IS THERE A PLACE FOR CULTURE IN TODAY’S MUSIC?
PARTICULARLY IN AMERICA, THE ONLY TYPE OF MUSIC THAT IS CONSIDERED “IMPORTANT” IS THAT WHICH IS THE “NEW” FAD. IT’S AS IF THE MUSIC IS CREATED IN A VACUUM, AND ONLY TO BE EXPOSED FOR A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME AND THEN DISCARDED. THE RESULT IS AN “AGE-ISM” THAT WORSHIPS THE NEW VERSES THE TIMELESS. AS GK CHESTERTON ONCE WROTE,”WHEN WE WORSHIP THE NEW, WE ARE ALWAYS CHANGING ALLEGIANCES, AS THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING NEW”.
GUITARIST STEPHANE WREMBEL TAKES ON THE PREJUDICE OF MODERN THOUGHT.
ORIGINALLY PLAYING GUITAR THE THE REALM OF PINK FLOYD AND LED ZEPPELIN, WREMBEL HEARD THE EXOTIC SWING SOUNDS OF DJANGO REINHARDT, AND IMMERSED HIMSELF SO MUCH INTO THE MUSIC THAT HE ACTUALLY SPENT TIME WITH THE SINTI GYPSY CULTURE.
HIS CAREER HAS BEEN A JOURNEY OF EXPOSING THE WORLD TO THE SOUNDS AND STYLE OF DJANGO REINHARDT, BUT NOT AS A MUSEUM PIECE. HIS SERIES OF ALBUMS ENTITLED DJANGO EXPERIMENTS CAPTURE THE ESSENCE OF GYPSY JAZZ WITHOUT SOUNDING DATED. IN FACT, THE ALBUMS SOUND TIMELESS.
WREMBEL’S TALENTS HAVE NOT GONE UNNOTICED, AS HIS PLAYING HAS BEEN IN A COUPLE OF MOVIES, SUCH AS MIDNIGHT IN PARIS AND VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, DEMONSTRATING THAT MUSIC WITH A CULTURAL FLAIR NEVER GOES OUT OF FASHION.
WE HAD A CHANCE TO TALK WITH MR. WREMBEL, WHO’S ALSO JUST COMPLETED AN ENTICING COLLECTION OF REINHARDT TRANSCRIPTIONS, A MUST FOR EVERY FAN OF THE SIX STRINGER.
AS YOU WILL SEE, WREMBEL MAKES NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN MUSIC, CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY.
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT YOURSELF DURING THIS LOCKDOWN?
Instead of learning something about myself, I’m continuing my journey.
If you read Carl Jung, he bases the foundation of his philosophy of psychology on introversion and extroversion. These are the psychological types. This comes from the two founding fathers of psychology, Freud and Adler.
Jung found that some people reacted to Freud’s method, and others to Adler. He realized that people who are more extroverted or introverted react to things differently. That’s why he put them together into one psychological trait.
I went into that introverted place and thought, “Alright, I’m confined. I’m home. It’s time to go into introversion, and I’m going to feed that part of myself. For now, I’m going to put the ‘extroversion’ to sleep.” Extroversion is the touring, playing for people; that part is shut down.
But it’s no problem because there is a part of me that is introverted, so I’ve been feeding it. That’s why I’ve done the book of transcriptions and have developed new things in my teaching. And I’m writing another book and have read a lot of philosophy as well as having spent a lot of time with my family. So, it’s been an incredible time.
I just wrapped up a lesson with a student.
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“I think that music is an experience that changes from people to people. You cannot put people in a factory like cans of sausage all coming out and playing the same music”
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WHAT’S THE BIGGEST THING YOU TRY TO EMPHASIZE WITH YOUR STUDENTS?
(laughs) That’s a great, long and beautiful conversation!
I do not believe in music schools.
I think that schools are a waste . The advantage of schools is the number; you get people gathering together. This is where the strength of a school lays. But otherwise, the thing of having the pressure of being given homework and being given a homogenous teaching to everyone with grades, I think is completely crazy.
