INTERVIEWS & ARTICLES
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Actuel DECEMBER 1981 - by Frederic Joignot & Jean Pierre Lentin
MUSICAL EXPLORERS IN AFRICA
We had met them together and had presented them together. Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, David Byrne. The strange alliance of the artistic avant-garde, the cerebral rock'n'roll of the Seventies and unstable and nervous afterpunk. Jon Hassell, forty year old visionary composer. Eno, thirty-two years old, sound acrobat of futuristic wild imaginings. David Byrne, twenty-eight years old, anxious and disturbing singer of Talking Heads. They sought fusion between the breaths of Africa and electronic technology, between the telluric rates/rhythms and the power of the amplifiers, between improvisation and discipline. Their research flattered our will of mixture and eclecticism. To marry the energy of primitive and the collages and mixings of the futurists, to violate the avant-garde and to channel Africa. Everyone would have his fill.
In October 1980, David Byrne and Eno were to leave together for Nigeria.
One year afterwards, here they are. Their trajectories diverge. Jon Hassell maintains his distance and continues his oeuvre, meticulous hermit. David Byrne is producing a new disc for the B-52s, goes slumming on the side of the avant-garde and still has not been to Africa. Only Eno was in person on the black continent: he recorded an afro rock'n'roll group in Accra, in Ghana.
At the end of 1980, a Ghanian producer falls by chance on Actuel issue #12 where Eno explained his African obsessions. He takes Eno on his word and invites him to record a disc with his best group, Edikanfo. Right on target. For a few weeks Eno was gathering information about Africa. He was hesitating between the large metropolises, Fela's Nigeria, Zaire which reigned a long time on the African music, a little deadened inventive Cameroon but...
July 1981, Eno arrives in Ghana, in the heart of anglophone Africa, the country which arranged in the Forties the first African modern music, the highlife, the mixture of the jazz, the rumba and the tribal drums. Faycal Helawi, the producer, is sitting in his marrowy armchair and swallows a lychee with a voluptuous pout. He has a small Neron side, sensual and worrisome. Ten young dogs always trail behind him. They thunder, they fight and at times Faycal shouts to them Kill, kill. Aside from this, he's a charming man.
This 35 year old Lebanese has always lived in Accra and thinks of himself as African. But he still keeps a taste for the great Arab meals, stuffed zucchinis, grilled lamb and Chinese fruits for dessert. In all of West Africa it is the Lebanese who control the trade and import-export. I therefore have a little fun when he harangues me for over one hour on cultural plundering.
"All the rhythms of funk come from here. You want evidence?"
He makes me listen to a green old labelless, nameless 45. An ultra-merry funk starts.
"These are Ghanaians! Since the Fifties, tens of investigators arrived with tape recorders, they recorded everything for the large companies Phonogram, Decca, by buying the musicians for a mouthful of bread. That's how they fattened themselves on our back."
And Eno?
Faycal sighs and swallows a new lychee. I find that incredible. Mr Eno passes through here and everyone comes to hear news about him. But Eno came here amongst us to learn. He helped to record the disc of one of my groups, in my studio, nothing more.
Didn't he play himself?
"Not much. From time to time he would strap on a guitar to support the rhythmic section."
He did not come only for that.
"No. He helped us to use all the possibilities of the studio. He is a first-class engineer. All the musicians will tell you so."
He's a musician too.
"I tell you that we recorded a disc of my group, Edikanfo."
Can we listen to it?
"You do not have a hidden tape recorder I hope..."
I am permitted to hear only one piece. Near enough to Fela, a full orchestra that roars, frantic percussion, blasts of tearing trumpets.
Where is Eno in all of this ?
"Arrangements, echo and resonance effects. But listen a little how one makes rock'n'roll here. Over the drums, one adds percussion. You hear the congas? How hard they strike. This is African Rock. What a shame, we do not have the means. The puppets, the puppets of the large companies who spend their time in costume, under the ventilators, invest only in disco music, funk, the commercial salads. The groups here are obliged to resift. In Ghana, we do not even have a pressing plant. We have to go to Nigeria. There, there are African companies. But you know the history of Fela. One day he stole accounts books at Decca and he discovered that he had sold a hundred thousand discs and that he had been robbed."
In 1972 Faycal launched the first club of Accra, Napoleon. The youth of the city came in droves. Two years later, Faycal opened a eight tracks studio, the first independent studio in Ghana. All the groups of the country passed through his place. And the hour of triumph: Fela and his tribe came to record at his place their disc Black President.
"Give me the means and you will see," an irritated Faycal says. "Tens of Ghanian groups await only one thing: to use the material of the modern studios. How do you want to capture twenty-five percussions with one eight-track? Let us get accustomed with the techniques, then we'll make sparks!"
Tzing! A clash of cymbals and a large man climb on the stage snapping fingers. The whole orchestra bursts of laughing. This takes place at the Tank, one of the twenty live clubs in Accra. The large man breathes some over-shrill notes in a flute. He's the Ghana State Minister For Petrol.
