Tucson Weekly, AZ
July 14 2004
Melding of Musicians
Jesse Cook travels to multiple continents for collaborators on his
latest album
By JOAN SCHUMAN
Jesse Cook
I’ve almost burnt a hole in Jesse Cook’s newest CD, returning again
and again to the seamless transition between the first and second
tracks.
“Prelude” slams into “Qadukka-l-Mayyas” with a punch of violins and
cymbals and deep, deep drums banging against each other before Cook’s
signature flamenco guitar bursts forth. And then, 25 seconds into the
second track, Maryem Tollar blares the lyrics of this traditional
Andalusian tune in a subterranean alto. An Egyptian string ensemble
headed by Hossam Ramzy in Cairo is responsible for haunting threads,
while back home in Toronto, Cook has enlisted Chris Church to
electrify the violin on the first track.
“It didn’t start as a master plan,” explains Cook of his aptly dubbed
fifth album, Nomad. We spoke by phone between gigs on his 14-city
U.S./Canada tour, which brings him and his Toronto-based band through
Tucson on July 24.
“I usually record at home in my own little studio. I tend to do all
the writing, arranging and producing myself. But I wanted to be far
enough away to get perspective.”
Cook was determined not to let distance drag down his dream of
incorporating musicians on several continents into the 12 tracks that
make up his Juno (Canada’s Grammy equivalent) award-winning album.
“I also was dying to work with Simon (Emmerson) of the Afro Celt
Sound System. So we called him in London and he loved the idea. He’s
the one who introduced me to Hossam who said, ‘Man, you need some
strings on here.'”
In the end, Cook grabbed musicians from London, Madrid, Cairo,
Toronto, Nova Scotia and, in the States, Milwaukee, Austin and Los
Angeles.
Paris-born and Toronto-raised, Cook already had four albums under his
belt before embarking on his latest project. Since 1995, he’s
produced CDs that have soared to the top of Billboard’s World Music
charts in the United States and gone gold in Canada–albums with
quirky one-word titles mostly on the Narada label (Tempest in 1995;
Gravity a year later; Vertigo in 1998; and finally Freefall in 2000).
His last two albums featured musicians from further reaches–like
Djivan Gasparyan (dubbed the god of Armenian Duduk) and Danny Wilde
of the Rembrandts, among others.
The Gypsy Kings influence is noticeable, as are hues of the Afro
Celts’ arrangement. At Narada, he shares a lineup with a litany of
world musicians including Lila Downs, Shelia Chandra, Jai Uttal and
Baka Beyond–all mavericks fusing their own styles into new genres.
Danny Wilde comes back for a cameo on Nomad, and Cook’s masterful
guitar yields its fiery, familiar taste–a smorgasbord of expressive
rumba and flamenco arrangements–a gypsy amalgam if there ever was
one.
“Montsé Cortés is a legend in gypsy music,” Cook says, discussing the
singer’s willingness to lend her vocals to “Toca Orilla,” the last
track on Nomad.
“Gypsy is a very guarded music. Sharing it with a foreigner like
me–a mungicake–is amazing,” concedes Cook of his admittedly “white
bread” status.
As for any fears of putting together an album with musicians living
far away from each other, Cook says it wasn’t that difficult.
“Hossam invited me to stay in his Cairo apartment, and it just
snowballed from there. It made sense to contact my vocalist friend
Maryem, who happened to be in Egypt at the time. She actually lives
three blocks away from me here in Toronto,” he adds with a chuckle.
“Once you get the travel bug, it’s pretty easy to just grab the
laptop and go. It’s amazing. I was flying home from Europe and I’m
mixing with 64 tracks on my Mac right there in row 13.”
He’s quick to add, “Just because you have the capability of recording
on the fly and have access to these tools, it doesn’t mean everyone
can be a producer. Remember, it’s in the ears.”
Going to where the musicians live is crucial, says Cook. “I’m not
sure you get the best take when musicians aren’t at home. In their
own space, they’re in the groove.”
The liner notes to Nomad hint at adjustments, however. Cook sprinkles
in bits and pieces of his album journal.
Cairo, January 11, 2003, 3:15: One of the violinists has arrived. The
first musician to show for a 2 p.m. call. Cairo time. Got to love it.
“I expected to have a hard time due to my Western origins. They all
thought I was from the States. I expected more hostility, post-Sept.
11. But people were great,” says Cook about his hosts. “I guess
politics operate above humanity.”
Nomad isn’t just different from Cook’s other albums for its melding
of musicians.
“Most of my previous music is instrumental. But I knew I wanted
lyrics and singing on this album. So, scary as it was, I made a demo
so I could generate interest in this project. It’s really awful, if
you’ve ever heard me sing. You begin to understand what a great
singer can do for a song–it makes it or breaks it.”
So, Cook wrote the tune for Montsé Cortés in her range. But he took a
different tact for Brazilian singer Flora Purim.
“I was just writing another version of ‘Girl from Ipanema,’ and then,
ironically, her CDs just flew across my desk and the project clicked.
I went to L.A. to record her voice tracks.”
Liner notes expand on his process for Purim’s track, titled “Maybe.”
It’s not so much Bossa Nova as it is Brazilian samba meets rumba
flamenco.
“I love eclecticism,” says Cook. “Finding a flow is important and a
bit of a trick. Basically, all the tunes are rumbas. The guitar is
front and center, chugging away.”
He adds, “I think people are obsessed with division–culturally,
spiritually and musically. For me as a musician, the similarities are
far greater than the differences. In Tibet, for example, when we
played there, it didn’t matter what language we were singing in or
even talking in. It’s the music that’s the universal language. Boy,
that sounds clichéd. But it’s true.”
For Cook, it’s all music from the planet Earth.
When I asked him to describe contemporary music in one sentence, he
responded quickly.
“It’s music of the next millennium. Our travel time is shorter now,
though we cover great distances, compared to say, France in the 18th
century. It changes how we listen. So, Britney Spears now has a
Bollywood string riff, and people don’t hear it as such. They just
hear that they like it.”
Yet with the shrinking of travel time and the ubiquitous ability to
taste everything, Cook says the business of musical genres and
audience promotion is slower to catch on.
“Here in Canada, the CD went gold. In the States, it’s more of an
underground following. Is it the music business or a cultural thing?
I don’t know. Some songs did quite well, even charted on the radio.
But not in the States. Oddly, “Qadukka-l-Mayyas” charted in the
United Arab Emirates.”
With all this globalism, Cook says he had the hardest time,
ironically, working with one musician closer by in the States.
“Once I decided I wanted to work with the BoDeans on the track ‘Early
on Tuesday,’ I went looking for Kurt Neumann in Austin. We made all
the arrangements, and I’m about to leave Toronto, and the SARS scare
hit. Kurt cancels, saying we all had cooties up here,” Cook quips.
“I spent a good deal of time convincing him that we’re all OK. No one
I knew had gotten sick–it’s a big city, you know. But Kurt wasn’t
taking any chances. The running joke later was that I’d be somewhere
in the States working, and I’d call Kurt in Austin just to tell him I
was doing OK.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress