is, if somebody really wants that Buscemi CD, and nobody in Chicago wants to stock it, and guess what? I don’t think they do stock it. They don’t have to be ‘shoot, I’m out of luck’, they can come down and get it or they can order it and get it mailed to them.

MV: That’s a fair balance.

D: We try and walk that line all the time and it’s very, very hard. And every once in a while we get some static from some of the stores, but we have an obligation at a certain level to the music. There are labels and artists that trust us to try and get the records out to people. And we, in turn, trust our stores to do that and unfortunately we don’t have enough stores that are doing that for us in a lot of cases.

MV: Where would you say the interest in what you distribute is concentrated, on the two coasts?

D: It’s predominately the two coasts. Everybody thinks, because we’re based in Chicago that we’re selling all of these records in Chicago and the midwest but because we have such a strong focus musically, it really is just wherever people care about this music and unfortunately more people care about this music on the coasts and in certain big cities than in the midwest. So, I have as many store accounts in San Francisco or New York, than I do in Chicago. Because there’s just more stores and more people interested in the kind of music we do. If we did different kinds of music, either music that appealed to everyone, or music that appealed more towards mid-westerners or something than maybe we would have more stores but we don’t. And I think that’s actually kind of a testament to what we do and how we do it is that we’re able to keep those stores on the coast because we have a lot of competition from distributors that are right there. And, we lose some business to them, but we do a pretty good job selling to people in our competitor’s backyards. And that’s just because we have a real focus. People tend to think of us more as a regional distributor if they don’t really know what we do. But we’re more like a specialty distributor. For example, Ernie B’s is the premiere reggae distributor in America-nobody cares where Ernie B’s is. In fact, I don’t even know where Ernie B’s is, you know. It’s just, if you want reggae and you’re really serious about reggae, you need to buy from Ernie B’s. And it doesn’t really matter where you are or where Ernie B’s is. And, so we feel the same way-if you’re really serious about downtempo, or you’re really serious about broken beat, if you’re really serious about jazzy drum’n’bass or leftfield dance music, then you need to buy from Groove. And it doesn’t matter that we’re in Chicago and it doesn’t really matter where you are.

MV: Backing up a little, how did Cargo close and how did Groovedis come about?

D: In ‘98 the main owner of Cargo decided that the company was losing too much money, and he was going to close it down and there were a few attempts to save the company but in the end it just was unsavable. So, in the end of ‘98 it closed down and I was faced with no job and questionable prospects as to what to do with my life. I had spent the last ten years of my life working at Cargo. The only thing I really knew how to do was work at a record distributor and unfortunately there weren’t a lot of record distributors in Chicago, especially dance distributors, for me to go apply. So, I could get out of the business all together, which I definitely thought about, or I could try and take the part of Cargo which I really liked, the dance department and try and spin that off to a new company. So, I waited a couple of months to see if any of the other dance distributors would kind of pick up that niche that Cargo’s dance department had, which was the leftfield offbeat dance music that would cross over to indie rock stores. You know, dance music that non-dance people would buy. And nobody did, nobody picked up that slack-the records just weren’t getting there. So, I decided if I was ever going to do it, it had to be then. I knew the people, I had the contacts with the suppliers, I knew the stores. I could get out of the business anytime, but if I was going to stay in the business I had to do it then. Just coincidentally my father had come into some money and he lent me some money and I bought a bunch of the remaining stock from Cargo-things like computers and all the old dance stock. And there were enough suppliers in England and in Europe that were willing to take a chance with me, despite how much money they lost at Cargo, that we were able to open. So, in ‘99 we opened. The company, on paper, started in late January. We shipped our very first record the middle of March. We started out way too big, we had way too many employees. We had six employees when we started, and we couldn’t make payroll. We had sold a decent amount of records, but the money hadn’t come back and we just didn’t have the cash. And I didn’t know how I was going to fix it or what I was going to do. So, two-thirds of the staff ended up leaving, though thankfully on good terms, and for the next year or so it was me, Nate, and our shipping manager Jake. And it was the three of us for the rest of 1999. We ended up getting a couple of more people after that and now we’re up to ten people.

MV: And that’s where you want to stay.

D: Yeah, I’m pretty happy with ten. Who the ten may be may change but I think this is about where we need to be. I often wish we could do it with less than ten and I look down the list and go ‘how could we juggle jobs around or what could we do’. But, unfortunately, as a distributor you get to a point where you are stuck-you can’t do it with less people and be able to sell what you need to sell. So, it’s easy to add people, it’s very seductive. You have to keep it as tight as you can, but at another level, especially with the kind of stuff we do, it’s hard to cut it down too much.

MV: As an independent business, what is your primary challenge?

D: I think our biggest challenge right now is not so much in having a spot for us now, it’s having a spot for us a year from now or five years from now. It’s like ‘how do we make sure that we’re not obsolete.’ Because the music business is definitely going through some shakeups and I don’t want to be a casualty. I don’t want to have to find another job now. I like what I do, I like where I work and I’d like to make that viable for the future. And I don’t know if doing what we do right now is going to be viable in two or five years. So, the idea has always been from day-the main key thing that Groove is about is finding cool music and bringing it to people. The venue at which we do that right now is by distributing records to stores and doing mail order. But it doesn’t have to be. Groove can just as easily be helping people pick music for advertising. It can be involved in label and tour promotion. And those are things that ultimately we might really want to get involved in, it just depends on finding the right people. But the one thing that we firmly believe is that if you don’t have some records that you control, you’re going to get shut out. There has to be some records that, at least in the short term, can’t go past you. That people have to go to you for those records. So, the idea is how do you get those records? Well, you have to do a good enough job for them that people give you those records. You have to be able to promote them at some minimal level, you have to get the records out to the right stores in reasonable quantities. And that’s what we’re trying to do. In the long term it’s like ‘how do we as a company stay viable for whatever the music business becomes. What if CDs aren’t the way people buy music in five years? I don’t want to be tied to getting CDs from Europe and sending them to other people, because if CDs are no longer part of that chain we’re irrelevant. But if it is how do you find cool music that other people haven’t gotten and get it to people who want it, we could definitely be involved in that. Whether it’s digital downloads or subscriptions, there’s definitely room for us as a company to be involved in that. I’ve heard some people talk about how all music should be free and musicians should make all of their money from tour promotion. Well, then let us be in the tour promotion business, that’s where we want to be.

