Latest / Arroe Collins Like It's Live / The Edge Of Heaven Vol 2 East Meets West From Singer Songwriter Producer Gary Lucas

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The Edge Of Heaven Vol 2 East Meets West From Singer Songwriter Producer Gary Lucas · Arroe Collins Like It's Live

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Speaker 1: It's more than just a podcast. It is a podcast network.
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Speaker 1: Ero dot net, A R r oe dot net, twenty
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Speaker 1: different podcasts to choose from, and one of the biggest
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Speaker 1: ones right now is one that's going to take you
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Speaker 1: dot net. Enjoy your exploration. Hello, and good afternoon. How's
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Speaker 1: everything going?
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Speaker 2: Hey? Pretty good? How are you?
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Speaker 1: Absolutely fantastic and very excited to share a conversation with you?
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Speaker 1: Because you love music exploration, I am inspired by that.
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Speaker 2: Oh that's crazy, thank you.
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Speaker 1: Where do you get that energy from? Because so many
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Speaker 1: people want to play, Oh, what's the hottest thing going
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Speaker 1: right now? It's almost like they're chasing a fat But
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Speaker 1: yet when you step into your music, it's like, no,
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Speaker 1: You're giving me a place where I can run off
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Speaker 1: to you, where I don't have to be around with
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Speaker 1: a bunch of fatty people.
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Speaker 3: I think that you kind of nailed it there, because
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Speaker 3: I thought that the artist's role was to open up
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Speaker 3: portals for other people to glimpse possibilities beyond the Baily
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Speaker 3: Titian level of things. And I was always inspired by
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Speaker 3: artists who did that, such as Captain b Phart, for instance,
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Speaker 3: who could pause at another world that would be, you know,
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Speaker 3: a challenging place to visit and enter and kind of
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Speaker 3: feel comfortable. And so I've enjoyed blazing my peculiar path
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Speaker 3: that way.
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Speaker 1: Well, look at what you do with the song on
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Speaker 1: two Roads. I mean, this is a song that definitely
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Speaker 1: has kind of a country edge, but it also sounds
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Speaker 1: like it should be in a movie as well.
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Speaker 3: Well, if you've got any good music supervisors maybe and
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Speaker 3: can do the pitch. I'm not very good on the
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Speaker 3: business side of things, I have to admit. As much
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Speaker 3: as I like plug away with social media, the idea
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Speaker 3: of cold pitching my stuff to people on the inside
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Speaker 3: of these things has not ever worked for me.
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Speaker 2: On the other hand, people have found my stuff. There was.
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Speaker 3: One fellow I guess he was the music I think
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Speaker 3: it was Cameron Crok himself, who was a writer. He
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Speaker 3: story for Rolling Stone and then he had a series
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Speaker 3: he was producing called Roadie's Yes some years ago. So
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Speaker 3: he found on SoundCloud recording of me and Jeff Buckley
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Speaker 3: doing a version of Bob Dylan's Farewell Angelina, and so
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Speaker 3: he contacted me, found me or his rep and so
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Speaker 3: we'd like to close one of the episodes.
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Speaker 2: Cameron is writing with this playing in the background.
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Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, I mean it's guy's like them,
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Speaker 3: then you who are enthusiastic about it to get it.
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Speaker 3: That sort of has made it sometimes windows open up
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Speaker 3: for me. But you're right, my mission is kind of
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Speaker 3: opening trying to open windows for other people to climb through,
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Speaker 3: you know, and see other stuff going.
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Speaker 2: I just I don't know. I mean, I'm a.
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Speaker 3: Bored person easily and event you know, if things sound
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Speaker 3: too saying in music, which they do to me mainly,
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Speaker 3: I try to break things up, you know. And you know,
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Speaker 3: just I've been walking that tigh rope of experimental music
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Speaker 3: and commercial music.
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Speaker 2: My whole career, you know.
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Speaker 3: I mean, thing I do, I always think, oh, I
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Speaker 3: think this could be interesting you other people, if not popular.
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Speaker 1: How do you how do you keep the the perfectionists
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Speaker 1: at Bay when you're experimenting, because I'm the type of
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Speaker 1: person that will go into the studio and I will
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Speaker 1: I will toy and tact and tear and rip up
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Speaker 1: and put new stuff in, and it's like, all of
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Speaker 1: a sudden, you know, two days have gone by, and
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Speaker 1: it's like, what'd you get done about thirty seconds of it?