I think that music is an experience that changes from people to people. You cannot put people in a factory like cans of sausage all coming out and playing the same music. ***Music is not something that you can moralize or explain like that; it’s something you need to experience. It’s a unique Dionysian experience.
That’s why in the old days we had the relationship between master and pupil, which was very healthy because the pupil gets to learn at his own pace and in his own way. The master would show him a technique and how to use the tools for music, but the student had to find his own path; he had to know himself.
At Apollo’s Temple it said “know yourself” which is to know the cosmos of the gods. For a student to know himself he must have the time to grow at his own pace. You can’t build a tree. It’s impossible.
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Music is not something that you can moralize or explain like that; it’s something you need to experience. It’s a unique Dionysian experience.
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YOU HAVE A FANTASTIC QUOTE ON YOUR WEB SITE, “WITHOUT CULTURE, SOMETHING IS MISSING IN MUSIC”. PLEASE ELABORATE ON THAT DYNAMIC THOUGHT.
The culture is a larger layer than the person. The person has a personal encounter with music with the technique, harmony and rhythm. The culture is linked to what I said before, that it is related to the relationship between master and student but in a certain environment.
For instance, if you grow up in Senegal, in Paris, or Caracas, your encounter with the music will be determined by the master and the group you are around, so you will have a certain angle to your music.
So, if you want to learn music from Senegal, you really need to go there, because there is something that lays in the way that it’s been taught and perceived for so long that in order to understand it you need to be there.
I remember going to Nigeria and the Ivory Coast in Africa, and by being around the Africans my timing got better, just in a few days! There is something natural that happens in a group setting like that.
DO YOU THINK THAT “CULTURE” ASPECT IS WHAT IS MISSING IN TODAY’S MUSIC? IS MUSIC THEREFORE MORE “CLINCAL” TODAY?
This is exactly where we are now in the world. We’re in a war. The war is between the musical “Mom and Pops” and the corporations. Mom and Pops is the world of freedom, of Churchill, and of Dionysus. It is the world of the master and pupil relationship. It’s an ancient technique that has been transmitted from one human being to another human being, and everyone is on the same pace. It recognizes that there is a diversity in the world, that every person is different, and you live in your direct environment, with the people around you. You live a life of love, of color, full of culture and human contact. That’s the Mom and Pops life.
Facing against it is the Corporate world, which functions as a pyramid. You have one guy on top, usually a soul-less human being that is there for the money. You then have a pyramid below where everything is tried to be equalized, and everyone becomes a piece of the pyramid, and you are owned by the corporation.
It’s not the system of Master and Pupil; it’s the system of Master and Servants.
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This is exactly where we are now in the world. We’re in a war. The war is between the musical “Mom and Pops” and the corporations. Mom and Pops is the world of freedom, of Churchill, and of Dionysus
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WHO GAVE YOU THIS INSIGHT?
Nietzsche was probably the greatest visionary who ever lived. He saw this coming 150 years ago. He warned us and taught us about Dionysus. In his book The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche described the energy that comes from Apollo and the energy that comes from Dionysus.
The energy that comes from Apollo is everything that has to do with structure and proportion and the beauty of the form, the rules of nature, etc. The danger of that, if you’re inclined to go that way, is that you fall into the trap of the corporations, that “this is how things are done and so this is how you do it”. You have to bend to that. But this is only half of the equation.
If you have an ideology or doctrine that can elaborate the equation on paper in a very Apollonian way. For example, Karl Marx elaborated on paper a very beautiful thing from A to Z. So did Freud or (Alfred) Adler; they all developed a very beautiful thing, but this is only one half of the equation.
The other half is Dionysus; Dionysus is life. Dionysus is dancing around the stars, around the fire, storytelling, making love or being with your family, playing music. This is Dionysus; he’s in the forest with his satyrs with him.
