A newsletter for the Portland area Didjeridu player......April  2000 Volume 6 Issue 4

In a Suitcase, here's an interview with Stephen Kent

with Ed Drury

The problem with interviewing Stephen Kent lies not in finding questions, it's in finding good ones. How many things would you like to ask him? And about which aspect of his various talents, or his much traveled life? This interview touches on but a few of my questions, but contains some previously little known aspects of Stephen which I found particularly interesting. Very soon now, Portland didj players and fans will get a rare opportunity to see Stephen perform solo in a small venue.  Hopefully, it will be the being of a regular series of performances which will make Portland a regular and favorite stop during his travels.        - Ed Drury March 2000

[Ed] How is it possible to fit a young man dressed in a tux into a suitcase only to have him emerge a short time later wearing only a G string? Is this something that you learned while with Circus Oz?

[Stephen] Oh, one question at a time is it? And you're starting with Entertainment Weekly part of the interview. Ha Ha Ho Ho...Ooookay

It wasn't actually when I was in Circus Oz that this episode of my life occurred. It came later. I left Circus Oz in mid 1983 and with another member of the group, Dona Rosella, went bush and spent a few months up in the Northern Territory .....

Later when I had finally arrived back in England to resume my life there I made a cabaret/street show with my then girlfriend Sue Broadway [another Circus Oz renegade] in which I continued to develop a character who had begun to emerge during my days as Musical Director-with-a-growing-tendency-towards-performance in Oz. This angular and paranoid creature was a skinny wimp in a black suit, with a bad temper who loathed children with a passion and made life difficult for all around him. People LOVED him [which only made it worse].

The crunch point for this character came when Sue and I had teamed up with a couple of others and formed the mini New Vaudeville Circus group Ra-Ra Zoo. About halfway through the show my hitherto miserable character seizes [there's no other word for it] center stage in a flurry of opportunism and announces a surprise - he ORDERS the appearance of a suitcase - not a large suitcase, an old fashioned brown leather case with straps and a couple of tatty travel labels on it. About 3ft X 2ft and 14 ins deep. Then he commands his cohorts to chain him by the wrists and "Now.....Force me to get into the suitcase!" Anyway blah blah ...finally they do Force him into the case [while he resists futilely] which is then locked and he is left alone on stage to cope.

For the next few minutes I lie there in a foetal position inside the suitcase doing a comedy routine with this situation while I gradually take off the chains - Oh! And my clothes.....

[Ed] The first two recordings of yours I happened to purchase where very   different from each other. One was "Songs from the Burnt Earth" and the   other was "Ocho Elefantes". It is the later which really got me hooked   on following your music and I've always wanted to ask you about that   project. Could you talk a little about writing Ocho Elefantes?

[Stephen]

 Over about 5 years in the Eighties [way back then] I spent a lot of time living in Barcelona, when I wasn't on tour either with Ra Ra Zoo or working with Lights in a Fat City. Spain held enormous attractions for me - I loved the lifestyle and with the artistic community in Barcelona I found myself in a scene with a vibrancy that I hadn't experienced before. Very inspiring. While I was there I was also working - writing music for a series of contemporary dance projects with choreographer Maria Antonia Oliver.

 Sometimes I performed live with the Didjeridu and percussion and on other shows I was commissioned to compose and produce recorded soundtrack material. [LIAFC was also brought in for one tour with that company. In fact the piece 'Valley of the Winds' in it's earliest form - solo didge with clap sticks - was made for one of those projects].

 The music which I later combined to put out as 'Ocho Elefantes' [a limited cassette release in 1990] was mainly taken from 1989's production 'Ocho' while it also included a piece or two from the 1990 show 'Marko Raso' [Marco Raso being a life-size Styrofoam elephant1]. It takes a very different direction than the work with the Didjeridu that most people associate with me. 'Ocho', a series of 8 different movements/episodes with three dancers had many different flavors and tones. I composed for a small string section with a combination of my own more varied musical abilities [percussion, guitar, didge] and a couple of other musicians and orchestrated a suite of music that I still have a great fondness for today.