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Speaker 3: Well, I commend that. I mean that kind of attention
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Speaker 3: to detail.
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Speaker 2: I've been there.
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Speaker 3: I mean when I was working with Beefheart, yes many
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Speaker 3: years ago and working on his guitar music, which was
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Speaker 3: fiendishly difficult to execute on the guitar, I was studying
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Speaker 3: it and approaching it like it was some sort of ritual.
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Speaker 3: Every day I'd wake up and I'd like, let me
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Speaker 3: listen to this tape of him.
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Speaker 2: Some might say banging.
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Speaker 3: At the piano, banging away at the vienna, but he
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Speaker 3: was actually, you could say, through composing, like improvising something
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Speaker 3: to be played once as a composition. And then I'd like, say,
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Speaker 3: how do you achieve that on the guitar?
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Speaker 2: Were those notes?
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Speaker 3: And it was a painstaking five seconds a day added
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Speaker 3: to process to eventually come out with what was finally
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Speaker 3: recorded as evening Bell that kind of put me on
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Speaker 3: the map. But that's on the last Beef Heard album,
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Speaker 3: ice Cream. For Crow it's about a minute, so I'm
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Speaker 3: with you on that. On the other hand, the older
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Speaker 3: I get, the more I get bored doing so I
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Speaker 3: don't know. I think that there's something to be said.
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Speaker 3: Alan Ginsburg, who I did work with famously, once said
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Speaker 3: first thought, best thought. So often you know, it's true
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Speaker 3: if you labor on something a little bit too long
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Speaker 3: fussing with it, you could like disrupt the flow of
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Speaker 3: energy that might have given you the impulse to begin
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Speaker 3: it in the first place. So I'm a believer sometimes
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Speaker 3: just throwing down music as it occurs to me. A
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Speaker 3: lot of it that I'm writing is just the result
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Speaker 3: of passing my fingers unconsciously over the guitar and suddenly
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Speaker 3: magic notes emerge. That's my music for Jeff Buckley that
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Speaker 3: became the songs Grace and Mojo Pen were both composed
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Speaker 3: in that manner.
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Speaker 1: So now is that how you mastered the art of
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Speaker 1: being hypnotical in the way that when you listen to it,
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Speaker 1: you feel like that you're going someplace mentally. I always
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Speaker 1: call this head music, and I'll put it on when
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Speaker 1: I want to listen to music while i'm writing or
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Speaker 1: I'm doing research, and I'm drawn into where that artist
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Speaker 1: is going. So for you to explain to me that
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Speaker 1: it comes out, you know, first time is the best time.
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Speaker 1: It's like, I totally get it, because I want to
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Speaker 1: be in that place where you disappear on that musical instrument.
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Speaker 1: That's where I want to be taken because you've seen
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Speaker 1: them live up on that stage as well as in
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Speaker 1: the studio. When you disappear mentally and physically, that's where
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Speaker 1: I want to be.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I agree.
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Speaker 3: I mean that's kind of asych energy passes through me.
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Speaker 3: I don't put that much mental subjective mental energy into
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Speaker 3: into props, into you know, editing it as I'm doing it.
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Speaker 3: So in other words, it's like just kind of taking
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Speaker 3: a chance, rolling the dice and being in a way
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Speaker 3: like a passive vessel for inspiration to flow through me.
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Speaker 3: It just comes out through my fingers and yeah, and
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Speaker 3: then they later, you know, times go back and I
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Speaker 3: push it around a little bit like Okay, I think
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Speaker 3: this section works great, and then let me see if
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Speaker 3: and like that, take this section over here. Then it's
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Speaker 3: like building a monster, you know, stitching parts together and passages.
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Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean it may be.
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Speaker 3: I mean, the main thing has been I used to
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Speaker 3: put in at least, you know, an hour a day
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Speaker 3: playing guitar until it was seamless. And at this stage
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Speaker 3: I don't need to pick it up as frequently as
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Speaker 3: I once did. I'm pretty much able to recall it,
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Speaker 3: not necessarily the pieces that I had composed a while ago,
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Speaker 3: but at least, you know, my approach comes back. You
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Speaker 3: have a certain muscle memory, I think in your fingers while.