MV: Can you describe some of the genres that you specialize in, like what is broken beat?

D: Broken beat, when it first started, was kind of house music that didn’t quite have a house beat. It was dubbed in the early days, ‘house not house’. And it was a record that had house production, it had the same kind of keys and orchestration that you would expect in a house record. But the beats weren’t the normal four-on-the-floor, 120 beat house beats. They were just off and so after ‘house not house’, a lot of these people came out of the West London scene, so it became West London music. But then lots of people began making the music, in Germany and other countries, so they dubbed it ‘broken beat’ as in the beat was broken-it wasn’t a straight normal rhythm, it was a broken track. There’s a distribution company in England, Goya, who does a lot of the labels. So, you’ve got people like IG Culture and Domu-a lot of people who came out of the drum’n’bass world and some people who came out of the reggae world doing this music. And I think almost everybody would agree, we are probably the premiere place to find that kind of music. Our real core has always been and probably be for a long time, down tempo music, as represented by people like Portishead and Massive Attack, even though we don’t sell their records anymore, but people like that. We do a lot of jazzy and atmospheric drum’n’bass that years ago when we first opened most of the people buying drum’n’bass were buying the harder stuff. The stuff that was more jazzy, more soulful, really didn’t get as much attention. And that was the stuff we felt fit the best with us and because there was this hole in the market we did it. Now jazzy drum’n’bass is a little bit more trendy, everybody else does it. We try and do it better than other people. We’ve also moved heavily into Brazilian drum’n’bass, which is this new subgenre and we do a couple labels like that. We push them really hard. For a while we were the kings of two-step. We do a decent amount of two-step now but the demand for it has definitely died substantially. We do a lot of deep house; week to week we probably have as much deep house records as anything else. Even when I describe it I still think of us as primarily a downtempo distributor and a lot of people think of us that way, but we do an awful lot of house music. But we tend to do the more deep and soulful stuff, not the real banging stuff.

MV: It’s a more spiritual vibe.

D: Exactly. One of the labels we do is Deep Play from Sweden and their slogan is ‘Deep soulful house music’. And that’s what we do with house. And if it tends to be jazzy, so much the better but the one thing that’s consistent is it’s deep and soulful.

MV: Did you work with Naked before?

D: No, but Naked is the perfect kind of label. Naked is a label that musically would fit exactly what we do but for business reasons we don’t. They’re distributed exclusively through Caroline. And that’s the thing-a lot people who don’t really know all the intricacies of the business look at our rosters of records and labels and go ‘how come you don’t have this?’ And musically they’re right, but they forget that we’re not a store. We can’t just carry everything we want to carry musically. We’re a distributor, so we have to pick things that number one we’re able to distribute. So, certain things like Ninja Tune CDs-they’re distributed exclusively through Caroline so we don’t do them. Certain things go exclusively through K7. There’s records that musically we would like and we sponsor, but we can’t actually sell them because noone would buy them from us at a wholesale level. And ultimately we’re a wholesaler that sells some stuff to the public, not a store that also does wholesale. And that’s a big difference.

MV: What would you say to an upstart label? Don’t even try it?

D: There’s two answers to that: one, if you’re a person thinking about starting a label and you’re asking should I start a label, my advice is always no. Running a label is the quickest way to lose money. So, if you’re doing it because you have to, you have no choice-you have to get this music out. Then fine, go ahead and do it, no one’s going to stop you. But just don’t think you’re going to make any money on it. If you’re starting a label as a way to make money then I think anybody who doesn’t tell you not to do it shouldn’t really be considered your friend. Running a label is, in most cases, an easy way to lose money. It’s just a question of whether or not you can afford to lose what your going to lose, or whether or not you don’t have a choice. Now the question is, if you’ve already got a label, should you even approach us-yes you definitely should. Our determining factor is ‘does it fit what we do musically, and does it fit what we do business wise.’ So, musically that’s pretty straight forward. If you do the kind of music we do: if it’s down tempo, if it’s jazzy, if it’s broken beat, then you’ve got that first hurdle. Then the second hurdle is business: we have to be able to sell it in a way that we can make money. We don’t want to compete with everybody else for it. So, for alot of the music we carry on import-either we’re the only people with it or there’s only two or three other people in the country who sell it. So, it may not be exclusive but it’s awful close to being a very small set of people we have to compete with. For domestic labels, often times a domestic label will open up and try to sell to every possible person. I don’t want to sell a record that five other people are selling-there’s not enough value in it. Especially when you’re selling stuff that’s underground and unknown from an upstart label where I have to do a lot of upfront work to educate people to this music. And everybody’s going to have it for the same price. And what happens is most people buy it from whoever’s closest and fastest. So, if you’ve got distribution on each coast and I pick up your record and we’re all selling it at the same time at the same price, why are people going to buy it from me? So, in that case we say ‘you know what, musically we like your stuff but if you have more than one or two other distributors we’re just not interested-there’s not enough business. But, let’s say you’re an upstart label and you really like what we do and you’re like ‘I’m gonna sell to a couple of stores I know locally on my own but the rest of the country you can have’ then, if we like your music, we’ll pick you up in a heartbeat. You have to be realistic as to what that means. Just because we carry your record and we tell everybody it’s great and we put up sound samples doesn’t mean that every store in America is going to jump up and down and buy it. Which goes back to my first problem is that you have a lot of stores that really don’t push these records. So, you get some stores that carry it and push it and then you’ve got a whole bunch of other stores that couldn’t care less. And then you’ve got a smaller set of stores that care but just aren’t going to invest a lot of time and energy to push record. So, as long as you’re realistic as to what we can actually do for you, it’s great. The thing is people seem to forget, there aren’t that many really good stores in America. On the underground dance side, there just aren’t that many-you’re talking about maybe 25 or 30 stores. And the stores that can actually sell big quantities, you’re down to a handful. Maybe 10, and if those 10 for whatever reason don’t pick up your record or don’t like your record, your screwed. You’ve got a bunch of people buying ones and twos and that whole bunch is only maybe 60 stores and they’re not all going to buy it. Not every store is going to say, ‘yeah I’ll take a copy’.

MV: So, in terms of units what is a big seller.