 The only part of it so far available is 'Toots' which is on the 'Family Tree' CD. That's perhaps the most 'out there' piece - it was composed without having seen the choreography and the initial version was not acceptable to the choreographer. The only part of that which remains is the last 2 minutes. The rest we did in the funkiest studio imaginable in Barcelona [Most of the music was produced in London on 24 tracks] with a deadline of a few hours. It was desperate - crazy! As far as I remember Simon Tassano [Sound Wizard Extra ordinaire and my creative partner on many projects] had to pretty much rebuild the 8 track studio to make it possible to work there. It was tiny. I still hadn't seen the choreography so Maria Antonia danced it on a postage-stamp-sized bit of floor between the mixing desk and the window looking in on me [.in the actual show it took up the whole stage]. I jammed along on the congas, which I'd borrowed from a friend that day, and then layered orchestrated toots over the top of it which we manipulated with a harmonizer. Then we cross-faded to the end of the first version  [JUST at the bit where the field recording of me and a friend playing a pair of bicycles we were riding in the heart of China a few years before kicks in - You even hear a truck go by]. Check it out.

 As far as didge goes there's also an extended duet with a cellist [my cousin Ben Davies] and a 12 minute solo piece. But really I think that the string arrangements are more prominent in the recording as a whole. We laid it down and mixed it in 3 days, with Simon at the controls.  Then there's the 'Marco Raso' piece with a great String-Bass player and a brass section - that rocks out! I'm thinking of making a CD available of Ocho Elefantes' through my website. All told it's some of the most lush and whimsical, almost conventional [dare I say it] music I've made and I think it stands well apart from my other recordings, while sharing their production values.

  I have the same idea for 'Songs From the Burnt Earth'. That's simply solo didjeridu that I recorded around the Bay Area in small caves and derelict military fortifications when I first arrived here and had decided to stay on - towards the end of 1991. Its really the story of my meeting with the spirit of the land of California.

[Ed] I was listening to some Lights in a Fat City yesterday, the thing  I was struck by was a total difference in mood between the two CD's I  have. This might be a good time for me to ask you to paint a picture of  City of Tribes. You mentioned the album Family Tree which kind of puts together many of these projects on CD 1, and as different as Sound Column is from somewhere, CD 2 of Family Tree takes us into this very different side of you. Reflective of some Steven Roach influences, perhaps?

[Stephen] Big question - not quite sure how to answer this one succinctly, better go into dreamtime mode.......

 As you probably know I have worked with Steve Roach [1995/96 'Halcyon Days' on Fathom records]. We had been aware of each others work since the late 80's and Halcyon Days was the realization of a dream we had dreamed together with Kenneth Newby. Honestly, though I have listened to quite a lot of Steves output over the years and appreciate that there is some territory that we share together [as well as a fascination with Australia and the Didjeridu] I don't really count him as an influence on the musical direction that I've taken. These are my thoughts:

 I have worked hard on my didj technique over the years and, from an early point in my development as a player began to play with a sense of great space in my improvisations. The most direct influence on that was the didjeridu itself: when you begin to play/plug-in it immediately puts you in 'The Zone', a place where time and space roll into one and a new world of timeless possibility opens up to you. People who hear the didjeridu also go there too. So the didj itself invites it, but then so does the experience of being in the Australian bush. I was there on and off for almost 3 years and it was a profound experience that changed my life.

Another influence I would have to mention is my friend Donato Rosella, who was really responsible for getting me started on the didjeridu and who was also my teacher about the land in Australia. He really helped to ground me in my experiences there.

 Also a major character in the development of my space consciousness was Eddy Sayer, who I met while he was lying under a chair at the bell of Don's didj in the Diarama Arts Centre in London at the end of 1983. Eddy and I went on to form Lights in a Fat City over the next few years and a major part of his percussion consciousness was the creation of spacial texture and music that was 'out of time'. Both Simon Tassano and Kenneth Newby, the 2 other Lights members had a similarly developed sensibility and their various skills on all manner of electronic effects and programming encouraged that aspect of our work.

So the space journey was always a part of my and our language. I would sit playing with Eddy in the market places of London - Camden Lock and Portobello - on a magic carpet, donated by the rug salesman for the day, and watch peoples behaviour patterns change as they came within range of the vibration of the didjeridu. Before their conscious selves had picked up what was happening their attitude and movements seemed to morph into something else. Then they would see us.....

 I strongly believe in multiple levels of transference of energy that happens between players, listeners, dancers and the physical space a performance takes place in - not to mention the spiritual, metaphysical etc.... I feel there is always interaction between all those elements and that every event is unique. The Memory Ground CD by Lights in a Fat City was taken from a recorded sequence of, mainly [Taksu was an already composed piece], improvisations that Eddy, Kenneth and I had in the Sound Column [literally inside a 50ft high concrete pillar] at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts. We had recently arrived in SF for the first time, to play a series of Concerts, and this opportunity came up [This was in July '91]. We were so taken with our interaction with that space on a spontaneous level that it was always likely that it would emerge on CD. Originally some of the recordings were released on Australia's Extreme records, but it got little distribution. Then Kenneth did some magic with the mastering, made a couple of edits, we added 15 more minutes of the material and City of Tribes put it out as Memory Ground.[A vastly improved, matured and realized project I think].