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Speaker 1: When when you're dealing with the pieces parts and you're
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Speaker 1: creating flow that you speak of. I mean, I've the
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Speaker 1: song that came to me instantly when you started talking
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Speaker 1: about that was Old Dreams, and it's like it's like, okay,
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Speaker 1: how do you how do you piece together this monster
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Speaker 1: as you called it? But how do you then take
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Speaker 1: it to that live audience that wants to have that
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Speaker 1: experience too, with other people around them so they have
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Speaker 1: someone to relate with while they're listening to it.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's just basically, to tell you the truth,
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Speaker 3: it's it's a combination on that track of uh, straightforward
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Speaker 3: interpretation in a strange tuning of the original that I've arranged. Okay,
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Speaker 3: I kind of invented guitar tuning for that one. Gee,
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Speaker 3: it might be interesting to try this.
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Speaker 2: Now.
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Speaker 3: I'm a big believer in tunings, but honestly, I use
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Speaker 3: a lot of your basic Americana country blues tunings, where
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Speaker 3: somebody like Joni Mitchell, I think, came up with about
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Speaker 3: seventy different tunings in her career to play different songs.
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Speaker 2: So I think there's a value.
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Speaker 3: In liberation to try and tune your guitar to different
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Speaker 3: possibilities tonally with intervals, and then workout chords just based
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Speaker 3: on finding shapes that work and sligning them up and
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Speaker 3: down and changing it up. So on that one, all right,
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Speaker 3: I had that basic thing, and then I have this
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Speaker 3: old Electroharmonics sixteen second delay, which is a really beautiful
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Speaker 3: early looper. It's digital, but it has this kind of
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Speaker 3: wonky characteristic sound, and with that, I've got this cascading
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Speaker 3: guitar effect going through it and treated like a loop
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Speaker 3: that creates an ambient texture electronically, like a cloud of
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Speaker 3: a pretty unearthly, you know, heavenly notes clustered that I
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Speaker 3: used to state in an intro using a couple of
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Speaker 3: other little pedals to get a kind of an angelic
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Speaker 3: choir sound out of a guitar, like it sounds like
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Speaker 3: a violin a little bit with these single note stabs. Anyway,
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Speaker 3: that's just just grabbing, and I'd have to show it
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Speaker 3: to you to do it. I do get, you know,
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Speaker 3: inquiries from other guitars often like how did you do this?
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Speaker 3: I was just done, but my father warned me once
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Speaker 3: a magician never reveals his tricks. So anybody who picked
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Speaker 3: up anything of value and that just forget about it.
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Speaker 2: Please.
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Speaker 1: What do you do with people though that? Because I've
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Speaker 1: run into this many, many, many times. You invite me
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Speaker 1: to the studio to take a listen, and then all
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Speaker 1: of a sudden someone pops up and says, so, who
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Speaker 1: are you doing this for?
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Speaker 3: Again?
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Speaker 1: And then you explain it to him and they go, hmm.
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Speaker 1: I think they want one, two, three, not fifteen, twenty five,
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Speaker 1: forty seven. And I understand what they're trying to say,
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Speaker 1: but it's like, this is my art, you know, they
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Speaker 1: tap into it, you know, I don't go to their world.
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Speaker 1: And I feel that with the edge of Heaven is
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Speaker 1: that what used to be called a concept album you're
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Speaker 1: giving us as a full fledgement, Oh my god, you're
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Speaker 1: in my heart type of album, and I ain't going
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Speaker 1: to be able to shake this damn thing.
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Speaker 3: Right, I just you know again, I look to Vhard
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Speaker 3: was kind of a mentor to me in talking about
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Speaker 3: how he made his music. He said, I just try
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Speaker 3: and turn myself inside out. And you know that's the process.
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Speaker 3: It's like kind of just putting your essence out there
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Speaker 3: as far as what moves you in a passionate way musically.
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Speaker 3: I'm just hoping that they're like minded. People out there
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Speaker 3: who are bored will pick up on this and say,
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Speaker 3: this is something really you know, special, and my god, okay,
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Speaker 3: I understand now.
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Speaker 2: I feel the passion behind it.