Apollo is all alone and cold as a god. Dionysus is alive, and you can’t control him. He always ends up exploding in the face of Apollo.
Translating that into the modern world, it’s like music is being about equalization; it’s all the same. Everyone is a consumer and it’s Master and Slave. This is what Apollo is like, while Dionysus is the world of color.
When you have a doctrine, it’s a doctrine; you cannot fit people into it. You have to remember that people are human. In a world of 8 billion human beings, there are 8 billion different people. How can you fit them all into a doctrine and ideology? You’d have to force them. It doesn’t work.
The only thing that works is Dionysus. Whatever lays in the Apollonian world can be beautiful, with harmony, reason and technique, but this is not what makes music.
What makes music is the human being in the middle of this world.
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“What makes music is the human being in the middle of this world”
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WITH ALL THAT IN MIND, HOW DO YOU DIVE INTO THE WORLD OF DJANGO REINHARDT’S MUSICAL “DOCTRINE” WITHOUT LOSING YOUR OWN INDIVIDIALITY?
You cannot lose your individuality.
Sometimes there are musicians who open up a new door. People like that, you study.
Now, you have John Coltrane on tenor sax. And today, you can be the most amazing tenor player and create your own music, but you will always be compared to Coltrane, and you will always lose.
The record industry has created these indestructible figures, these gods.
You can be an amazing electric guitarist, but you’ll always be compared to Hendrix, and you’ll always lose, because Hendrix is indestructible.
So, if you play something that comes from a tradition, of which Django was the master, and you play something from that tradition, and you’re always compared to Django. You always lose. We doom ourselves.
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“Today, you can be the most amazing tenor player and create your own music, but you will always be compared to Coltrane, and you will always lose. The record industry has created these indestructible figures, these gods”
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HOW DO YOU FIGHT THAT?
I don’t know! (laughs)
I don’t really think you can fight these things.
What you can do is to live the Dionysian life and look for the truth that is within you. If you look for something that is the truth that not marketing, something will come out of it.
SO, WHEN YOU PLAY, ARE YOU PLAYING “DJANGO” OR ARE YOU PLAYING “STEPHANE”?
I cannot think that I’m “playing” Django. What I learned from Django was harmony. Django knew harmony. When I say he “knew” I don’t mean that Django understood harmony, but he “knew” it; harmony was part of him. He knew it in a Dionysian way. He knew harmony even from the guitar.
He showed us the path on how to improvise on these songs on harmony and how the guitar functions. He knew the right-handed technique that helped to produce a certain sound, and you can find it only from him. We’re his descendants and we learn his technique and his laws of rhythm and how to make something swing on the jazz guitar.
And then there is Django The Man. Django the Human. Django the Dionysian, with his personality. This no one can copy.
You can copy a Django solo and play it; everyone can do that. But you cannot write a solo and pretend that it is a Django solo. No one knows how to compose a solo like Django could.
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“live the Dionysian life and look for the truth that is within you. If you look for something that is the truth that not marketing, something will come out of it
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DID YOU EVER COME TO A POINT IN YOUR CAREER THAT YOU FELT “I’VE MASTERED DJANGO REINHARDT”?
No. It doesn’t exist. Only Django Reinhardt is Django Reinhardt.
The only things that you can “master” and know pretty well is the technique, which is rational and teachable, and the harmony, which is the grammar of music. You can learn harmony and it is rationally teachable.
But, what makes the “music” in it? The melody! The melody is the great mystery. No ****one knows how to do a melody. If anyone tells you “I can teach you how to create a melody” that person is a con artist. That ability does not exist. No one can teach you how to make a melody; you have to find it within yourself.
There are things that you do and don’t like that are natural to you, and you have to search for that natural element within yourself. That is the most important thing.
GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE
If you listen to Chopin, there are hundreds of melodies that are never the same but they are always Chopin. Then when you listen to Mozart, there are also hundreds of melodies and whether they are different or the same, they are always Mozart. He doesn’t sound like Chopin, Handel or Bach.