 The real point for me about this release is that it is DEEP work, beyond, way beyond the devising of one, or even three souls......there we tap into something other....in the moment, in the space in time - and we recorded it onto DAT. It was that simple.

 The same with the second 'Deep Space' suite on Family Tree, though I recorded that in the studio. I was feeling my way into THAT territory again. It is a place to go. A tangible PLACE. This [none of it] was not some wafty westerners idea of the 'Aboriginal', of 'The Dreamtime'. Nor was it inspired by referencing other musicians musical experiences in the contemporary world. It was our own journey into another dimension, our own trip. That was why we called the first LIAFC LP [originally that's how it came out] 'Somewhere' - it took you to a tangible place, at least to me, and in our intention. Music as travel.

 In regard to your question about the different facets of my playing - I have always believed that the didjeridu really has the power and the depth of character as an instrument to work well with all manner of musical styles. I still feel after 18 years or so of playing that I have really only scratched the surface. When putting together album projects I have sometimes felt - say with 'Somewhere' and 'Landing' that perhaps they visit too great a variety of sonic zones in the space of one CD. Contemporary listeners are less attuned to the Music as Art scheme of album releases as I think they once were. I think that many people nowadays like to stay in one rhythmic or ambient zone for a while. The concept of 'Family tree' then was twofold: to give people a sense of the breadth and depth of my work with the didj over 10 years and also to give the listener the space to really go deep into the sound vibration of the pure nature of the instrument. I had never done that before on CD and, though I feel that in a way that is worth a whole project on its own I wanted to include it in 'Family Tree'. Also I know that the didj can have a tremendous role in the work of body workers and practitioners of forms of alternative medicine and the second part of 'Family Tree' was made with them in mind too.

  As for City of Tribes......City of Tribes was originally formed, I think am right in Saying, as a response by Patti Clemens to the music her friends, including myself, were making. So there has been an incredibly supportive infrastructure there for the release of virtually my whole catalogue to date. It is not MY label though, although I suppose that to date it has very much come to be associated with my various musical projects. Nowadays they are branching out into a number of different directions including the Qawali pop of Ali Khan, the Middle Eastern melange of Stella Mara and various re-mix projects.

[Ed] My favorite CD on the City of Tribes label is "Day Out of Time" which   is an incredible performance and a wonderfully recorded CD as well. I wonder   if you could talk about that performance a little from your perspective.   It is so tight and the didj playing so sweet that I find it makes me   smile throughout the entire thing. I remember one listening when my drummer was trying to talk to me on the phone about something and I kept laughing. I had to explain that I was laughing because the CD I was listening to was just "too good". I think it's that good.

[Stephen] The Trance Mission CD 'A Day Out Of Time' was a recording of a concert, billed as the last Trance Mission gig of the Millennium, and to date was the last performance by the band, though a re-emergence of 'Trance Mission' is under discussion right now.

 Trance Mission hadn't been playing a lot in the States for a while - we all were more focused on other projects, Beth Custer with her band Eighty Mile Beach and Eda and I with Family Tree and other projects. One of the largest was a big production benefit for Tibetan refugee children which Eda produced and TM played with Nina Hagen, among others. Peter Valsamis, who took over the drum chair from John Loose in '97, was a full time music student at Mills college in Oakland. Most of Trance Missions work since 1996 had been in Europe where we undertook a number of Tours, sometimes going 2 or 3 times a year. Beth and I, the only original members left, were feeling a lot of pressure to come up with a game plan for TM. We never had an agent in the States and THAT meant that the two of us did all our booking here - not always the easiest job in the world. So instead of bowing to the expectations of more TM to come we decided to take the heat off the partnership, which had been under some stress for a while, and announce a hiatus, if not the end of the band.

 So, as TM had been a significant entity on the SF Bay Area music scene for most of the nineties there was a large turnout at St Johns church in Berkeley for this event. Synchronistically it was an auspicious date to have chosen as we discovered on the day itself - on the Mayan Calendar July 25th is designated Green Day or A Day Out of Time, a day when we can step out of the rhythm of our daily lives and make what we will out of our futures. This touched a chord with us - we have always felt much in common with indigenous perspectives and the Mayans were an ancient race that many people are turning towards to give shape and perspective to our lives in the modern world.