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Speaker 3: You know a lot of music too, it takes a
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Speaker 3: little repetition factor. There's certain tracks by artists that I
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Speaker 3: couldn't stand. I want to name any names here, I
12:27
Speaker 3: can't think of any anyway, but.
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Speaker 2: I'm repeated listening.
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Speaker 3: Sometimes there'd be a moment where the thing would click
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Speaker 3: in and I'd say, okay, now I get it, so
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Speaker 3: I think you know it. You know, most people, though
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Speaker 3: these days, don't want to give beyond ten to twenty seconds,
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Speaker 3: they're like, buddy, you know, I mean, that's just it's
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Speaker 3: a sad commentary and attention span. And in an age
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Speaker 3: of instant you know, gratification sonically of the digital universe,
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Speaker 3: whatever is out there, and there's such a you know,
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Speaker 3: abundance of people making music or trying to that it's
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Speaker 3: made for a very crowded field in order to like,
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Speaker 3: you know, rise above stuff that may be not so
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Speaker 3: good or you may find mediocre boring. There's a lot
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Speaker 3: of noise out there, so you want to yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 1: Were you thinking of a wedding when you did new
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Speaker 1: pair of flowers? Because right away, I mean, because I'm
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Speaker 1: in the wedding business, and that's exactly what fell into
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Speaker 1: my heart in my vision.
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Speaker 2: I think.
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Speaker 3: So, I mean, I think it was designed to sound
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Speaker 3: like a wedding toe right and the I mean I
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Speaker 3: think And whatever Anne sent you, I gave a little
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Speaker 3: bit of the backstory behind the track, so you can do,
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Speaker 3: you know, just check that thing that you must have
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Speaker 3: sent you, because I researched it, you know. To me, honestly,
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Speaker 3: it was I'm not I can speak a little Mandarin,
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Speaker 3: but not much.
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Speaker 2: I did.
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Speaker 3: Live in the Far East in Taiwan for nearly two years. Wow,
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Speaker 3: And so I picked up a little bit there. My
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Speaker 3: first wife actually, who was my girlfriend in Taiwan, had
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Speaker 3: a tape of this original music from thirties forties Shanghai,
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Speaker 3: which was so beautiful and astonishing. When I heard it,
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Speaker 3: I was like, I'm surprised more people in the West
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Speaker 3: don't know about this at all.
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Speaker 2: I mean, because then if.
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Speaker 3: You tell people most Western is Caucasian Westerns, you know
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Speaker 3: that you're enjoying Chinese pop music from the thirties forties, Yeah,
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Speaker 3: I think it must be a very noisy, you know,
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Speaker 3: Chinese opera, like horrendous racket to Western years, like they
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Speaker 3: can't nothing to hang on to. I think, you know,
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Speaker 3: I that's just a sort of cultural you know, a
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Speaker 3: sad commentary on people's unwillingness to often maybe it's xenophobia,
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Speaker 3: the fear of the foreign elements, you know, to embrace this.
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Speaker 3: But I you know, found it enchanting because you know,
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Speaker 3: it's like a fusion of East and West and like
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Speaker 3: the best of both worlds. And yeah, anyway, so that
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Speaker 3: track was something in my listening experience I found on
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Speaker 3: a cassette of music by Joshuin who was otherwise maybe
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Speaker 3: considered the finest of these singers known as the Seven
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Speaker 3: Great Singing Stars of Shanghai who emerged in that period,
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Speaker 3: and Joshuin was also known as the Golden Voice of China.
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Speaker 3: And I think it's like her with her one of
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Speaker 3: her singing partners who she later married, if I'm not mistaken,
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Speaker 3: So there is that kind of wedding connection.
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Speaker 2: But they're toasting each other. And I found it fun
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Speaker 2: to do the.
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Speaker 3: Other voice, you know, But I have to say I
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Speaker 3: did it fanatically.
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Speaker 2: It was translated for me, but fe young. My partner
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Speaker 2: is a very good teacher.
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Speaker 3: And yeah, so the vocals that I have attended on
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Speaker 3: this record as the foil for her main vocals are based,
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Speaker 3: is authentically his. I can produce them in my voice
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Speaker 3: on the original recordings, and there's a kind of a
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Speaker 3: rough hun quality to them, which suits me fine because
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Speaker 3: I'm not really, you know, like known as a smooth
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Speaker 3: vocalist or I do you know some singing in Gods
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Speaker 3: and Monsters, which is my main group project.