D: For us, on a domestic record, if we’re only seling it in the states with no export business, we’ll sell on the low end if a bunch of people have it, or it’s not super hot, as low as 50 copies. On the high end, if it’s got a little bit of legs, maybe a couple hundred. There’s certain records we’ve had exclusively that have had really good legs. There was a drum’n’bass mix that this guy did in the midwest of a Method Man, Redman record that he did on his own as a white label. We probably sold 700 copies of that but those are the exceptions. On import, there’s certain records we sell a few hundred, there’s some records that are really, really obscure or really offbeat and we’re lucky if we can sell 15 copies, you know? You’ve got 15 copies of the record, you’ve got the entire states to sell it and sometimes that’s a struggle. Sometimes that’s a really demoralizing thing, which is another reason why we felt compelled that we have to have some kind of mail order business. On CDs there’s a huge range-there’s CDs we’ve sold a couple thousand and there’s CDs where, once again, it’s an uphill struggle to sell 20 copies. There just aren’t that many stores, and the stores you have-you have the CD and it’s got really cool music but most of the CDs we sell aren’t cheap, they’re all imports and it’s like how many people are really going to buy it. First of all, one of the problems with CDs is a lot of dance stores don’t even carry CDs-all they care about is vinyl. So, that’s an uphill battle. And then for those that do carry CDs, a lot of times they’re just looking for the ones that are going to sell themselves. They don’t want to have to work to sell it. But that’s not what most of the records we get are-they don’t sell themselves, at least not in the early days. Like, we carried the Zero 7 CD when it first came out in England, before all the hype hit. That record didn’t sell itself, you had to tell people, ‘this is the next big thing, you need to get on it’. Now, six months later, when it came out on Palm Pictures and Palm could put the sticker with all the great reviews it got worldwide, well, yeah, then it sells itself. But then it’s in every store in America. That’s the tradeoff these indie stores have to realize, they have a little window just like us where they’re the only people with it. But they have to take advantage of that, they have to push those records. Because if they wait until everybody knows about it-well guess what, then it’s on sale at Best Buy for $11.99.

MV: So, who’s the artist you feel now is the next Zero 7?

D: We’ve been pushing the Bent CD really hard. The Samba Loca CD, the Brazilian drum’n’bass classics. We feel that’s really strong. I don’t know how long this Brazillian drum’n’bass thing is going to go but at least for now it’s a pretty cool subgenre. Shaun Escoffery, who’s a British soul singer, I think his stuff is really good. We’ve got both his regular record, which is very much in the electroniic neo-soul vein, and there’s also a remix CD of his, with remixes by Koop and Jazzanova and Four Hero. And that’s really strong. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets picked up a year from now and somebody throws a bunch of money to promote him and market him and he’s in the Best Buys and Towers of America. But right now he’s not, he’s bubbling on the underground. On a more mainstream R&B side, because we do a lot of neo-soul, there’s the singer Terry Walker who’s signed to DefSoul UK, that we’re pushing and think is really nice. Once again, nobody really has it; it’s on DefSoul UK, most of the stores here in America don’t have it. It fits perfectly in with Floetry and Angie Stone and that kind of music. It’s interesting, we’ve now built up a neo-soul group of stores, like a contingent of stores that are really into it. A whole bunch of stores in Atlanta, which is hands-down the neo-soul capital. So, there are certain records like Shawn Escoffery and Teri Walker and this group the Rurals, which are really a house group but they’re really deep. So, we do really well with those.

Interview conducted by John C. Tripp, late spring 2003

Groovedis

Groovedis Myspace

Offtrack, Radio, Dirk, Rumpff

By J.C. Tripp

For the past decade DIRK RUMPFF has produced the fortnightly radio show OFFtrack radio, one of the internet’s freshest and most innovative music casts. Rumpf is one of the pioneers of internet radio who’s excellent music choice has earned him a global fan base and stellar reputation for programming musical “pearls”.

With OFFtrack radio DIRK RUMPFF has found the perfect vehicle for his sincere devotion to music: his goal is about beating a path through the unthinkably big jungle that is contemporary music, to seek out the tracks that really mean something, and at the same time creating a platform for his extensive network of music and friends. A place in the virtual space where bridges are built and a multiplicity of musical currents can come into contact with one another. It’s a place where that which has long since ceased to take place in conventional radio can happen: dramaturgy, adventure and surprising changes.

The same vibrant selection of music of Offtrack radio can be found on the Sonar Kollektiv released “…broad casting” compilation which takes in the spectrum of sound heard on the program. Compiled by Rumpff, “broadcasting” features exclusive music by Slope, Clara Hill, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Mark Pritchard and many others. It is a record of Rumpff’s wide-ranging tastes and impeccable selection.

(biography – with some revision – by Hannes Bieger / Dirk Markham , courtesy off Sonark Kollektiv)

MundoVibe: You have been a pioneer in webcasting with Offtrack radio. What led you to start the program back in 1998 and what has motivated you to continue?

Dirk Rumpf: Back in ’99 i started university in a little town in marburg (Germany) where i joined the local student radio. it was a lot of fun even though it involved a lot of duties in order to being able to broadcast. An internet radio station called cyberchannel opened its doors in a town near by and a friend did a d’n’b show there that i hosted when he was away. after a while they asked me if i would like to do my own show. back then it was only streamed live without any archive whatsoever. we could see the numbers of listeners online. i believe it never exceeded 20. nevertheless it was worth the effort to drive an hour to get there every week. the station went down a couple of years later and thats when i hooked up with simon brant in london (RIP) who just launched freaked.co.uk. regarding the motivational aspect i suppose it´s just the good music that i feel needs to be heard.

MV: The music Offtrack features seems to span a wide range fo styles from acoustic to hip hop and beyond. So, you are clearly not bound to any

one genre. How do you tie it all together?

Dirk: whenever someone asks me what music i like/play i don´t know what to say. somehow there are pearls in any kind of genre. can´t say that i am an expert in any genre but i think diversity is the key.

MV: What is the criteria for a song to be played on Offtrack? What are you seeking in a track?

Dirk: somehow with the show i try to create the soundtrack i like to listen to while on my bike to work or sitting in a train watching outside or just before i want go out. can´t name you any criteria but i suppose it´s just whether i “feel” a song or not it will get a spot in the show.

MV: You are a member of Jazzanova’s “extended family” with a longtime relationship with Alex Barck and their Sonar Kollektiv label. How did

this friendship begin and how do you work with Jazzanova?

