As the gathering of all the players in such a large group was naturally difficult, the percussionists would meet every Friday afternoon separately, and practice the groove of the songs. Then, during the last four weeks before the presentation, the whole group would meet in order to get a common breath and feel comfortable with the group’s interaction. The interaction of course produced new material, which was added to the songs throughout the process.
In late 2020, the first performance with the whole group will take place in the Black Box of Sibelius Academy.
During the last 4 years I have been playing the original versions of Greek urban folk songs with Chrysoula and Ilias. In this group I played guitar but as this is not my instrument, I felt that we could invite them to play with the group and finally switch to bass. Joao and Viivi would provide a solid harmonic background, so I would not need to play the guitar.
We started rehearsing all together and we set our routine for every Monday at 18:30.
I would get there already 40 minutes earlier to set up the room, putting mics for every instrument and of course for the singer. I had the belief after discussion with many fellow musicians that rehearsals should always be mic-ed and as close as the final sound as possible.
Here is a short clip from one of those rehearsals.
Soon after the fusion “bug” was embedded deep inside my head, I wanted to meet Joao and Christopher more regularly to try out stuff and experiment with it. I would regularly ask Christopher to play on top of archive recordings of Greek urban folk, using rhythms from other musical traditions. I would record these sessions, and then try to arrange songs based on our ideas.
After a good break the group continued with slight alterations. Viivi, our accordionist, had her duo project Vilda, lifting of and would be long time occupied with their record and tour.
Having a heart-warming conversation she explained that she was interested in continuing with the group but for 6months time she would be occupied otherwise. Agreeing that she would be welcome to the group anytime, we were called to fill the great gap of Viivi’s contribution.
After consulting the group with my idea of a replacement we talked to Joni, our future guitar player. We also agreed to add Merve to the group regularly.
Joni apart from an experienced player and a very nice person, was a great contributor to the music through his musicality and his ability to play with effects, creating an amazing atmosphere on which we all stepped to take this project to the next level.
During the rehearsals we started also exploring different possibilities for the harmonic behaviour of the songs with Joni taking the lions share on this changes.
We went on with our ´´routine´´ Mondays, and in as a next step we re-arranged few more traditions combinations. This time it was Rumba and Tumba with Zeimpekikos. We worked a lot on the combinations as things were starting to be more complicated. After figuring out the alterations needed and rearranging the existing repertoire for the new line up of the group, we presented our work as part of Global fest in Sibelius Academy.
After the initial try giving satisfactory results, I sat down with Mr. Adriano Adewale to discuss the Brazilian traditions and to get a better insight into the rhythms. Adriano was the leader of the Karakatum group. With his guidance and invaluable help two more people were added to the group, in order to cover the traditional percussion instruments needed for these rhythms.
Lets now look what was the method of approaching the music.
For the Rebetiko 2.1 to become ´´Home´´ there was a need of care for the music, brainstorming in terms of the aesthetics, common time so that the musicians involved could breathe together and, finally, plenty of rehearsing time.
The process of the rehearsals was consciously structured in a way that there would be a lot of common time between the players on a steady basis, always at the same day and time of day.
The goal was for our meetings to become part of each musician’s routine, so that in spite of everyone’s busy schedules, we would look forward to the meetings.
The foundation group as I had it in mind consisted of Drums, Bass and Vibraphone.
I asked Joao and Christopher to meet a couple of times and jam / study a tune that I brought in scores. The song was Nostalgia, by Babis Goles. The beautiful melody, in my imagination, should be heard as if in a secret bar during alcohol prohibition somewhere in the US. Taking advantage of the instruments, we made our own version in the form of a 9/8 swing. Here is a short sample of the original song, and our version of it as well.
It was during those jams that drum patterns of real groove and beauty popped up and I asked Chris if we could use those for some songs. Then we would meet all three of us and try to make sense of the ideas. At the same time Viivi showed up in one of these jams and without hesitation I asked her to join us, first to jam and then to join the group as accordionist, forming a kind of bridge for the two worlds. Here is a small sample.
The next addition to the group was Beltran on Viola. I came across the instrument for the first time in an orchestra that we played together, and I loved the sound and the player. Beltran, due to his character and skills had no problem jumping in and making the final sound of the band complete.
As a last addition, I asked Merve to accompany me on piano on a solo piece exposing myself in something that I had never done before, singing, and also exposed the amazing talent of her piano playing and the aesthetics she added to the song.
So after quite a few Mondays we reached our first 6 months’ result in an amazing night at the Studio of Sibelius academy.
After the debut performance we all felt the need to continue with this project and that felt like the biggest win. We achieved something collectively and some things on a personal level.
On a collective level the music came out flawlessly, and was shared with an audience that was really into the music. We managed to take the audience through the stories, intrigued the ears and brains with the combinations of songo and aptalikos, samba and serviko, made the odd meters to not feel too odd and most importantly we enjoyed the results of hard work as a group.
On a personal level I realised that the process opened up new possibilities. This collaboration with musicians of different backgrounds was proven to be not only possible, but it brought the music and the musicians to a new level.
Examples of this achievement were made visible in the concert but were also discussed later on.
In my talk with Beltran, our viola player, I realised that a love for percussion came forward, but at the end of the day, through the song Teketzis, he felt comfortable playing changes between 5/8 and 9/8.
The same stood for Christopher our Drummer. We not only invented new patterns, but they were put into complex odd meters. The division of music into 8th notes had been explored further, and as a result his playing in these odd meters felt natural and sounded tight.
Ilias, our bouzouki player, was getting all the time steadier and kept the original lines in spite of the change of rhythms behind him. I felt the same with my playing. Being able to keep the altered rhythms along with some harmony got stronger and more comfortable. Chrysa, our singer, was able to balance the voice lines, floating beautifully on top of four different levels of sound and rhythm, and, once the seed was sown, clearly excelled in exploring different ways of approaching traditional voice lines.
Talking with Joao right after the concert was eye opening, as he verbally expressed something that all of us heard in his solo and in the concert. He gained freedom through improvising. This means that he felt safe with the group behind him, to lift off and to freely explore a line that both contrasted with the music but at the same time complimented it.
Finally, as a personal highlight, I managed to expose a bit of what was in my brain and my heart.
There was satisfaction in guiding the rehearsals, deciding about the end product, but also giving the freedom to all the players to contribute to the music and finally to coexist on stage, most importantly as a group!
The final stage in the preparation of this project’s first phase, was to dig deeper into other musical traditions of the world and attempt more fusions. For this reason, I revisited the rhythms approached by the Afro Brazilian ensemble Karakatum, which I had been part of for the previous two years. In the ensemble we played with and dug into the traditions of Samba, Coco and Maracatu from different areas of Brazil. The intention of approaching these rhythms was to figure out the interaction between Greek urban folk and a bigger percussion ensemble, using the traditional instruments of these musical traditions.
As always, I started by experimenting with archive recordings and musicians playing on top of those different percussion instruments. In this step we would blend Hasapikos with Samba, Syrtos with Coco, and Tsifteteli with Maracatu.