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Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's with Gary Lucas coming up next.
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Speaker 1: The name of the new album, The Edge of Heaven
17:06
Speaker 1: Volume two. We are back with singer songwriter Gary Lucas.
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Speaker 1: Do you find yourself playing in art houses because when
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Speaker 1: I hear a song like seeing older brother Roth, I
17:15
Speaker 1: want to be in an intimate setting where I can
17:18
Speaker 1: really get into that dramatic vibe that you're giving me,
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Speaker 1: because it is emotional and you really, you really do
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Speaker 1: find yourself, you know, getting into everything that's going on.
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Speaker 3: Yes, well, most of the contents we've done over the years,
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Speaker 3: I've done with various singers. If I've been the latest
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Speaker 3: in my live versions of this music I've had as
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Speaker 3: an accompaniment visually slides of the era of old Shanghai
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Speaker 3: when it was known as the Paris of the East.
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Speaker 3: You know, to me, there's a lot of glamor and mystery.
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Speaker 3: I was an associated in that city was and still
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Speaker 3: is the most cosmopolitan port in mainland China, with a
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Speaker 3: showcase actually for westerners, a lot different than Beijing for instance.
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Speaker 3: And you know, some of the glamour is still there.
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Speaker 3: Although they've ripped down many of the old buildings.
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Speaker 2: Where a lot of this stuff took place.
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Speaker 3: There's been quite a bit of modern development and some
18:31
Speaker 3: parts of Shanghai look futuristic. Oh yeah, I mean there's
18:36
Speaker 3: a tower in the harbor that I can't really just see.
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Speaker 3: You could see it, but it looks like something out
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Speaker 3: of a science fiction film. So hopefully that when people
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Speaker 3: see me perform. And we've got a show coming up
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Speaker 3: in a film center New Jersey May twenty second, the
18:55
Speaker 3: Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee, We're going to have
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Speaker 3: these slides perjected on a screen behind us to give
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Speaker 3: you a flavor of old Shanghai. And yeah, if I
19:08
Speaker 3: was doing a tour, let's say, of art houses, which
19:13
Speaker 3: it would be nice. You know, the trick has been
19:15
Speaker 3: trying to find agents to get behind this. It's not
19:19
Speaker 3: something that's easily explained to people. You know, they have
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Speaker 3: to listen to it and kind of become you know,
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Speaker 3: enchanted by it or involved with it to see, you know,
19:34
Speaker 3: an upside, because like I said, there's a resistance. There's
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Speaker 3: a prejudice i'd say about things coming from China, even
19:42
Speaker 3: older music, because of the situation in the world currently,
19:47
Speaker 3: just geopolitical madness, which I don't want to comment on
19:53
Speaker 3: other than to say that the fact that i'd like
19:58
Speaker 3: you may be at loggerheads with your government politically with
20:01
Speaker 3: this other country where this music springs from should not
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Speaker 3: invalidate the music of the thirties and forties, you know,
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Speaker 3: and in fact, just as a sidebar, when the Communists
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Speaker 3: took over in nineteen forty nine, after a series of
20:18
Speaker 3: endless war in China, that's what seeing brother older brother
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Speaker 3: off is about, they clamped down on this music for
20:29
Speaker 3: a while and said it was yellow music. That was
20:33
Speaker 3: their way of saying it was pornographic music, that it
20:36
Speaker 3: was designed to cater to westerners, and we have to
20:41
Speaker 3: purify the culture.
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Speaker 2: Of these pernicious influences. It was horrible.
20:48
Speaker 3: Joshua eventually went into a mental hospital. Sh had a
20:53
Speaker 3: breakdown shortly after they came in, and she couldn't work anymore.
20:59
Speaker 3: And she'd then a movie star on top of everything,
21:03
Speaker 3: as was Bagwang, who sings a lot of the other
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Speaker 3: the originals on the record. They were in movie musical,
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Speaker 3: historical films, contemporary films with music that were coming out
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Speaker 3: of Shanghai in the forties, very popular and performing in
21:22
Speaker 3: dance halls in China. Anyway, their career and Baigu Wang
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Speaker 3: left to go to Taiwan and she had a thriving
21:32
Speaker 3: career there and that's where she died.