 It was always our intention to record that show and I believe that, as a live incarnation, that particular version of Trance Mission rocked like no other before it. The inclusion of Peter, who is a monster groove drummer plus Eda's incredible voice brought a new dynamic to our work together. Obviously, to those who have followed us since our inception in the early 90's it was different, but the power of that group was undeniable.

 The juice was flowing that night, at least it seems so from the recordings of the show - so excellently mixed as always by Simon Tassano. In some ways I think that the CD is better than the gig! The performance was fraught with the tension of the situation but also with the sense of releasing that material to the spirit world. Letting go! We weren't planning to ever play most of it again. The whole evening had a sort of momentous sense about it, yet at times it was almost mundane. But then.....life is sometimes like that. I think for Beth and I it was finally a very emotional occasion. We certainly put our all into the music.

 And there you have it on CD - the moment forever encapsulated - all shiny and polished up, better than new!!!!! And so I can listen and say WOW! We DID play really well that night and, truly, my Didj playing that night was at a kind of peak. Perhaps I might play things better technically and with more imagination but the energy of the moment and the power of being in A Day Out of Time took me with it. I'm happy its available to the world.

[Ed] I'm happy this release is available to the world as well. Also available to the world is a lot of your rifts and vibe. In listening to your taped radio interview with Dr. Karl Neuenfeldt you brought up the issue of sampling without permission. I also remember a statement in the liner notes from Songs from the Burnt Earth to the effect that, "this is organic music, please don't sample." Before I get to asking about Stephen the on air personality on radio, I'd like to extract an opinon about electronic sampling. I often do performances with a local electronic project which I deeply respect and love. However, from time to time I hear some grooves from my set in their mix and they've never said anything to me about that. I like what they do with it, but wonder why they just don't say, "Hey Ed, why not sit in with us while we prepare our sample loops?" Or something like that. Seems like electronica projects have a group mind or "non-mind" if you will, and the rules are constantly being stretched. What do you think of this 'new' twist in the concept of "property"?

[Stephen] God, what a can of worms this one could turn out to be......and indeed IS in some cases, many of them being wrangled over in the global courts at this very moment.....

 First up - I'm all for crediting sources of samples in the case of using recognizable sample sounds in new [not the original] contexts. There are all sorts of copyright laws in place globally to protect musicians and composers against unlawful breach of copyright. That doesn't mean to say that everyone who samples abides by those laws or that holders of those copyrights can afford to prosecute unlawful breaches of their copyright.

 Frankly it gets up my nose that people wantonly break those laws and through the theft of the signature sounds of authentic musicians seek to build their own reputations and careers without honoring their sources. The music industry is rife with piracy and I think that composers deserve all the protection that they can get.

 This is not to say that I am actually opposed to the new art forms that have come into being with sampling. Far from it. I think it has provided a very potent extension to the possibilities of collage composition and has certainly brought to the worlds attention some ethnic cultures and their musics that maybe were falling on deaf ears before - the central African Pygmies being an obvious example. BUT that's a two edged sword. I think there's a fine line between good taste and respect for these sources and the 'Hell, its there for the taking, lets just sample it' attitude that is propagated by, I imagine, many of the perpetrators of sampling. The group Loop Guru, for example - I was quite interested in their music until I read an interview where their respect for the ethnic groups that they sample was blatantly lacking. I can't support that kind of attitude.

 Where I personally think that sampling is at its most interesting is where the sampler alters the sampled sound so it is no longer recognizable and becomes a completely new sound. Kenneth Newby [of Trance Mission] is a wizard at that, synthesizing sounds in innovative ways that are beyond recognition.

 As far as Songs from the Burnt Earth went - I think I said that it was 'Living Music - please don't sample it'. I have never heard anyone use a sample of a Didjeridu in a way that gives a positive comparison to a live musician playing it. Looping didjeridu samples as a quasi-didj backdrop for whatever other musical material somebody wants to record generally turns up pathetic results, to my mind. The Didj lives by the rhythms of the human breath, not as something frozen in a few synthesized seconds........I have little respect for those who think they can 'make' Didjeridu music in that way. It just doesn't wash.

[Ed] I think that there are a lot of people out there who have followed you as a musician and composer for years who are unaware that you have quite a following as an on air personality with your own radio show. Having only heard the taped show you sent me on the didjeridu, I'm a bit jealous I can't listen to you on a regular basis. But for those who are within the reach of your radio waves, tell us about your show, it's format and your philosophy about programing.