If you listen to Django from beginning to end it is always Django. You listen to Coltrane it’s the same thing. David Gilmore, Frank Zappa…it’s the same thing because that’s the way they are. They looked inside for the melodies.
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“(Today’s education is) not the system of Master and Pupil; it’s the system of Master and Servants
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HAVING SAID THAT, DON’T YOU THINK DJANGO REINHARDT’S LATER “ELECTRIC” PERIOD HAS A DIFFERENT FEEL, ALMOST LIKE GRANT GREEN?
It still sounds like Django to me, but to be honest this is when I like Django the least. He’s trying to fall into a fashion of the time. I think he got corrupted a little bit, but of course he had no choice but to be Django, so he was still Django.
When bebop came, I think that was the beginning of the end, and it was a very unhealthy thing for him that arrived.
When you listen to Charlie Parker, he was playing what was natural for Charlie Parker. He just told Dizzy Gillespie “I found a new way to play the blues”. The way Parker was geared, he played a certain way, and it was great. But then that became a marketing thing for everyone else. Everyone tried to fall into bebop, and instead of trying to find their own melodies they started to copy each other and finally fell into the same trap.
When you listen to the original jazz, the New Orleans stuff, those guys or to Django, they come from the 19th Century and listened to melodies their whole life. They listened to Debussy, Ravel and Chopin.
When they play a song, they always stick to the melody; the melody is always there. It will always float around.
Once you reach bebop, the melody is starting to vanish. I listen to it and think, “All right, where’s the melody?” It sounds like a bunch of leaks.
YOU TALKED ABOUT CULTURE BEFORE. YOU ABSORBED YOURSELF INTO DJANGO’S SINTI CULTURE OF GYPSIES. WERE YOU IMMEDIATELY ACCEPTED INTO THEIR WORLD?
I was invited to play with them. I was friends with some gypsies. Some of the people were jealous of my success because I’m not a Sinti. Not all of them; you cannot make a generality.
Sinti means a culture, but within it you still have the same type of human beings.
WHAT DID YOU LIKE ABOUT THE SINTI CULTURE AND LIFESTYLE?
I liked its unique aspect. They have a very close family and are close to their music; they are close to nature and very direct in their aspects of life.
Musically, they learn by ear; there’s a real nomadic aspect to the music that talks to the soul. We humans are nomadic creatures. Part of us is a little bourgeois and part of us is nomadic. (laughs)
When I think of “bourgeois” I think of Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse who describes a guy like a loner and a nomad, but always finding himself in a bourgeois home. I think that the bourgeois aspect of life is instant gratification. You clean your floor and there’s instant gratification. You put a plant in the corner, it’s instant gratification. There is this aspect of life in a material world.
The more nomadic, gypsy culture enjoys reading, philosophy, poetry and music. They like the floating in the mind
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“There’s a real nomadic aspect to the music that talks to the soul. We humans are nomadic creatures. Part of us is a little bourgeois and part of us is nomadic”
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BESIDES YOUR DJANGO EXPERIMENT ALBUM SERIES, YOU ARE RELEASING A SERIES OF TRANSCRIPTIONS OF HIS SOLOS. IS IT POSSIBLE TO PLAY DJANGO REINHARDT SOLOS ON A WIND INSTRUMENT, OR SOMETHING ELSE BESIDES A GUITAR?
There’s not much interest for that.
If it can be done is not the point.
That’s why you have to know your instrument. Every instrument has a different character. A line of notes played on a certain instrument may sound beautiful, but on a different instrument it will sound lame.
Each instrument produces certain tones and possibilities. That’s why I love Django and the guitar.
I love (Reinhardt’s clarinetist) Hubert Rostaing, but if I want to play his music, I’m not going to play it with my guitar, but on the clarinet. You have to know the nature and role of the instrument.
