Bojan Z: Stranger Sounds

AAJ: My musician mate last night at the concert said to me: "I bet you Bojan has Hunky Dory by [David] Bowie, which has Rick Wakeman on piano.

BZ:I had it. That's the one where he's flying or something, a blue cover. I don't know where they've gone all those LPs—somewhere. I was really listening to all of it, I was listening to the Sex Pistols, like, all the way. It was in '79 that I was in London—Supertramp had just done Breakfast in America, The Police had the second album, Regatta de Blanc, so it was a perfect vibe, a London vibe that I could feel when I was there at 11 years old. I was already five years into rock. Yeah, that's why underlying this side of my musical education I ended up knowing quickly that I would not be a classical pianist.

AAJ: Although I think it's clear to anybody that you have a classical style in your playing.

BZ:I had training of course but what you hear mostly is the way I'm listening to this music, and I'm still listening to this music. I don't need to spend hours in front of the written notes. I'm used to learning music by ear not by reading it on paper so that's what you hear. Certainly I made a profit [benefited] out of years—I started when I was five, so you know by the age of ten I did have the basic things about the instrument in my fingers. But I discovered how to practice by myself when I finished music school when I was seventeen. By myself I sat down, so once school was over I could really deal with it myself and find the importance of it for me.

Yeah, so for me the rock side is very important. And it's not like a sin from the childhood—far from that because quite a lot of jazz musicians keep an eye on their rock period and that's where Ben Perowsky just blew my mind when I heard the way he's playing with a rock band, and the way he approaches it is exactly the same as when he's playing duets with Sylvie Courvoisier, you know, completely improvised music. For him it's exactly the same thing. And when you listen to him play this beat, for example on Xenophonia we play two tunes which have more of a rock feel, "Ashes to Ashes," by David Bowie, and the second one is a real slow blues, but like a rock blues. The sound he's got, the way he's playing the music is just amazing. He's not going to do it because he has to earn more money playing this, no. He's into this music body and soul. Actually for me it's the same thing—I still listen to everything that can move me, you know. I was into "Buttons" when I was fifteen years old so now I'm not going to say ":Buttons, oh no!"

AAJ: It's formative, isn't it?

BZ: Yeah, and I like continuing to inform myself about machine skills and recording engines and things like this—it's very helpful. So that's my knowledge of rock music. I was listening to everything I could get my hands on.

AAJ: How many languages can you speak?

BZ: Fluently, three, and I can express myself a little in Italian but this is more because of the proximity and love I have for their language and this country. On the other hand, my problem is the house where I will have complots [conspiracies] behind my back in Dutch, so I am about to try and learn some Dutch in order to understand.

AAJ: I guessed you had three minimum and I imagined you had bits and pieces of a couple more—do you think there's a correlation, a relationship between an ability to learn and absorb spoken language and an ability to absorb musical idioms?

BZ: Of course. For me, what is music if it's not a language? I've got two sons from my first marriage; both of them are interested in music. The first one even has some other talents which I discovered when he was six—that he's got perfect pitch. Mine is not perfect. By practicing music for quite some years already I can guess the note. But the funny thing is looking at them and giving them some education about music and helping them achieve it—the only idea I had about it was I wanted them to understand music as a language. Then they do with it whatever they want but I couldn't permit them to end up not understanding music as a language. And the way it happened made it clear to me that music is a language. Now where are the frontiers of this language and where does it go in another country? Depends on so many things. But it definitely has something to do with ability to speak other languages. The wish to do it is the thing.

AAJ: In the concert in Siem Reap you cited Don Cherry as an influence. Piano players apart, what other musicians like Don Cherry have had a big influence on you?

BZ: Oh Miles Davis certainly. It's not very original I know, but heck! If I didn't say it I would be lying. I'm still listening to....the way he generates music with the guys that are around as well, that's one of the very strong points of his artistry. But the way he's playing trumpet, the sound he had, this is really happening you know. Ah, so many of them you know. I still listen to all the major...Charlie Haden. I was studying double bass for four years too for the classical thing, so I do have a double bass, which is another thing which helps me playing with bass players.

AAJ : When you're solo you are a bit of a one-man band. The percussion thing, particularly the rhythm of your piano playing—you're the drummer, the bassist as well as the pianist .

BZ: Well, that's Me, Myself and I which I told you about. No, but it is because I do think and I imagine bass, I imagine drums, I imagine harmonies. Well, but that's an important thing you know. Important? It's an interesting thing—I studied with Clare Fischer who's supposed to be the most sophisticated harmonicist, harmony-wise pianist living on this planet, because Bill Evans and the others are not here anymore. Which is true, and I do hear all these things, but very often, and especially when I play solo I emphasize the rhythmic and line—wise things and I like actually the African color of these non-African instruments, if you see what I mean—the lyric side of it too.

Actually, in my McCoy Tyner period I was very touched by the way he made this instrument sound like a Kora—I don't know if he was aware of it himself but he certainly did it. For me the most African sound of the piano were on Randy Weston and McCoy Tyner's records, and he's got this percussive thing that afterwards Chick Corea took and in his own way made out of it something else. But I was listening to him quite a lot. I'm still juggling you know, everything I hear. You know I bought this video in Tokyo of Bill Evans and it's funny to see this man. He was definitely a freak! You know, his broken teeth...

AAJ: He was smacked up though for a lot of years.

BZ: Oh he was smacked up yeah, in this video he is. And then of course there is the thing where he sat down and played a melody with just one finger and you are like oooooh! [speechless]. You know, touched by some grace of course. Why do I tell you this? Because I remember when I was studying all these guys, it was really like corresponding to my teenage spirit while I was looking to Red Garland he was the God, the rest was shit. Then boom! I was switched to Wynton Kelly. Wynton Kelly was God! etc etc. etc. I was treating all of them and nowadays I'm still listening to them and Alfred Brendel, you know on the classical side.