[Stephen] Since mid 1995 I have had a weekly 'Music of the World' radio show on Berkeleys KPFA FM [94.1 FM], incidentally Americas first listener-sponsored Public Radio station, now 51 years old and feisty as ever. KPFA has had a helluva rocky ride during the last year as a result of very serious conflict with its 'parent' organisation, Pacifica. The situation continues to be very worrying to all those who support free speech in the media and who have a 'progressive' viewpoint. If you're interested in more of this story then go to www.pacifica.org and read on.....

 My show runs on Thursdays between 10am and Noon [Pacific Coast Time]. KPFA is broadcast over the internet and details about that I am sure can be found on their www.KPFA.org website, as can access to my own website and weekly playlists of my programme.

 Since my early childhood in Uganda I have had a consciousness of the musics of different global cultures and some of my earliest musical memories are of African tribal drumming which regularly took place within earshot of where my family lived - sometimes for days and nights on end. My parents also gave focus to that consciousness by introducing me to the collections of field recordings made by Jean Jenkins, an english Ethnomusicologist who my father introduced me to when I was about 11 years old. Jean Jenkins had travelled in the 1960's and 70's throughout the Islamic world [amazing I think for a western woman, alone] and made recordings that to this day are an inspiration to me [Some of her work is available on the Topic label in a CD series called 'Music in the World of Islam']. In fact her recording of 40 Ugandan trumpeters partying at a wedding celebration was the most powerful influence which drew me to the Didjeridu in the first place - if you can get your head around THAT concept!

 This interest in different World Musics continued through my own early musical experiences with composition and in bands like Furious Pig. We started when I was 13 and continued until I left to embark on my Australian adventures at the age of 23. Furious Pig took inspiration from composers like Stravinsky and Varese as well as Duke Ellington, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and the Beatles but we were happening in the time of PUNK ROCK and we also listened to the sounds of ritual polyphonic chants of Ethiopia, Pygmy singing and other ethnic music. In fact [everything is connected so please don't think I am getting too far from my radio show. Its ALL in there] what Furious Pig became best known for was an extraordinary acapella vocal display that was as at home in the Streets of London as it was in Rock Clubs, Comedy Clubs and Concert halls. Anyway it was this kind of vocalizing and the energy it took that I was later able to channel into my didjeridu playing. All this history is the foundation for my own music and my appreciation of the music of many different cultures.

When KPFA offered me a slot to play my selections of  'Music of the World'   I was rather overwhelmed. I actually refused at first then after a couple of weeks realised what an incredible thing that could be. It is a great honor to have been asked to be of service in this way. My vision of world music is perhaps against the grain of a lot of peoples idea of what comes under that heading. For me the underlying commitment I have, as someone who can bring these sounds to the publics ears, is to feature a lot of Tribal, Ritual and Indigenous music. I have a fascination for, and a commitment to, all manner of acoustic musics from cultures around the globe whose entire way of life is under threat or may even, by now, have disapeared. I am also looking for the other end of the spectrum where contemporary artists, using 21st Century technologies, are also incorporating the sounds of global cultures [though I think this category has to be patrolled vigorously by 'the good taste police'] into their music. I find it a very interesting zone and something I am close to in my own work - the combination of the ancient and the modern.

 In between all this I try to have a sense of the moment....what's happening in the news around the world [for example last week I really wanted to get some music from Mozambique in there]....what cultural or religious events of significance are in the calendar - I did a Ramadan Special when Clinton bombed Iraq at that time last year, for instance.....Then I have to pay attention to the kinds of artists that are playing in the Bay Area at the time, bringing their music into the mix too. I conduct interviews, have live guests in the KPFA studios and sometimes indulge my pet loves in the world of music: I'm a sucker for 70's and 80's guitar-based pop music from the Congo and East Africa, a lot of the music of Mali, Rom music from the Balkans and, of course, the Didjeridu.

 Mostly I try to keep my presence as a programmer down to a minimum and let the music do the talking. Its stronger that way. I don't simply 'Put On Records'. Never! For me its much more than that. I view my show like a kind of a ritual, a performance that has a flow - a beginning, a middle and an end. There is no standard agenda or formula. Mostly I play what I like, though naturally in a community radio station there have to be exceptions in any kind of a responsible programmers life. And there are.......but the important thing is that it works in the context of that particular show. The World is a big place and on KPFA I try to bring as much of its myriad of different sounds back to the world as I can in 2 hours, once a week. With respect. That's the bottom line. Respect. Listen to the Elders - the indigenous people of the planet.

Stephen's Web Site

  Questions about this or other articles in this series can be directed to Ed Drury

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