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Speaker 2: But anyway, I've digress.
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Speaker 3: I'm just saying I try to accentuate the mystery and
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Speaker 3: power of that era. I'm kind of fascinated with old Shanghai,
21:47
Speaker 3: of the cultural development there and the activity that took
21:52
Speaker 3: place artistically, It's like amazing.
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Speaker 2: And I have.
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Speaker 3: Quite a collection of old photos and art deco advertisements
22:02
Speaker 3: from the period, Coca Cola ads and film clips and yeah,
22:08
Speaker 3: so that if you come to one of my Edge
22:10
Speaker 3: of Heaven shows, that's going to be part of the show.
22:15
Speaker 2: And wouldn't it been It would be nice.
22:17
Speaker 3: As you say, the song by songs sync up specific imagery.
22:22
Speaker 3: Right now, we run them kind of as loops, but
22:25
Speaker 3: when you know, I did this at BAM, the Brooklyn
22:29
Speaker 3: Academy of Music.
22:31
Speaker 2: I had two nights there.
22:33
Speaker 3: It worked really well because my sound man was also
22:37
Speaker 3: the lightning guy, and he was running the slides and
22:40
Speaker 3: he knew all the songs, so he was able to
22:44
Speaker 3: cueue more specific images for each song.
22:46
Speaker 2: But there was an element of improv that worked well.
22:51
Speaker 3: And then the other thing was they pitched it to
22:53
Speaker 3: the Chinese community, which was my advice to their publicity department.
23:00
Speaker 3: At that point, there were at least five daily periodicals.
23:05
Speaker 2: That were.
23:08
Speaker 3: Associated with the Chinese community in New York City, and
23:11
Speaker 3: two of them in English actually, and anyway, we got
23:16
Speaker 3: there those papers to cover the event with a lot
23:22
Speaker 3: of like articles leading up to it, to get people
23:25
Speaker 3: excited about it, because the fact is, even after this clampdown,
23:31
Speaker 3: the music lived on. A lot of Chinese people from
23:34
Speaker 3: all over the world have heard many of the songs.
23:37
Speaker 2: That we're doing and loved them.
23:40
Speaker 3: You know, they're kind of evergreen and enduring classics. And
23:46
Speaker 3: one of my biggest thrills was to play in Shanghai
23:51
Speaker 3: and watch the audience go crazy and start singing along
23:54
Speaker 3: with some of the songs. So yeah, I always, when
23:58
Speaker 3: it's possible, try and bring in a publicist from that
24:03
Speaker 3: community who can get the word out, because otherwise, you know,
24:09
Speaker 3: to try and pitch this, like I said, to a
24:12
Speaker 3: hipster audience maybe or exotica music lovers works to a degree.
24:20
Speaker 3: But again, as it's in Mandarin, you know, that's one
24:26
Speaker 3: a little bit of a barrier to comprehension. But me,
24:30
Speaker 3: I like, you know, I just like it as pure music. Yeah,
24:34
Speaker 3: where I was never a lyrics guy of anything.
24:37
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, where can people go to find
24:39
Speaker 1: out more about everything that you're doing, because I mean,
24:42
Speaker 1: this is volume two, so they're going to want to
24:43
Speaker 1: know what Volume one is all about.
24:45
Speaker 3: Okay, So if you go to Gary Lucas dot com,
24:50
Speaker 3: you'll find three pages.
24:53
Speaker 2: Of links. One is in the discography section.
24:59
Speaker 3: You can look to a page for the first album,
25:02
Speaker 3: which came out in two thousand and one. You can
25:05
Speaker 3: hit a button and it'll take you to reviews of
25:08
Speaker 3: that album, which was superb internationally across the board, and
25:14
Speaker 3: the lyric translations.
25:16
Speaker 2: And then the.
25:18
Speaker 3: New page I've set up for the Edge of Heaven
25:21
Speaker 3: Volume two, also in the discography, will take you to
25:24
Speaker 3: a dedicated page on that album, which has further links
25:29
Speaker 3: I found.
25:31
Speaker 2: Online.