I just love hearing all these different things piano-wise, just on the one hand to remember the lost colors of this instrument because there is a tendency nowadays growing into a certain pattern of piano playing that most of the pianist are using and they just forget about these things for example, Errol Garner or Earl Hines and guys like this, the way they were using this instrument—so all these colors are a bit left aside. So, Duke Ellington is one of my favorite piano players because he's the one I like listening to at almost any moment of the day, so fresh and so mysterious and his attitude so...hip! If you ever get your hands on Music is my Mistress there is one thing that left me breathless and it was at the end of the book, there is a list of the tunes that he composed, I mean, I really felt like, little, and lost in the woods. And you're looking at the titles and it's like Ohhh! My goodness! What a production! Quantity and quality.

AAJ: He was a very special case though.

BZ: He's one of the special cases but hey, better listen to special cases like this because they kick my ass and everybody needs it every now and then.

AAJ: Are you familiar with a pianist, Jan Johansson?

BZ: No?

AAJ: He's a...dead. He was Swedish and nobody knows the guy...

BZ: Ok! It's possible that it was this guy that Esbjorn Svenson mentioned at some concert that they were dedicating a tune—it was in the Sarajevo Festival. That's where I saw Esbjorn with the trio, where I was playing the first part of the evening and he was playing afterwards, and he was speaking about this guy, dedicating a tune, and I think it was this name. So who is the guy?

AAJ : Jan Johansson. I was curious if you are familiar with him because he sounds like nobody else. He's Swedish who, loosely speaking, you could call a jazz pianist—solo stuff by and large, but not dissimilar to yourself—he has the folkloric side which sweeps, infuses right the way through everything he plays. Beautiful, quite minimalist. The version you did of "Ashes to Ashes" in Siem Reap—I could see him, if he were alive today, doing something like that.

BZ: That I really look forward to hearing.

AAJ: While we're on Bowie. I read an interview with Bowie not that long ago and he said that in the near future musicians are going to have to start doing an awful lot of gigs because that's the only way they'll be able to generate any money because he says musicians are losing control over their music because of pirating, downloading and that made me think, because of your song "CD Rom," which is a kind of fond portrayal of the CD pirating in Belgrade. I just wondered where you stand on pirating of music.

BZ: Things are very clear for me, because I just finished this recording and I know that the making of the CD cost 35,000 euros. This is the investment. So, what is the way of generating the money back? Author rights. They take 50% of my author rights, but this is not just for them making money, this is to inject money in my career, my posters, things like this. And the second thing is selling. I'm lucky to be working with guys who are investing in quality besides the fact that the times are not hard, they are impossible to live for them. So there are many different views why it is like this, but this is not the question. So, very obvious, the object itself is completely devalued. I heard my producer Pierre Walforz say this on the radio a few days ago, doing a radio promotion in Belgium and he said that nowadays, you know, bringing a CD as a gift at a birthday party is the worst gift you can think of. It's like, come on in anyway.

AAJ: It's the best gift you can get!

BZ: How about this? I would receive an LP and jump over the person, look at it and couldn't sleep for looking at it. So, it's true that nowadays, with the CD it's hard to make people believe that this is a work of art. This is art, work, that costs money. If you want to have a nice cover, somebody thought about it—it costs money to make it and things like this. The good thing if I can say it's a good thing for me is that I am already used to not earning my living by selling CDs. I'm still doing OK. I'm still selling like at least 10,000 CDs.

AAJ: Per year, you mean?

BZ: No, no. it's an average for CDs I make. For example Solobsession (Label Bleu, 2000) is getting up to 20,000, but it was done in 2001. It's still selling. But most of them did reach this respectable number of 10,000. If Bowie says it he cannot be wrong about it because it's there. If I park my computer here in the hotel and put my CD in it I can send this CD to my wife in real time, which means it will take the time that it takes to listen to it, or even less. You can pass this quality music through the cable in real time. And it's going even much faster so we'd better get things organized, or there will not be good music any more.

Selected Discography

:

Bojan Z, Xenophonia (Label Bleu, 2006)
Julien Lourau, Fire and Forget (Label Bleu, 2005)
Marimanga Trio, Marimanga Trio (Gramofon, 2004)
Bojan Z, Transpacifik (Label Bleu, 2003)
Nguyen Lé, Purple—Celebrating Jimi Hendrix (ACT, 2002)
Henri Texier Azur Quintet, String Spirit (Label Bleu, 2002)
Julien Lourau, The Rise (Label Bleu, 2001)
Bojan Z, Solobsession (Label Bleu, 2000)
Karim Ziad, Ifrikyia (ACT, 2000)
Bojan Z, Koreni (Label Bleu, 1999)
Henri Texier Azur Quintet, Mosaic Man (Label Bleu, 1998)
Nguyen Le, Maghreb & Friends (ACT, 1997)
Simon Spang-Hanssen, Instant Blue (Storyville, 1997)
Michel Portal, Dockings (Label Bleu, 1997)
Bojan Z, Yopla! (Label Bleu, 1995)
Henri Texier Sonjal Septet, Mad Nomads (Label Bleu, 1995)
Bojan Z, Bojan Z Quartet (Label Bleu, 1993)
Henri Texier Azur Quartet, An Indian's Week (Label Bleu, 1993)
Sylvian Beuf 4tet, Impro Primo (Big Blue Records, 1993)
Vincent Courtois, Turkish Blend (Al Sur, 1992)
Jacques Bolognesi Big Band, Caravanserail (OMD, 1988)

Photo Credits:
Top Photo: JM Lobrano
Center Two Photos: Ian Patterson
Bottom Photo: Jean-Luc Agathos

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