If you go to New Orleans and listen to the street bands, they still play like 100 years ago. You have the tuba playing the bass on “one” and “three” beats. You have the trombone and the trumpet playing melodies together, and you have the clarinet playing lines in between, singing around the hits from the brass. The wood is not doing what the brass is doing, and vice versa; they complement each other.
ON THE LINER NOTES FOR YOUR BOOK OF TRANSCRIPTIONS, YOU ESSENTIALLY SAY THAT YOU COULDN’T PERFECTLY WRITE THE SOLOS BECAUSE YOU COULDN’T CAPTURE THE FEEL OF EACH NOTE.
Sometimes you have the choice between two voicings and I had to put down one of them. One line can be played with a certain fingering. That’s the thing that’s different with the guitar because you can play one line so many different ways because of the strings.
I had to make a choice with the tablature. The actual notes are correct, but I couldn’t be sure if the tablature is played “here” or “there”. The listener has to sit there and figure it out for himself, too.
When you interpret music, you listen to someone like Chopin, you’re going to slow down the beat. So, instead of playing to a rigid timing, like when you’re grooving in jazz, you don’t play ****on the rigid beat, but you count the pulse, and you feel the pulse of the song so you can stretch the beat because it’s alive; It breaths in a certain way. Everyone has a different feel for it. There is no rule for breathing.
So, when I transcribed this Django material, do I know if he’s slowing down or accelerating? I have to find a way to write it down as close as I can to neutrality.
YOU HAVE MASTERED A STYLE, BUT THIS STYLE IS NOT “NEW”. DO YOU THINK THAT THERE IS A PREJUDICE IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AGAINST “TRADITIONAL” MUSIC AS OPPOSED TO “NEW” OR “CURRENT” MUSICAL GENRES OR TRENDS? IN OTHER WORDS, DO WE HAVE AN OBSESSION WITH “NEWNESS”?
This is part of the corporate thinking. I don’t think in those terms.
I think in terms of rhythm, harmony and technique. That is what’s teachable and rational.
What’s not rational is melody and the groove. The melody leads to philosophy and the groove needs to dance. That’s all that I know; the rest is just marketing.
“Evolution” is a big word. I don’t like that word; I prefer “adaptation”. Darwin should have called it “the theory of adaptation”. I don’t think that the cat is dumb or that the tree in my garden is stupid. I don’t think that they are evolving towards more and more intelligence. It’s always more of an intelligence of adaptation.
I think that we are adapting to a world that is more corporate, which has less culture and less philosophy, less structure of the mind, so we are falling into things that are not so good.
What you call “new” versus “old” is neither new nor old in reality. In reality there is music ****that is sophisticated and talks to certain parts of the mind that requires a bit of work, and then you have music that is pretty much just the beat with a message, and that’s it. There’s not even a sense of melody anymore; there’s no longer a sense of harmony, so we’re falling into an oversimplification of things
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“The melody leads to philosophy and the groove needs to dance. That’s all that I know; the rest is just marketing”
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SOME PEOPLE ARE APPRECIATING WHAT YOU’RE DOING, SINCE WOODY ALLEN HAS INCORPRATED YOUR MUSIC INTO A COUPLE OF HIS FILMS
Yeah, Woody Allen likes my music so he asked me to compose for his movies. It is great; he has an excellent taste in music, so I was delighted and honored to be asked be his composer. It’s crazy.
DID YOU FEEL INTIMIDATED BY THE REQUEST, LIKE “I BETTER DO SOMETHING FANTASTIC”, OR DID YOU RELAX AND JUST DO WHATEVER YOU WANTED?
It was in between. (laughs)
I was honored, but I also realized “I’d better deliver something!” Yet, there was nothing that I was going to deliver that was going to be different than what I am. I have to do what I always do and hope that it will fit.
We’re not doing a sport here; you cannot run faster or slower. Music is not computed like that; it’s computed in taste. Does the music fit into the scene? That’s it!
You do what you do and you hope people like you because you do what you do in the most natural way possible. In my case it went great, so I’m very happy about it.
