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I want to document a little my intentions or hopes for what I might be able to contribute and learn from this week’s festival of Gnaoua music in Asilah Morocco. I should have written this before but here we are. I arrived in Asilah yesterday afternoon with some time to acclimatise and adjust to a different pace of life and a constant flow of musicians and languages.
I will of course be delighted to share my music with audiences and to contribute to the various ensembles which will gather throughout the week to improvise together. but there’s more to music than the stage. As a research project this opportunity offers me two specific avenues above and beyond documenting the musical activities in audio, images and film.
The first is a close-up appreciation of individual musicians, specifically musicians dedicated to Gnaoua music and most likely string players, based on the simple fact that I know almost nothing about this music apart from what I’ve gathered from the internet. I would like to find out about their background, their understanding of music generally and their chosen musical practice, the instruments, the organology, the technical aspects of playing their instruments, the scordatura, notions of melody and rhythm.
The second is an understanding of how a tradition comes to be established and disseminated, its history and evolution, how the tradition is passed on to new generations, and most importantly for me, how the tradition might coalesce with other musical traditions and hybrids like my own.
Finally in keeping with the food or menu analogy here’s a picture from the local supermarket.
I will of course be delighted to share my music with audiences and to contribute to the various ensembles which will gather throughout the week to improvise together. but there’s more to music than the stage. As a research project this opportunity offers me two specific avenues above and beyond documenting the musical activities in audio, images and film.
The first is a close-up appreciation of individual musicians, specifically musicians dedicated to Gnaoua music and most likely string players, based on the simple fact that I know almost nothing about this music apart from what I’ve gathered from the internet. I would like to find out about their background, their understanding of music generally and their chosen musical practice, the instruments, the organology, the technical aspects of playing their instruments, the scordatura, notions of melody and rhythm.
The second is an understanding of how a tradition comes to be established and disseminated, its history and evolution, how the tradition is passed on to new generations, and most importantly for me, how the tradition might coalesce with other musical traditions and hybrids like my own.
Finally in keeping with the food or menu analogy here’s a picture from the local supermarket.
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I was lucky that my father took me up on wanting to learn guitar as a young boy. But at first it didn't quite pan out the way I had hoped. I thought I'd be learning Bob Dylan and blues songs. Instead my Dad found me a classical guitar teacher and I thew myself into learning the most amazing music, mapping out the history of my chosen instrument from the early vihuelists, notably Luis de Milán, to Dowland and the lutenists, to the classicists Aguado, Carcassi, Carulli, Giuliani and Sor whose studies I still play to this day. Then the Spaniards, Francisco de Asís Tárrega Eixea, Ponce, Torroba and finally Bach and Villa-Lobos whose music taught me the virtues of patience and attention to detail. Pieces like Bach's Chaconne and the Preludes of Villa-Lobos have been enormous landmarks in my musical career. And all realised under he watchful eye of Andrés Segovia Torres, 1st Marquis of Salobreña, who, pipe in mouth, smiles down at me benignly from the framed picture in my studio.
For a long time all I wanted to do was live in Paraguay and play concerts in small venues around Latin America. All on this guitar, an Oscar Teller which I bought a long long time ago from a shop in London and which I've taken all over the world on my travels. The rosewood back and sides are probably unobtainable nowadays. It never goes out of tune. I once wept when I took it out of its case after a few years, such is the emotional imprint that instruments can leave on a player. Now I play it as much as I can. I believe that if you can play whatever it is you do on a guitar like this you can play on any guitar because it has a wide fingerboard which you have to work upon, like a large canvas.
For a long time all I wanted to do was live in Paraguay and play concerts in small venues around Latin America. All on this guitar, an Oscar Teller which I bought a long long time ago from a shop in London and which I've taken all over the world on my travels. The rosewood back and sides are probably unobtainable nowadays. It never goes out of tune. I once wept when I took it out of its case after a few years, such is the emotional imprint that instruments can leave on a player. Now I play it as much as I can. I believe that if you can play whatever it is you do on a guitar like this you can play on any guitar because it has a wide fingerboard which you have to work upon, like a large canvas.
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Everyone else does it so here's me posing with a guitar on a couch. A twelve-string Guild as it happens, to which I throw as much right-hand complexity as I can. My peacock loves it.
