After a lifetime of playing with tropical island musicians, renowned guitarist Bob Brozman decided to try six days of trad music, writes Siobhán Long
IT WASN'T EXACTLY a proposition to die for: six days, three musicians who haven't played as a trio before and a raft of unfamiliar music to contend with. This was the challenge posed by executive producer Brian Carson of Belfast's Moving On Music – but the truth is it led to sparks flying in directions none of the musicians could have anticipated, with the results of their intensive lockdown captured on a new album, Six Days In Down.
Bob Brozman is a prolific recording artist, ethnomusicologist, master of the Hawaiian slide guitar and this year was voted "Best World Guitarist" by the readers of Guitar Playermagazine.
He’s got a Ry Cooder-like capacity for crossing borders, working with René Lacaille from La Réunion, Okinawan three-stringed snakeskin banjo player Takashi Hirayasu, string bands from Papua New Guinea, and countless other, mostly island musicians. So finding himself in the company of two Irish traditional musicians felt like the most natural thing in the world to a man for whom a five-year career plan is simply anathema.
“My entire ‘career’ has been defined by a couple of things,” Brozman muses. “One is serendipity, which is allowing things to happen rather than trying to make them happen. The other is curiosity, so when this project came out of the blue, I jumped at the opportunity to work with people who are virtuosos in their own music and open-minded enough to try different things.”
Six Days In Downis a sparkling collection of tunes, mostly drawn from a traditional Irish base (with two songs from Stephanie Makem), but infused with a rhythmic sensibility and a tonal depth that's refreshingly unexpected.
Piper John McSherry and fiddler Dónal O'Connor of At First Light even composed two new tunes with Bob Brozman: Beer-Belly Dancing, a Middle Eastern-influenced series of notes imposed on a traditional Irish rhythmic line; and Brelydian, a slow polka influenced by the north African Lydian mode, where two keys are played at the same time.
At the core of Six Days In Downis Brozman's belief that nothing in music is set in stone. Flux and change are the oxygen that ensure its survival across and within cultures.
“The idea of a traditional music is a bit of an illusion,” Brozman says, “because it’s comprised of individual musicians, each one pushing the limits. For example, there’s a kind of conservatism about blues music among the fans of blues, but the ironic thing is that the great old blues guys that they loved so much were actually innovators in their time.”
Brozman did not intend to usurp the role of any Irish musician by engaging with our traditional music. This was a journey of discovery rather than an attempt to assimilate, he insists.
“I did not set out to be a great Irish musician on this project,” he explains.“It’s half a lifetime of work. Indian music’s a full lifetime. I think Irish music is at least half a lifetime! But we went about the making of art over six days, at 12 to 18 hours each day. It’s a wonderful way to make friends – with music. It’s like having a conversation with 100 times the density and speed.”
Fiddle player Dónal O’Connor admits to his share of reservations about the project before he met Brozman.
“There’s always the fear that when you’re taking your music to a meeting point with somebody else and their music, that there could be a compromise that wouldn’t work or that you just mightn’t get on,” he admits. “We had mixed emotions, but it organically came together. It was an amazing experience really.”
Why did Brozman do it? “After a lifetime of collaborating with musicians from tropical islands,” he says, “I thought a cold-climate island project would be interesting and challenging.”
Bob Brozman, John McSherry and Dónal O'Connor's CD, Six Days In Downis now out on Riverboat Records/World Music Network. They are touring nationwide. See bobbrozman.com