Dirk: well, the friendship also began in marburg. i actually invited juergen to play at a party but he was away so alex came instead. we had a great time and a couple of weeks later he invited me to play at their clubnight in berlin which was of course a great honor for a little student dj like me. he introduced me to the rest of the crew and after that we always invited eachother to our parties also after i moved to munich. alex also talked me into moving to berlin and soon after i saw myself reading bedtime stories to his kids. today i am in the sonar kollektiv office almost every day since i started to produce with roskow under our little season & sygaire alias.

MV: Webcasting has become a great phenomenon for underground sounds, since most radio stations ignore it. What impact have you seen Offtrack radio making in terms of exposing music and expanding the scene?

Dirk: It´s difficult to say. From my point of view i would say the show probably hasn´t changed anything but it´s always nice to hear that people really enjoyed this or that show. some may have even discovered new music through the show which is exactly why i am doing it.

MV: What is your production setup for the program?

Dirk: very very simple. only 2 turntables, a cd- player, a 2-channel mixer, mic and a laptop to record the whole thing.

MV: Do you ever feel pressure with playing certain labels or artists based on your audience?

Dirk: never. it is strictly 100% the music i like.

MV: Since a webcast is a one-play type of program, unlike radio where there is rotation of songs do you feel that webcasts play a substantial role in “breaking” artists?

Dirk: i believe webradio is still a niche-thing. The “regular” listener still only tunes into his/her FM-transmitter. due to the large amount of webradio-stations you really have to dig to find the ones that you like. on the other hand you find a station for every kind of taste. nevertheless probably also here the ones who shout the loudest have the biggest audience. or you build your audience over the years and rely on word by mouth. it takes time but i still prefer that way. is there still a way for new artists to break through just through their music? thought it always goes hand it hand with an image campaign….

MV: You are a warm and inviting voice, which gives Offtrack a unique personality. The program is much more than just the music. How do you approach the presentation of the program?

Dirk: that´s a charming compliment. my friends actually make fun of my “radio voice”. can´t help it. it´s like a switch turned over once i have a mic in my face. actually it just happens. never have any kind of presentational approach in my head

MV: You recently released the compilation “Broadcasting” on Sonar Kollektiv. How did this release come about and how did you choose its tracks?

Dirk: some artists made their way to the sonar kollektiv because i kept bugging alex and juergen to listen to their demos so alex one day proposed to just compile a cd with all those tunes so i don´t have to bother him anymore. after 2 years of collecting and listening i ended up with this selection. important for me was that the tunes have a certain timelessness to them. it would have been a bit pointless for me to just gather the current hits and mix em up. for some of the tunes it took a lot of convincing, long emails, phonecalls to get them exclusive for the compilation but in the end i am happy with the result.

MV: Is Offtrack a labor of love — is there income from it or is it not important to you.

Dirk: it definitely is. actually i invest more than i gain also considering $$$ but it´s worth every cent and minute as long as there are listeners appreciating the show.

MV: It must be a great effort to produce Offtrack on a regular basis, what keeps you inspired to do it?

Dirk: again, it´s mostly the amount of exceptional music that is floating around in the big music jungle out there

MV: Who are some of the artists you see coming up in the future? Any new

genres that you see emerging?

Dirk: I suppose everyone is keen to know which musical genre is coming up but for me it doesn´t really matter what´s hyped at the moment. there a lot of exciting producers at the moment. for me a guy called clonious from vienna is goin to twist some ears soon but there are constantly artists that i have never heard of before that surprise me. recently the ensemble du verre produced a beautiful albumthat will hopefully reach some people but also artists like carl borg and dimlite are always inspiring to me among many others.

MV: It seems that even though the music industry is going through major

changes, the music just keeps coming. Do you see more quality music as a trend and how do you see the market evolving?

Dirk: actually foremost the quantity has increased. you really have to be outstanding these days do make yourself heard (or have a clever businessplan or styling-assistant) could write essays about my view on the current state of the music industry but i rather not. the internet obviously plays a major role- both good and bad.

MV: One issue we face at Mundovibe is the lack of feedback from readers. We know they’re out there but we don’t often hear from them. Do you face a similar “silence” from your audience?

Dirk: I am always surprised that there is someone listening at all. the feedback is sparse but constant so i know there must be someone tuning in out there

MV: What are some of your other ventures in relation to Offtrack? Where do you DJ? Is there an Offtrack party?

Dirk: due to my day job i am a bit tied to getting up at 6am every morning so i can´t dj too much or my patients would be at risk but at the weekends i sometimes play some tunes here and there in small clubs.

MV: Will there be an Offtrack tour in the future?

Dirk: no plans so far but i am on a little road trip through europe this summer and if my old car doesn´t break down you might be able to hear me spin some tunes on the way’

Offtrack Radio

Dirk Rumpff Myspace

Dirk Rumpff Blog

Different Drummer also released some seminal compilations such as ‘Bastard Tracks’ and ‘Music Is Immortal’, featuring acts like Templeroy, Painted Van and Euphonic. Remixing became an increasingly worthwhile past-time for Rockers Hi-Fi, as acts such as Sly and Robbie, Tosca, Ennio Morricone and Ella Fitzgerald all received the ‘Rocker’s’ touch. The continuing success of Rockers Hi-Fi in Germany, resulted in a Different Drummer Compilation entitled ‘Spliffen Sie Englisch’, which featured the cream of the German Nu-Jazz scene with tracks from Jazzanova, Beanfield and A Forest Mighty Black.

Now in 2003 and ten years on, Different Drummer are sticking to their dub pistols with recent albums from G Corp, Pre Fade Listening, Phase 5, and Noiseshaper keeping heads knodding. And to commemortate their longevity in the shifty music business they’ve released “A Different Drummer Selection” a hand-picked mix by G-Stone’s Richard Dorfmeister from the label’s extensive back-catalogue. The CD captures some of the highlights of a 10 year love affair with all things deep and dubby.

In addition to the label, Different Drummer Club Nights are held at The Medicine Bar in Birmingham, an increasingly popular venue for quality music of all genres. ‘Leftfoot’ is a night without musical boundaries which has seen the likes of Jazzanova, Fila Brazillia and Grand Central Records, whilst the Rootsical ‘Overproof’ has featured 100% Dynamite and The Blood and Fire Soundsystem. The Different Drummer Soundsystem is a collective of DJ’s Musicians and Vocalists which can range from 2 to 6 members. The musical agenda is based around the ‘Leftfoot’ Club Night, basically a selection of quality music from around the globe. The Soundsystem have performed all over the world as well as clubs and festivals around the UK.