Light as a young man, the minister jumps, howls "Padapapa!" Dad! and starts up a long tirade. The drum follows it, quiet, then more nervously. A guy in a fedora hat joins up on percussion. In the small room the crowd rises and start elbowing one another. Pulled by frenzy, I begin to beat on the bar. Small, my buddy and guide in Accra The Insane, offers me a small pure grass joint while bursting out laughing.
The minister plays every Sunday here. Does Mitterrand do the same back home?
Half of the musicians form part of the group which recorded with Eno. This evening they will play of the jazz, they improvise, it is madness, fun. Tomorrow they will play reggae or disco music in a club or a dance hall in the open air. Accra does not sleep after midnight. On weekend, one can easily find about fifty places to have fun. That's without counting the crossroads and buildings yards where three congas can assemble a whole district. It is not Abidjan, nor Lagos, the large capitals of West Africa, but Accra has also its hot nights and its exhausted early mornings.
Osei Tutu, the trumpet player, tells me of the weeks spent with Eno.
"Oooooh! We never worked so much! We were in the studio every day, in the morning and the afternoon! He made each musician play solos and improvisations of percussion. And then he made us slow down the tempos, break up the rhythms, still slow down. He sought to understand the rhythms and he had trouble with this. At the end of one week, he discovered ompe, the elementary pulse..."
Osei strikes a slow three part beat in his hands, with a light acceleration in the middle.
"That's the rhythm which he liked over all. Tap! Tap! Tap! He listened to it for hours at a time. Tap! Tap! Tap!"
Why that one?
"I do not know. It is the simplest beat. Here, everyone knows it, it accompanies the love chants. Eno was thrown into a panic a little by the faster rhythms. He found them too African. Ompe, he called the open beat."
I think I understand. I imagine Eno breaking up the rhythms like an insane physicist breaking the core of an atom, to unearth quarks and gluons, the particles essential to all recombining.
It is stronger than him, it is necessary that Eno to putter about. In a African rhythm one cannot slip anything between ten tangled up percussions. The machine rotates by its will. Eno wanted to enter at all costs. The open beat, finally, lets itself be handled. Eno grafts a blow of echo there, a beat moreover, one guitar riff, an unforeseen melody... Eno believes in the virtue of musical fission, the explosion of the forms. To crack the rhythmic molecules and to generate a new chemistry.
He left satisfied. The Ghanian musicians lengthily questioned themselves. This story of open rhythms... it kept playing in their minds. Will this seed grow? Everyone says that the African music one day will break open the Western world. It would be justice, when one thinks about all that the modern popular musics owe Africa. But missing are the few nuances that will make it rock out of a closed universe. As for the reggae which learned how to use electronics.
New York, September 1981.
Hello, I would like to speak with Brian Eno.
To whom ? You're mistaken.
But no, he lived here last year... he left his telephone number?
No. Your buddy must be in hiding.
I call David Byrne. He does not have the number: I've not seen Brian for months.
From Jon Hassell, same story: Eno is in one of his incommunicado phases. No more interviews, no more dispersion. It is like that each time he works on his music.
Too bad. It does not matter. I have the impression that for Eno, the African episode is closed. He played, he crafted bits of Africa in his American studio, then he made the great dive over there and now he's gone on to another thing. In a few years, perhaps the African itching will return to him. He will think of all that and will invent new angles of attack.
Strange as the three primitive futurists shifted towards different courses, very quickly, in one year. Typical of the meetings that Eno likes to cause. A shock of opposites, intense and short, which modifies the trajectory of each one. And then good wind.
Ten o'clock in the evening. David Byrne is ringing at my door and suddenly he pouts. He contemplates my souk-demolished beds, opened bags, cassettes, books, ashtrays, vodka... This half of apartment was used all summer as NY HQ for several journalists from Actuel. Suddenly, I feel a little ashamed. And then shit!
Stops making that face. Think of your pad before you become rock'n'roll star. David utters a small dry laugh and answers nothing else. Not the king of talkers. But he likes us since, precisely, we suffer him gladly, we amuse him it, we make him drunk with information. Byrne soaks it like a sponge. Then filters it all.
A year later he has become even more courteous, distant and polished. The hair cut to the millimetre, the manicured nails, grey creaseless flannels. With him, a small brown-haired woman, in a black tailored suit, looking withdrawn, slightly cantankerous.
"Oh come on, don't worry, we're not remaining here, we're dining with friends, in a large loft with white bricks."
Once there, things get better. David did not want to eat and then lets himself be tempted to try the Creole rice and the wine.
This almost morbid introvert starts to smile and to whisper some sentences.
"Sadly, no, I didn't get to Africa. No time. Too many urgent projects. The B-52s asked me to rework their disc, because they were turning in circles. They wanted me to blacken them and that I funkicise them. And now I'm composing ballet music for Twyla."
He points to the girl in black. Twyla Tharp, a pioneer of the avant-garde, one of names of the contemporary dance in America. Up to now, she had rather worked with serious composers. And I have the impression that each day Byrne sees himself more and more as a serious composer.