25:33
Speaker 3: It went up a year or so ago a beautiful
25:36
Speaker 3: tribute to this era music called I Think the Story
25:40
Speaker 3: of She'd Died You, which is a manner in word
25:44
Speaker 3: s Hi da iqu she'dyede you meaning popular songs of
25:51
Speaker 3: the era wow. And this runs down biographies of the singers.
25:57
Speaker 3: The history, the history of how this East West fusion
26:01
Speaker 3: came about is totally fascinating.
26:04
Speaker 2: I mean, the fact is Shanghai between.
26:10
Speaker 3: The wars World War one and two was a freeport
26:16
Speaker 3: and you could get in and out of there without
26:17
Speaker 3: a passport, and it was a haven for many refugees
26:22
Speaker 3: in Europe fleeing the Nazis and the Communists and the fascists.
26:29
Speaker 3: Many Jewish musicians were part of the orchestras that comprised
26:36
Speaker 3: the bands that you hear on the record of the
26:39
Speaker 3: large orchestras, but many Filipino musicians. It was kind of
26:46
Speaker 3: a mixed orchestras. And then there was the songs. Many
26:51
Speaker 3: of them were written by a guy named lejiin Hui
26:54
Speaker 3: who was known as the father of Chinese popular music.
26:59
Speaker 3: And he started at a school called the Bride, Sun
27:01
Speaker 3: and Moon Academy that took road shows around of young
27:10
Speaker 3: mainly female Chinese singers, including his daughter, and he wrote
27:14
Speaker 3: songs for them and kind of did the earliest recordings
27:19
Speaker 3: that you would say were in a popular you know,
27:22
Speaker 3: idiom in the actual the twenties. I mean, there's a
27:26
Speaker 3: few scratchy examples online. But anyway, as things heated up
27:31
Speaker 3: in the late thirties, there were Shanghai was kind of
27:35
Speaker 3: divided into legations. There was a British and a French area,
27:41
Speaker 3: an American legation, so there was a lot of Western
27:49
Speaker 3: basses diplomats and their families and certainly fat cat investors
27:54
Speaker 3: trying to make a book on the backs of the
27:58
Speaker 3: local population who were considered coolies.
28:02
Speaker 2: You know. It was like thriving.
28:04
Speaker 3: There was the opium trade, and brothels were prevalent. It
28:08
Speaker 3: was a very racy, cosmopolitan city and a little bit
28:13
Speaker 3: on the corrupt side, but flourishing anyway. And the idea
28:18
Speaker 3: was to really, you know, have a good time ago nuts.
28:23
Speaker 2: So there was this.
28:24
Speaker 3: Atmosphere of the jazz age that really took hold there
28:29
Speaker 3: in the late thirties in the dance halls and clubs, nightclubs.
28:35
Speaker 3: Now the black trumpet player Buck Clayton, who was a
28:41
Speaker 3: jazz master who wound up with the Count Basie Orchestra.
28:45
Speaker 3: He led a band, a big band of his own.
28:49
Speaker 3: It was an all black band called the Harlem Gentleman.
28:53
Speaker 3: I think they were based in Kansas City. Not only
28:56
Speaker 3: any of them had been actually east of Kansas City.
29:00
Speaker 3: But he was recruited in San Francisco by a talent
29:04
Speaker 3: scout and he signed a contract to come to Changhai
29:10
Speaker 3: for a two year residency to play in a club
29:13
Speaker 3: with his band Wow.
29:15
Speaker 2: And so he's written about it. He wrote about it.
29:17
Speaker 3: He's dead that extensively in his he has a book
29:20
Speaker 3: of memoirs. And that's fascinating too, because there are those
29:25
Speaker 3: who would credit his collaboration with Lee jing Hui, the
29:30
Speaker 3: father of Chinese popular song, as being the ifetus for
29:35
Speaker 3: this Shidai Chu classic sound, which melds elements of jazz
29:41
Speaker 3: and American swing and music hall and vaudeville elements, Broadway
29:48
Speaker 3: show elements with Chinese scales and instrumentation on some tracks
29:54
Speaker 3: and vocals in Mandarin. That that template was forged by
29:58
Speaker 3: those two guys.
30:00
Speaker 2: He was looking.