MundoVibes fired off a selection of questions to label founder Richard Whittingham on what keeps the Different Drummer crew going:

What is the concept behind “A Different Drummer Selection”?

To celebrate the fact that we’ve been releasing music for 10 years.

What is Richard Dorfmesiter’s role in the project?

To mix a selection of our back catalogue into a beautiful inimitable Dorfmeister mix.

Did he select the tracks or just mix them?

Richard chose some and so did we.

Where did your love of dub music begin and how did it develop?

In a punk club, in 1977/8, in my home town of Birmingham England called Barbarellas.It’s still developing – I’m still find stuff that I didn’t know existed!

It’s interesting how prevelant bass has become in music today. How important is bass to Different Drummer’s releases?

Very Important. In instrumental music it’s usually the centre of a track, the melody, the part you hum…well it is for us anyway!

Since the label’s name is Different Drummer, is it all about representing underground beats?

I suppose so, but I wouldn’t turn my nose up at crossing over, going over-ground.

What was the founding mission of Different Drummer and how has it evolved?

We started DD to release our own music as Original Rockers, but now we

release other peoples music. We also like to release albums now, as before it was all about 12″ vinyl.

Different Drummer is both a label and a sound system. What is your version of the “soundsystem” and how similar is it to the original Jamaican version?

Well, we use two decks instead of one, we don’t just play Reggae….although

most of the music we play is heavily influenced by Dub/Reggae. The rest is

very similar – a selector dropping the tunes and an MC/Toaster chatting and

singing over the Rhythms. We also use a Roland Space Echo which was a big

part of the Reggae and Dub sound of the 70’s and a few effects.

What do you feel are the essential elements of a Different Drummer

recording? Is there a “signature” sound?

Not really….although we are predominantly known for releasing ‘Nu-dub’, but we have released Hip Hop,

Electronica, Drum & Bass. If we are into something we’ll release it!

Are you at all influenced by what is current in Jamaica or is it more London?

We are influenced by what lands on the doormat.

What makes a track wicked for both ears and the dancefloor?

I don’t know!

You represent both dub and hip hop. How does this work?

We represent other forms of music too, and it seems to just work – there’s no secret formula.

What would be your dream project if you could bring anyone together?

John Barry & Johnny Osbourne

Who are the producers that have most inspired you?

Lee Scratch Perry, Scientist, George Martin…

You work with talent from Jamaica amongst other places. How do you find these artists?

We find each other.

What is the Birmingham scene like?

The scene that we are involved in is pretty cool. B’ham is a big place and there’s a lot of things going on!

Dub is an international phenomenon. What do you attribute that to?

The bass line and the echo echo echo…

You represent Birmingham with the label and with artists like Mighty Math.

Do you actively develop local artists?

There’s not enough local talent coming our way, but I’m very proud when we release something from Brum!

What has been your most well-received project to date?

The Dorfmeister compilation, with the G-Corp releases a close 2nd.

You seem to have a connection with New Zealand.

Yes, NZ has a great music scene! It all started with a guy called John Pell, now a good friend,

booking Original Rockers to play his dub club in London. He eventually went

back to NZ and took us out there to tour. Also, a DJ out there called Stinky

Jim was playing our releases back in the early 90’s – we hooked up with his

label, Round Trip Mars, to release the NZ compilation Sideways.

What do you think of the international dub scene right now?

Very healthy!

How does Different Drummer fit into the dub scene?

Snugly!

How do you promote your music?

Carrier pigeon.

How does Different Drummer use modern technology, while still keeping aroots vibe?

We mix the two.

What are your current and future projects?

New release from Noiseshaper (their 2nd album for DD) Debut album from Al Haca Soundsystem Inevitable (due end of October) Next year we have releases from Overproof Soundsystem,

Moma Gravy, Dollboy, and a few others that haven’t signed contracts yet.

Are your production techniques more on the digital side or analogue?

A bit of both, but we are moving more towards a digital set-up.

What are the primary obstacles you face as an independent label?

Cash flow.

Will you ever get into the reissue business such as label’s like Blood & Fire?

We tried to license a load of Reggae tracks a few years ago, but gave

up as it was a complete nightmare – but never say never.

What are some venues and shops in Birmingham you’d recommend?

Medicine Bar, Swordfish Records, Massive Records, Plastic Factory, Jyoti

Hindu Vegetarian Restaurant, No Name, The Diskery, A2, The Soya Café.

Da, Lata, Patrick, Forge, Tin, Palm, Pictures, Da Lata, London, Brazilian, music, Serious

PATRICK FORGE AND DA LATA

By John C. Tripp

In 2000 Da Lata swelled onto the musical map with their stunning debut “Songs From The Tin”, a tribute to the Brazilian influences that first bonded DJ Patrick Forge and musician Christian Franck. Now Da Lata are back, better than ever, with “Serious”, a stunningly diverse and logical progression from the original Brasilian-basis of their sound. The song-oriented and ultra-tight recording achieves an incredible integrity of soul and purpose with its diversity of sounds and styles and collaborations. From the opening salvo of afrobeats on the title track, to the lyrical beauty of the fleeting “If u don’t know,” from the broken beats and electronic textures of “Reeling” to the earthy flavors of “Something,” this is an album that puts all of Da Lata’s influences forward and the final word is London. The cast of contributors is one of enormous talents: Jhelisa Anderson, Baaba Maal, Nina Miranda, Courtney Denni, Bembe Segue, Mamani Keita and Pedro Martins, as well as guest musicians. Once again Da Lata employed the talents of young Brazilian accordionist Marcelo Jeneci de Silva and the superior sonic skills of Toni Economides. “Serious” is definitely a contender for this year’s breakout release.

Mundovibes recently connected with Da Lata’s Patrick Forge to get the word on “Serious”…

“Serious” is a considerable opening up of global influences, yet with a London sensibility. Can you tell us how things have evolved since “Songs from the Tin”?

Well, we didn’t want to make another Brasilian record,so you’re right this album was all about opening things up and letting our natural influences and ideas come through. Yes there are global influences, but those flavours are around us here in London anyway, so this record is much more about the here and now, and it’s evolution has been a natural one, we knew from the start that we wanted to make a much more diverse album so that threw things wide open.

How important is London is shaping the sound of “Serious”?