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“In reality there is music that is sophisticated and talks to certain parts of the mind that requires a bit of work, and then you have music that is pretty much just the beat with a message, and that’s it… we’re falling into an oversimplification of things”
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TELL ME SOME BOOKS THAT YOU THINK EVERYONE SHOULD READ THAT HAVE INFLUENCED YOU
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book For All and None by Friedrich Nietzche, for sure.
Plato’s Republic, The Bible, and Dialectic of the Self and the Subconscious by Carl Jung
There are more, but those are the ones that come quickly to my mind.
WHO IN WORLD HISTORY WOULD YOU LIKE TO SIT DOWN WITH FOR AN EVENING AND PICK THEIR BRAIN?
Socrates. If you’ve got a question to ask, you’ve got to ask the man who asked the questions!
HE MIGHT END UP ASKING YOU QUESTIONS!
That’s what I’m hoping he’d do! We’d ask each other questions and have a nice conversation. (laughs)
BESIDES DJANGO REINHARDT, WHAT MUSICIAN WOULD YOU PAY $1000 TO SEE PERFORM?
Debussy
WHEN YOU LISTEN TO A GUITARIST, WHAT DO YOU LISTEN FOR?
I don’t think in those terms; I either like it or don’t like it.
WHAT GIVES YOU THE GREATEST JOY?
Everything that I do. That means music, teaching and performing, even listening to music. All of that gives me great joy.
My family, my kids and my wife.
Reading gives me great joy, especially reading philosophy. I read all the time.
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“We’re not doing a sport here; you cannot run faster or slower. Music is not computed like that; it’s computed in taste. Does the music fit into the scene? That’s it!”
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WHAT ARE YOUR FUTURE PROJECTS?
I’m writing a new book right now. It’s a Method book, but it’s like no other guitar method book. Instead of being polite and Apollonian, it’s going to be very chaotic and Dionysian. There will be a lot of life content in it.
WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO SAY AT YOUR MEMORIAL SERVICE?
I can’t think about that. I don’t want a memorial service!
When my soul leaves my body, it is disregarded.
If you read Plato’s Phaedo, it’s another essential book. It’s part of a trilogy, Apologia, Crito and Phaedo. It is the trial of Socrates, then he doesn’t want to escape and then he takes the poison. He was condemned to death.
Before he takes the poison he spends his last day with his disciples and talks to them about death, life and birth. The most interesting point is when he says that the opposite of life is birth. So, you have birth and death, but life never stops.
When you think of it, you know that life is everywhere, all the time and it never stops.
ARE YOU EVER GOING TO COME TO LA TO PLAY?
Yes, when the drama is over. (laughs)
STEPANE WREMBEL MAKES NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN HIS MUSIC, HIS CULTURE, HIS PHILOSOPHY AND HIS DAILY ACTIVITIES. AFTER READING THIS INTERVIEW, YOU MAY ASK YOURSELF, “WHY SHOULD ?!?”WREMBEL’S ANSWER IS PRE-DATED BY CHESTERTON WHEN HE WROTE “THE WHOLE OBJECT OF REAL ART, OF REAL ROMANCE-AND ABOVE ALL, REAL RELIGION-IS TO PREVENT PEOPLE FROM LOSING THE HUMILITY AND GRATITUDE WHICH ARE THANKFUL FOR DAYLIGHT AND DAILY BREAD; TO PREVENT THEM FROM REGARDING DAILY LIFE AS DULL OR DOMESTIC LIFE AS NARROW; TO TEACH THEM TO FEEL IN THE SUNLIGHT THE SONG OF APOLLO AND IN THE BREAD THE EPIC OF THE PLOW”. MUSIC IS A PHILOSOPHY, AND WREMBLE POINTS OUT THAT PHILOSOPHY WHOULD BE MUSIC TO ONE’S EARS, IF ONE IS TRULY PAYING ATTENTION. PERK UP!
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