30:01
Speaker 3: He was under a lot of pressure at one point
30:03
Speaker 3: in a Chinese club that he had moved over to
30:06
Speaker 3: to play Chinese music, and he wasn't familiar with the
30:12
Speaker 3: scales for instance, and anyway, Wow, yeah, So there's a
30:18
Speaker 3: lot of cross currents culturally here.
30:20
Speaker 2: It's a fantastic.
30:23
Speaker 3: Melting pot story of music, musical missigination, you know, musical exchange.
30:32
Speaker 3: And to me, that's like the essence of why I
30:36
Speaker 3: love music so much, is that you can bridge cultural
30:40
Speaker 3: dichotomies political differences through that medium of music. Because musicians,
30:49
Speaker 3: music doesn't respect arbitrary boundaries or nation states, and it
30:56
Speaker 3: travels well, and it's very influential. So people are always
31:02
Speaker 3: you know, looking for new sounds. Now, of course we're
31:07
Speaker 3: in this global network, you know, so it's really hard
31:11
Speaker 3: not to be influenced by foreign right now, Latin music
31:15
Speaker 3: of the last several years have.
31:16
Speaker 2: Become you know, completely primaries. Wow wow a bad.
31:24
Speaker 3: Bunny for instance, and you know, so it's all healthy,
31:28
Speaker 3: I think, but people should open their ears to the East,
31:32
Speaker 3: especially China has so much in the way of like
31:36
Speaker 3: fascinating cultural things that people can learn. I mean, I'm told,
31:43
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't hang out with these these kids.
31:48
Speaker 3: I mean I respect them though, But that among young
31:51
Speaker 3: influencers in the gen z if that's what they call it,
31:54
Speaker 3: the youngest generation, the idea of like having it's.
31:59
Speaker 2: Called China maxing, where.
32:04
Speaker 3: Apparently, you know, one phrase that's I haven't heard is
32:07
Speaker 3: I don't understand that I'm Chinese. People say, yeah, Caucasian
32:12
Speaker 3: kids very seriously. It may just be a passing affectation.
32:19
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I think that they look, you know,
32:23
Speaker 3: people who may feel that they're in a kind of
32:26
Speaker 3: doom loop in the US or a dead end as
32:30
Speaker 3: far as job prospects and career and that we're reward
32:34
Speaker 3: and blah blah.
32:35
Speaker 2: Economy is tanking.
32:38
Speaker 3: They're looking for some other outlet to fixate on, you know,
32:43
Speaker 3: And so in many senses, when they see pictures of
32:47
Speaker 3: modern China, which parts of it are very you know,
32:51
Speaker 3: gleaming and built up, such as Shanghai, it seems to
32:57
Speaker 3: back in, you know, as an alternate. Well, you know,
33:01
Speaker 3: some kind of paradise too aspired to it's a portal.
33:06
Speaker 2: It's another portal. Hey, but I will I don't.
33:09
Speaker 3: Mind because if that's a bandwagon, maybe they'll find my
33:13
Speaker 3: music to that.
33:15
Speaker 1: Well that that's an open door for you to come
33:17
Speaker 1: back to this show anytime in the future, because you know, Harry,
33:20
Speaker 1: it's it's always going to be open for you. I
33:22
Speaker 1: love your connection to music history and how you're promoting
33:25
Speaker 1: things forward by making it modern. But at the same time,
33:28
Speaker 1: it's coming. It's coming with something that we can all
33:30
Speaker 1: dig into and even you know, and have a piece
33:32
Speaker 1: of real culture.
33:34
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm glad that you appreciate. It's very nice. It
33:37
Speaker 3: makes me feel like my mission has not been in
33:40
Speaker 3: vain sometimes, you know, it's like a hard to explain
33:43
Speaker 3: the people I say, Well, I'm a guitarists, I've done
33:46
Speaker 3: this and then you're like, well, how do you describe
33:48
Speaker 3: your music?
33:48
Speaker 2: And it's like wow, there's like so.
33:50
Speaker 3: Many varieties of music that I've recorded and arranged and
33:55
Speaker 3: you know so, but I'm glad you like this one.
33:59
Speaker 2: It's dear to my heart. I'll tell you Chinese music.
34:04
Speaker 1: Well, you have yourself a brilliant day then today okay, sir,
34:07
Speaker 1: Thank you, sir,