Obviously the musical culture that we’re all plugged into has a massive role,but also it’s where we live and our experiences of the world are filtered through this crazy city where everything is in your face. Serious reflects both those aspects.

Da Lata seems to be a conceptual/collaborative project more than a group.

How do you view/define Da Lata? What ties it all together as one?

Da Lata really started out as a “project” rather than a band. We feel that there are many places we would like to go with our music and therefore it is easier to do this as a production team as opposed to a band where not everybody would necessarily want to do the same thing. Chris and Patrick don’t always want to do the same things either but it is easier to decide things between two people rather than with a whole

band. What ties it all together as one is the shared musical tastes between us.

What are the roles each of you play in Da Lata’s creative process? How

do you collaborate and how does this whole thing create such stunning music?

Whereas Chris has written or co-written most of this album, the production,arrangements, and sonic qualities of the music are much more collaboratively worked on. We’ve had a musical dialogue for over ten years, we’re both music lovers but coming from different perspectives, a musician and a d.j.,and it’s that contrast that has shaped the Da Lata sound.

“Serious” does have a strong Brazilian influence, yet it is thoroughly fused with a London sensibility. Can you tell us in what way Brazilian music has inspired you and how you’ve explored it?

Brasilian music and culture has been a shared passion between us for a long time now. The cultural melting pot that Brasil is has so much to offer in terms of music and art. We have both been inspired by the Brasilian way of doing things. In the same way that when you see the brasilian football team play with such skill and unique talent the music also has a magic all of its own.

With all due respect since this is such a great recording: why the short length on the CD? Did you want to exand on the tracks with remixes and keep the CDs songs within a more radio-friendly length?

Radio friendly had nothing to do with it!We in fact recorded about fourteen tracks altogether but in the spirit of less is more,and wanting to make a record that we felt worked, there are only ten tracks. Classic albums from the seventies were all this kind of length, and just because c.d. gives you the option of seventy plus minutes doesn’t mean you have to use them all! Some of the tunes just needed to be 3-4 minute songs, there’s no point in making it epic for the sake of it!

Can you give us a sense of how the tracks on “Serious” came together?

Every track came together in a different way. The most important thing about the recording of this album is that it was all recorded in London. All of the guests on the album were either flown in or were here at the time. This obviously influenced the way in which people performed. The album took roughly a year to complete from start to finish. some of the ideas for songs were already there before we started but most of the songs were developed over the course of that year. As well as working in a studio environment a lot of time was also spent vibing with the musicians outside of the studio.

The vocalits that contributed to “Serious” are incredible. Do you care to comment on any of them and their involvement?

We’re really happy to have had some phenomenal contributions from the singers on this album, big love to all of them! Jhelisa Anderson is someone we’ve both known and admired for a long time, we always hoped we’d get a chance to feature her on a Da Lata record. Bembe Segue made a massive contribution to the title track by coming up with the perfect vibe and hooks. Baaba Maal was amazing, when he finally blessed the studio with his voice and talent after many failed attempts to hook it up, every moment was magical. Courtney Denni came up with a great piece of spontaneous songwriting with ‘Can It Be?’, a whole song in one vocal take!

What role did Toni Economides play in the project?

Toni as always is such an important part to the making of any Da Lata record. He is a true master in the studio. His involvment includes recording, programming, mixing and co-producing. On this album he also has a writing credit on ‘Can it be?’

Has travel to other places had an influence on the music? What are some of the places that inspire you?

Travel is a very important influence on the music. Brasil is obviously a crucial place to go to. We have both been there and Chris goes to Brasil at least once a year. Some other places that have inspired us are India, Egypt, Venezuela, South Africa, Japan. In short, travel is one of the most important things you can do in your life!

What is your opinion on our present musical culture? Are ears more open today?

There are always things to be positive about, people making great music, inspiring performances,the culture is healthy and plenty ears are open,some ears could open a little wider though!

Do you wrestle with issues of authenticity with your music? And what are the biggest issues and challenges you face in creating your music?

Not really. However it is very important for us to be respectful in our interpretation of

Brasilian music. We don’t just want to copy brasilian music (or any other styles for that

matter), we want to try and interpret them as honestly and as respestfully as we can.

Can you tell us what the London rhythmic music culture is like at the moment? Is this an exciting time?

London is such a melting pot,and it continually evolves, I don’t think there’s ever a time when London isn’t exciting on that level.

“Songs from the Tin” was very well received, but “Serious” seems to have songs that will break Da Lata to a much wider audience, like ‘Distracted Minds’ or ‘Can it Be’. How do you feel about this?

Of course we would like our music to be heard by a wider audience. One of the reasons why this album might reach further is also due to the fact that it is mostly sung in english. We didn’t really make any real effort to be more “commercial” on this album, things just turned out the way they did quite naturally. We hope we can reach more people with album.

In a world that seems so bleak at times, what role can music play? Can music change the world?

Music can be an escape, it can be a release, it can inspire, it can create hope, it can reassure, it can comfort, it’s a lifeline for the soul, music is always changing the world!

What message do you hope to send to the world with Serious?

We hope to send a message of positivity with this album. It’s not really that we want to be taken too seriously but that we want people to take the world and the events which are taking place within it seriously. We don’t want to sound too pretentious though we want people to enjoy this album as well as be ‘serious’ about it.

Da Lata Myspace

CLARA HILL — FUTURE SOUNDS OF SOUL. AN INTERVIEW.

By J.C. Tripp

Editor’s Note: Clara Hill is busy working on her fourth solo album for Sonar Kollektiv. This interview occurred in 2007 with the release of “Folkwaves”.

Clara Hill has been a figure in the urban-electronic-soul scene since her teens. A the tender age of 17 the musically inclined artist founded the acid jazz combo Superjuice with her friend Funès. The duo gained a following in Berlin’s many dance clubs, laying the foundation for Hill’s forward-leaning sound. During these years, Clara made her first steps in live music and at one of her shows, had a fortuitous meeting with DJ Alex Barck of Jazzanova. This would be one of the most important of Hill’s career. The two became friends and in 1998 he introduced her to the producers of Extended Spirit (2/6 of Jazzanova): Stefan Leisering and Axel Reinemer, who were taken aback by Hill’s soothing vocals. Leisering produced one of her first professional songs, “No Use,” which would end up on Jazzanova’s landmark “In Between” album. Good fortune seemed to match Hill’s talents and her musical output took off with a number of new projects including her group Stereoton, a band that was rooted in hip hop but played with jazz elements. Hill also collaborated on several tracks with Berlin based singer Georg Levin including his hit “(I Got) Somebody New”, that was remixed by Masters Of Work.