"I do not leave my studio any more. I am there, morning to evening, six days per week. It is necessary to do things fully."
And Talking Heads, it is rumoured that they were going to separate. The others were seemingly furious about the fuss over you and Eno without never any mention of them.
"We have not seen each other for six months but we soon will meet to record. In my opinion, we will set out again in a completely different direction."
What?
"I do not have the least idea."
What do you listen to?
"Noises..."
He slips a cassette into my Walkman: one hour and half of frog croakings. He recorded them in Bali and listens to it non stop. At the end of a few minutes, these small beasts seem to play a repetitive, unforeseeable and hypnotic music.
No discs? No concerts?
"I haven't gone out in months. I do not listen to anything. Any good stuff out?"
I try to get him to see the rock'n'roll group about whom all New York is talking, Liquid Liquid, who arrange drums in a zigzagging pulsation, at the same time funk, voodoo, Latin, African...
David and Twyla leave. They're working early tomorrow morning. A serious composer avoids dispersion, he concentrates on his own ideas. With the risk of missing air.
Blip! Blip! Blip! Blip!
Ah, fuck. I try to make an appointment on the phone with Jon Hassell and from my opened window rises a repugnant electronic squealing. Hassell laughs: "Hey, it is the end of the world at your house?"
I do not know, a type of alarm siren which must have got stuck...
"Ah, that's much better. I was afraid that it was the latest NY punk hit!"
I arrive at his place in full five o'clock traffic. Appalling those traffic jams on a large avenue in New York, on a summer day. I am dripping with sweat, dirty and my ears are ringing.
Hassell opens the door and suddenly, I feel the calm of Tibet high plateaux. Immense ceiling, walls of white enamelled bricks, cushions on the floor, Indian percussions on a carpet. A puppy munches raw carrots. Hassell serves us Perrier, lemon and kiwis.
"Do you want to listen to the test pressing of the new disc? Please don't feel obliged. I will not be upset..."
He seems to float on a cloud of good mood. Aside from that, shaven, and with hollow cheeks, he looks more and more like a bronze. His disc is similar to its predecessors, it has the same refreshing virtues as the Fourth World album he co-created last year with Eno. The percussion clatter, the melody penetrates with the graces of Siamese cat. The air of the room becomes lighter and luminous. No other music in the world makes this effect.
Hassell lends me a bundle of photocopies.
"'Dream Theory in Malaya': I found this article in a review of ethnology and I made a disc of it. At Senoi, in the island of Malaya, every morning, each one tells his dreams and they discuss these for the hours as if they had really happened. Result, Senoi are the most relaxed people in the world! Listen to these lappings, they were recorded in Malaya: a tribe bathes in a river and strikes the water with a the dish in the hand, in rhythm. I cut out fragments of these water percussions, I assembled them in a loop and that gives the rhythmic structure on several pieces. All the disc resolves around these two topics, the dreams and moving water."
I imagine a ballet of elves on this incredibly soothing balancing. I tell him about David Byrne and Twyla Tharp.
"David invited me to the studio but I refused. I do not want to be considered for life as the Talking Heads studio musician. And this music, I should have done it."
Why?
"I'm a composer! I was happy to work for a moment with David and Eno but, all things considered, I do not have anything to do in rock'n'roll. I am a traditional composer. And I finally believe to have found the definition of classicism: systematic treatment of a restricted number of elements... Ah, shit, I can be such a pain... Excuse me. I should be stopped. Look, when I knew that you were coming, I quickly wrote this long-winded speech...
"I summarise: There are multiple manners of combining Western contributions and exotic. One can juxtapose, superimpose, glue together... I chose to use musical textures, Eastern or African, like the figures on a template (an accessory for draughtsman, a plate of figure sifted of geometrical slits, half-circles, spirals or logarithmic curves). The pencil follows the layout exactly, just as the recording reproduces the musical fragment exactly.
"My work then consists in mixing these various structures. It is a methodical approach, a system to create a new language. The avant-garde composers are satisfied to import and to tie up a new packing. And the pop musicians pin tourist memories on their walls."
So to David Byrne.
One year later, the project of the primitive futurists takes shape much more clearly. Two extremes. Hassell works in a closed vase, on laboratory specimens, he forges rigorous concepts. Eno has more volatile ideas but he quickly harness them on public ground. Hassell respects the traditional forms scrupulously, he still continues to learn as a studious pupil, all the subtleties of Indian ragas. Perhaps Eno contributes to the blossoming of new expressions in Africa. Hassell works rather for the Westerners. He wants to live in Europe.
"America is too empty. I want to move to France at the beginning of the next year. What do you think of Mitterrand? It's a major change, isn't it?
"And then, you know what? I am passionately in love. But the girl lives here with another man. It is essential that I take her along to France. At this moment, I do not touch ground anymore. I've never been so in love in all my life! This gives me incredible energy. The girl, she's Chinese, she was born in New York, she carries the two cultures in herself, I am completely fascinated by it. You will see, I will move mountains!"
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