Oran Etkin
9th Annual World Beat Album Nominee
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Genre: World Beat
Motema Music
www.oranetkin.com
HOMEBASE/COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Born in Israel, based in New York, USA
WHERE WAS THIS ALBUM RECORDED? New York
NAME OF ALBUM NOMINATED: Kelenia
TELL US ABOUT THE TRACK “Yekeke”: This track highlights the group’s interactive playing, where each member of the band is expressing himself fully, yet in dialog with the other members. In the fast back-and-forth solo section that I share with Bala (the balafon player). You can hear our individual personalities and backgrounds, with echoes of Jazz, Jewish and African dialects in our phrasing, but you also hear two friends talking musically, laughing together and egging each other on.
WHAT UNUSUAL INSTRUMENTS OR TECHNIQUES DID YOU USE ON THIS ALBUM? This album features my working band in which I play bass-clarinet/clarinet/sax and am joined by Balla Kouyate on balafon (African marimba), Makane Kouyate on calabash/vocals and Joe Sanders or John Benitez on bass. We also have a string quartet on one track, vocalist Abdoulaye Diabate on others, and several tracks feature Lionel Loueke on guitar. Lionel gets amazing sound from his guitar, which is inspired by traditional African instruments like the ngoni. The balafon is a diatonic instrument, meaning it only has the white notes on the piano, not the black notes. Now Balla plays two balafons– one tuned to C Major and the other tuned to C# Major, but when we started, he just played the traditional C Major balafon. This limitation in his notes inspired me to write music that stretches the harmony while keeping it grounded in the balafon. Also, all of our songs were learned by ear through the course of rehearsals, never through written music, as is the tradition with West African music. It takes a little longer that way, but the nice thing is once we know it, we will know it forever, and we know the music more deeply and can play more freely than if we were reading music.
DID FANS HELP FUND THIS PROJECT? Nope.
WHO IS SITTING IN YOUR AUDIENCE? I’ve found the audience ranges from people who are regularly Jazz fans, World music fans or just people interested in music that reaches them regardless of genre. It’s a very diverse audience age-wise as well.
WHAT MAKES YOUR FANS UNIQUE? I often learn things from my fans who tell me what else they are listening to– they seem to be people who seek out music that interests them and have a wide variety of music that they’re into.
WHERE HAVE YOU TOURED? With this project, we’ve toured around the USA. With other projects, I have played in Haiti, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE PLACES TO PLAY? I love to play in places where people are really listening and where we can get super quiet if the music takes us there and people are on the edges of their seats listening to the intensity of the quiet moments — whether it’s in a theater setting or in one of my favorite New York venues, Barbes.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR MOST EXCITING MOMENT TO DATE? There have been a lot of exciting moments, but the one that immediately comes to mind is playing at the UN for Kofi Annan, Al Gore and presidents of several countries in an event they had to discuss poverty and the environment. After we played, Wyclef Jean played. A few years later, I recorded and performed with him in the context of my work with the Haitian group Djakout Mizik, but that was my first encounter with Wyclef and an exciting moment for us to contribute to this gathering about an important topic.
WHAT’S IN THE WORKS FOR 2010? I have a few projects for 2010. This spring, I will release a CD of music for children. I have developed an educational method for young children, starting at two years-old, that is now being taught through music classes that I started throughout the city. This CD is my project with Jason Marsalis, Curtis Fowlkes, Fabian Almazan, Garth Stevenson and Charenee Wade. One track will also be featured on Putumayo Music’s compilation, Jazz Playground. There is more information about the children’s music and the classes on the “kids page” of my Web site, www.oranetkin.com.
Then, as a follow up to my Kelenia record, I will begin work on a new CD to be released toward the end of 2010. It is inspired by stories that my grandmother told me before she died, when I was eight years-old. My mother bought a tape recorder for me and my brother and told us to go record my grandma’s stories. She was the youngest of 12, and there are amazing stories ranging from WWI Europe, pre-state Israel and Ethiopia. One of her brothers moved to Ethiopia and became friends with Heile Selassie and later used those connections to get his brother out of a concentration camp by going directly to the office of Himler, head of the SS and demanding he let his brother out! They are amazing stories of very focused and intense people in a time of huge transitions, and I want to capture the emotions of these stories in the music I write for this next album.
FINISH THIS SENTENCE: THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IS… What it is. If you don’t like it you’re in luck– it’s not going to be what it is now for long. It sure ain’t what it used to be. I guess it’s our responsibility to figure out a way to make it into what we want it to be.
WHAT IS YOUR DEFIINITION OF SUCCESS? Success is being able to wake up and work on music that I love working on with people that I love to be around.
WHAT’S ON YOUR IPOD THAT WOULD SURPRISE YOUR FANS? I have a ton of pre-war acoustic blues, particularly Blind Willie McTell, that I love.
NAME SOME ARTISTS YOU ARE CHAMPIONING: My friend Raphael McGregor is a great lap-steel player who does some amazing things with lap-steel and loop pedals. We have a duo where we both use various pedals, but his solo stuff is absolutely beautiful. I also have a friend Jon Levy, whose band, the Stumblebums, mixes New Orleans brass-band music with Punk. They have a great energy that gets people moving.