All the while, Hill’s voice was strenghtening and maturing as were her song writing abilities, leading to the realization of her goal to record a full length solo album. In 2004 Hill released “Restless Times, a collection of reflective songs featured over the dreamy, deep house productions of Leisering and Reinemer (known together as Extended Spirit) as well as her old friend Funès. With “Restless Times” Hill’s great soul voice caught the attention of some of the genre’s most reputable artists, including Vikter Duplaix, Atjazz, and King Britt. Hill took advantage of this internation recognition by collaborating with these artists resulting in some velvety deep soul tracks like ‘Nowhere I Can Go, with Atjazz, ‘Paper Chase’ with Vikter Duplaix and ‘Did I Do Wrong’ with King Britt.

On her second album “All I Can Provide”, released in 2006 Hill took her collaborations a step further, working with the créme of clubland´s soul and jazz knob twisters. The result is a personal and very mature album, full of great songs, sensuous moods and complex emotions. All I Can Provide furthered Hill’s vocal journeys while mirroring various musical styles like deep house and boogie, jazz ballads as well as folk oriented songs.

Fast forward to 2007 and Hill has a number of additional collaborations on her growing resume, is busy touring the world and is releasing her third full length album “Sideways” as CLARA HILL’S FOLKWAVES. For this project she crafted 10 delicious acoustic-based and folk-oriented songs highlighting perfectly her passionate and rapturous voice.

The result is a recollection of neo-folk tunes in a very calm and slightly jazzy orchestration. She also left some space for very pure guitar and strings melodies in a sensuous atmosphere and invited her friends of JAZZANOVA and EXTENDED SPIRIT, as well as singer/song writer THIEF and NATHAN AMUNDSON from RIVULETS as male singers on the album. “Sideways” is a magnificent album full of enough emotional peaks and valleys to satisfy even the most temperamental music lover. This new phase in her artistic life will please her most faithful fans and will pave the way for the Sonar Kollektiv crew in its new adventures in folk music. which will be a departure from her past collaborations and will be Hill at her most intimate and personal (thanks to Soul Seduction for this last paragraph –ed.)

Mundovibes was fortunate to catch up with her in this exclusive e-mail interview just prio to the relase of “Sideways”.

MUNDOVIBES: You have been singing and creating music since you were in your teens and at the age of 17 you founded the band Superjuice. What inspired you to create music at such a young age?

CLARA HILL: Me and a good friend of mine we were writing a lot of songs. At this time we realized this kind of music/sound was not around in Berlin. We were listening to many Berlin- live-bands but we both were not satisfied with that matter of fact that the sound we loved to listen to were hard to find in berlin. (except the sound of early jazzanova music)

Short: at this time we thought our songs where nice and brilliant and we had to play on stages…in front of a real audience.

MV: Fate seems to have been on your side, since you became friends with Jazzanova’s Alex Barck while touring. How has that first meeting with Barck and your relationship with Jazzanova directed and impacted your career?

CH: I just can say that i´m still thankful. Jazzanova was and still is a big inspiration for me. making music together with Jazzanova was a dream of mine since I´m 17 years old. And it came true when I was 21 producing NO USE with Stefan Leisering from jazzanova. I´ve learned a lot about music and making music while working with Stefan and Alex. And a positive side-effect for me was that they had many useful connections around the world.

MV: You have also had a long standing relationship with Berlin’s Sonar Kollektiv, which is one of the leading dance and soul labels. How is it to be part of this “family”?

CH: It´s still a special feeling working inside of this “family”. Sonar Kollektiv is still a label which never stands still. It constantly changing and breathing. And that´s very important for me – very important and helpful for my music that grows everytime.

MV: Jazzanova have played a big role in shaping a new urban sound, much like producers of previous eras. What impact do you feel that they have had on the music you create?

CH: As I already said before, they influenced and inspired me. I also wanted to make music which is modern, fresh and at the same time timeless. Sometimes they were like teachers for me…cause in my opinion they already did so many experiences.

MV: Your first full length record “Restless Times” was produced by Extended Spirit and Funes. How did this recording come together? What concepts and experiences influenced its songs?

CH: To record a solo album, was my first goal. This special morning in 2001 I felt that “now” is the right time to make an album. To make my dream come true i chose those producers with whom i had already worked earlier. Jazzanova /Extended Spirit and friends of mine. The concept was to make fresh, contemporary but timeless songs…with many choirs within. Sounds simple but we wanted to create deep music, deep electronic sometimes “rough” sounds — in combination with a “soft” and sweet-soulvoice.

Five tracks from “Restless Times” I produced and arranged with three friends (i.e. Funès, with whom I already worked and with Stereoton´s drummer and DJ). The remaining seven tunes of the album were written, recorded and produced with Stefan Leisering and Axel Reinemer from Jazzanova, 2002-2004.

MV: “Restless Times” introduced your talents to an international audience. Were you surprised by the reaction to it?

CH: Yes, I was surprised! I never expected such a kind of good feedback. That was the reason why i was inspired to make a second album. the feedback was a kind of new impulse.

MV: The follow-up to “Restless Times”, “All I Can Provide” features collaborations with a number of leading producers. Why did you choose to do it this way, as opposed to working with just one team?

CH: First i had the idea to make a kind of compilation-album inviting different producers to work with me. (Like Ursula Rucker does before) Cause I wanted to make new musical experiences. I was curious how it would be to work with other producers from the scene.

It was a great challenge getting all these very good musicians together and bring them all on one album. Had no idea how it would be to work with so many different people. But it worked! Because all the producers I have invited and worked with speak the same “musical language”!

MV: With two full length records behind you, you are firmly established as an artist. How do you feel about your career at this point?

CH: I feel accepted but I´m not satisfied…I can´t stop making music. cant stop expressing myself that way. I believe I have to make more experiences to gain more range of my musical languages. That is why I had to make a new album…my third album…coming out in September. After working two years on “all I can provide” I had to make something fresh. it was the right time for a change.

MV: Love and relationships are major themes in your music. What is it about these subjects that inspires you?

CH: Past and present main influence is the feeling of the “unfulfilled yearning” of love. Love or relationships or friendships are themes within the most intense feelings. Intensive feelings: in positive or negative ways. Love includes hate and happiness, mourning and pain. Love includes everything. Open topic. And I like to write about that.

MV: How do your songs form and take shape?

CH: Mostly I got the instrumental-sketches at first. If the sketch is good it inspires me to write a melody or voice-harmonies…and with the melody the words are coming. Then I write a story around the words. Later I do the vocal arrangements by myself…most of the time. i have to be in a special calm atmosphere/mood. “the write moment” has to be particular which challenge me to catch the special feeling inside.

MV: Your voice adds a lot of warmth and feeling to the music, which is mainly electronic. It is kind of like the soul in the machine. How do you feel about the juxtaposition of a human voice and electronic music?

CH: I like the combination of warmness and coldness. I prefer to work with contrasts. I like the warm sound of soul (not only a soul-voice. It also can be a typical soul instrument, for instance a Rhodes-piano) in combination with the cold and strange sound of electronic sounds. Sometimes it can be very interesting if you combine a clean warm voice with dirty cold sounds. That is what makes a song so colorful and fresh.

MV: How have you grown as an artist over the years? how has your vocal style evolved?

CH: I think now I can be more relaxed because i´ve learned so many things. And I can imagine that you can hear that in my voice. Now I can trust myself more and more ´cause I know what is good for me and my music.

MV: Would you ever want to work in a more traditional “band” setting with live instrumentation?

CH: That´s what I already do! Since I have my new “all I can provide band” I´m working with live instruments. And for my forthcoming album I also chose live instrumentations to translate my musical concept behind that album. We have a drummer, a lot of guitars, bass, keys and sampler/ laptop beside some electronic sounds.

MV: How does your “live” performance differ from producing music in the studio?

CH: As I said before, I tried to mirror the width of the full productions. that’s the reason I founded this band with a drummer, bass,synthesizer +rhodes, laptop and for the new band plus a guitar. if you do a performance with a band you have more energy. that´s what I found out again…(it´s like in the past when I had my own band.) Beside of that I´m also performing my live-pa set with a DJ.

MV: Collaboration plays a big part in your music. What makes collaborating interesting for you?

CH: When I was 17 years old I always worked with one person. That was OK but I had to make steps into the future. In my opinion it is good to work with many musicians to make many experiences and get new inspirations.(sure, it depends on with whom you work!) It can be a special phase in your life. And making experiences means you can develop yourself and get more structure and character. But for the last album I just worked with a small team to keep the intimate and creative athmosphere of the music.

MV: What is it like to live in Berlin right now? How does the city influence and inspire you?

CH: I just can say that berlin is a very creative town. In the part of Berlin where I live you can find many artist, musicians and students. That´s a very inspiring atmosphere. It makes me feel free. But when i´m writing my songs I have to be alone and it has to be very quite.

MV: There is a great intimacy in your vocal style which ranges from soothing to vulnerable. Do you sense this as you are writing and performing?

CH: No, not really. Cause sometimes I don’t want to sing in a smooth and intimate way. But it seems to be a kind of “trademark”…but i never influence it.

MV: Trends in music all constantly changes and there is always a “new” sound. How do you keep up with this ever evolving state of music?

CH: As I said, I try to keep up with that…but try to keep my own style…no matter if it fits to what is hip or not. But I think it is important tobe well informed. It is good to know what most of the people are listen to…it´s a kind of orientation.

MV: There is a cosmic side to your music, with the spacey sounds such as those heard in “For Your Love”. Is there a connection with jazz from the 60s and 70s here?

CH: Sure there is. My music comes from listening to soul-jazz music from the 70s, jazz folk pop from the 60s and boogie and house tunes from the 80s/90s. These directions you can find in my music.

MV: What do you think of some of the new folk sounds that are coming out now? Is this inspiring to you?

CH: Yes it was…but before the sound came out. When i was 16years old i was listening to grunge music and a lot of guitar music. Today i go back to these roots. I rediscovered the guitar music for me. That´s the reason I wrote the last album: clara hill´s folkways: sideways which is a musical sideproject.

MV: How do you want your listeners to react to your music? How do you see them connecting with it?

CH: For me it´s always important to see: how music is moving people. I would like people to be open for my music. I would like to see people are listening to my music when they are outside, travelling, sitting in the car (because of the special mood) or dancing and also when they are at home, when they are quite, deep and relaxed.

…and then the hidden tracks will wake them up.

MV: What are the challenges of creating your music, both with your vocals and working with music that is very complex?

CH: My biggest challenge is to break new musical grounds. The thing is, not to stop that process and keep the passion. And i always want to touch souls with my sound of music. which is the combination of my voice, words and production.

MV: What are the challenges in fitting your voice and lyrics to a producer’s music? How do you improvise in this context?

CH: I´m mostly co-produce my songs. which means i always say what sounds i would like to have and which directions i want to go. So there is no need to improvise in this context.

MV: The majority of your songs would are slow to mid-tempo. Is this where you feel your music works best?

CH: I don’t know. On “restless times” the focus was on mid-tempo songs. On “All I can provide” I wanted to sing on more clubby and boogie tunes. I just can say that I prefer to work on different musical styles. Otherwise it would get boring for me, probably. I don’t want to define my style…when i´m writing music I just want to reflect the current phase of my life.

MV: Who are some of your inspirations today?

CH: Musical inspirations: these days i´m listening to Nick Drake, Linda Perhacs, Beck, Beatles and Rolling Stones again

MV: What are your feelings on the U.S. audience, which is huge but exactly in tune with what is going on in Europe?

CH: This march was the first time when i played for U.S audience. I really enjoyed it. In Miami the people were singing “NO USE” together with me…nice! I´m looking forward to play more concerts in the states. I hope there will be a small U.S tour with the forthcoming album.

MV: There will be a new full length soon. What can we expect? Are you collaborating with any one you can tell us about?

CH: As I said before…for the new album i didn´t make big collaborations. Cause this time I wanted to keep this personal and intimate feeling. For this album i wrote 8 songs. You will listen to 10 folk-songs including electronic sounds and natural guitar songs…songs which are direct and pure. I knew exactly how to create the sound for this album. I worked with marc mac and extended spirit and sung with rivulets and sascha Gottschalk from Thief. A small team and friends I know for a long time.

Clara Hill Myspace

Sonar Kollektiv