Gordon Grdina (VI)
This interview with Gordon Grdina was conducted by email during May 2018.
Tony Reif; Can you give us an overview of how The Marrow relates to or develops on from the other oud-based groups you’ve been leading (or in some cases co-leading) starting over 10 years ago – Vancouver groups such as the wide-ranging world music group Sangha and the Persian-oriented Qalandar (both featuring Hamin Honari), and of course your Arabic 10-piece Haram, as well as US guitar-and-oud projects No Difference (with Mark Helias) and Inroads?
Gordon Grdina: This group directly comes out of each of those groups in different ways. Mark and I have worked up a rapport with the oud in particular that is exploratory, patient, delicate and a little irreverent at the same time. I think this is one of the relationships that really got me focused on trudging my own path with the instrument. He’s played with Marcel Khalife, who is a really heavy oud player and singer with a strong, artistically experimental voice that is also grounded in tradition. Mark already has a lot of this music in him. The Sangha and Qalandar projects are of course the driving force of my interest in this music, but they are very much based in me going towards the history and keeping a fairly traditional aesthetic. Hamin has been a huge part of my musical development. He is adventurous, and I wanted to hear and write music for him that would push both of us outside of both of these ensembles towards the aesthetic and concept of Haram: taking traditional pieces and rearranging them, finding ways to pay homage to the tradition from a place that is comfortable and honest in relation to each of the varied backgrounds of the musicians. This idea is a big part of The Marrow’s attitude, but we focus on a quieter dynamic range, and with original compositions rather than arrangements.
TR: You told Stuart Derdeyn for a preview in the Vancouver Sun that the name The Marrow came from two places: “Firstly, the connection to the music which really does feel as though it is in my bones, and also because of all the racist b.s going on when deep down we are all connected and there are not these differences.” But of course there are differences between cultures, which is part of what can make creating these deep musical connections so interesting and rewarding. Can you think of instances in the past where making the music work involved understanding cultural differences and negotiating a way through them with the musicians? And what about The Marrow itself? You and Mark have quite a long history together but this is the first time you’ve worked with Hank, yet his playing on these middle-eastern modes, some of which I assume he wasn’t that familiar with, is exciting and creative, just what you must have been hoping for. What was the learning curve like in getting the band to the level of this recording?
GG: I haven’t run into any real instances of having to understand cultural differences that I can really recall. All of the issues and negotiations have been technical and instrument-based. Some of the instruments have been working together for centuries in well-developed aesthetics, so writing melodies that work on the oud might not sit well or at all on the tar or kamanche for example. Navigating that and figuring out what will work while retaining the original spirit of the pieces has been the biggest challenge or negotiation in my musical culture-clashing. The other has been sonic, as the traditional roles of the percussion and stringed instruments have been set up for very real aural reasons. The tombak takes up a lot of low end while the tar and setar and kamanche are brighter in nature, creating space for everyone to be heard. Making the tombak work with the oud is a different story – which is why the darbuka and riq are tuned higher than the tombak. But now that we have a lot of amplification and can really massage the EQ we can fit these instruments together quite nicely. And in this group we’ve added bass and cello, which would make the group quite low-end heavy. Musically we find ways to work around this and we also help in the mix. I pick groups based on people and not instruments, so I am lucky we can make these unlikely combinations fit and create our own hybrid.
Hank is amazing and so unique. He sounds like no one else, he performs in so many different contexts and manages to put his own stamp on things. He really does that here within a very unfamiliar context. He is also very studious and really puts his love and time into the music. We started this group as a trio with Mark and had a few gigs, the first of which was at Barbes as part of my good friends Brian Prunka and Kane Mathis’s Oud Summit. I think we rehearsed twice before the gig and worked on the tuning, and then the music really came alive right from the start. A notable aspect of this recording is that the guys weren’t playing their own instruments and were able to negotiate the quarter-tone tunings on foreign instruments superbly.
TR: And the title of the record, Ejdeha (“dragon” or “serpent” in Kurdish and Farsi) – what’s its significance?
GG: Well, I was looking for words that have similar meaning in two languages. In this case Farsi and Kurdish. My oud teacher Serwan is Kurdish Iraqi and I’ve studied Persian music with the Honari family so having ejdeha mean serpent or dragon in both languages seemed fitting. Dragons are a universal mystical creature, much like music is, so the cross-cultural parallel is a through-line. Also my 3 year-old loves dragons so there’s that…
TR: Officially this is one of Songlines’ world music releases (like Haram) but of course it’s just as much a creative jazz record – in the ways the musicians interact, the way solos can morph into duets or group improvs, the commitment of the soloists to intensively and cogently exploring the material, etc. You said recently that in the last few years it’s starting to feel like your oud playing and guitar playing “are turning into the same thing” and that “Indian music, Iraqi music, Arabic stuff, Persian music: they’re all giving jazz another viewpoint on improvising.” Certainly you seem to have been developing a personal musical language that incorporates all these diverse areas of interest, each with its own stylistic determinants and its own traditions of elaborating the basic elements of a piece (mode, rhythm and sometimes harmony), into a coherent yet flexible vocabulary that you can draw on intuitively – let’s say in the middle of a solo. Do you work on this much in practice on the oud, or is it something you leave for the inspiration of actual performances?
GG: Yes, I feel that this has developed more from taking off the reins and letting go, to not try and constrict the improvisation, more than in a conscious effort to add new ideas into traditional language. I feel this has led to sometimes staying completely within tonal, modal or rhythmic constraints and other times to stretching them. I have been and still am working at hearing and internalizing maqam and dastgah in order to have aspects of them come out naturally and fluidly just as more western improvisational ideas already do. Moving in the opposite direction I practice western-based ideas on the oud as well because there have been techniques that needed to be developed in order to translate harmonic and melodic material to the instrument. My lifelong practice is to effectively and clearly execute on the instrument what I am hearing. There are many practical applications that I work on to bring this about, and the process raises different complications to work through on the oud than on the guitar.
TR: Could you take us through how sone of these pieces works modally – which maqams or dastgahs they are based on, and to what extent you all stayed within those parameters in your improvising or, on the contrary, expanded their tonality the way jazz players often do.
GG: In “Ejdeha” for example the first part of the melody is loosely based on the Persian mode Nava, or possibly the maqam Bayati, but the tonic is different. The piece then switches to Saba on G and then resolves to Nahawand on the 4th before resolving to Rast. That is roughly what is happening I think. I wasn’t thinking about the piece in any particular maqam but started with the vamp, and the melody developed from there based on what I was hearing should come next. In this way the improvisation was also developed. The vamp is played behind Hank which opens up his development through the maqams of the piece and his own interpretation of the vamp. He stays pretty close near the beginning and then stretches and expands the tonality ending with some sonic textural space which I think creates a lot of interesting tension.
TR: What about the two slow, song-like, percussion-less pieces, “Bordeaux Bender” (which seems reminiscent of another piece of yours, or have you played it in other groups?) and “Full Circle” – in jazz terms one could think of them as ballads and they bring into focus the more lyrical/melodic side of your composing and playing. What’s the inspiration for them? The definitely have a different feel from the rest of the record…
GG: For “Bordeaux Bender” I was looking to develop a 3-part invention with each new part revealing more information and re-contextualizing the original melody. I wanted the piece to welcome more exploratory improvisation that was harmonically ambiguous. I felt it would make sense with Hank and Mark and feel comfortable and lead to some untypical spaces for the oud. “Full Circle “to me seems like a standard and territory that we were all familiar with. That piece was written really quickly and I wasn’t sure it would work in this context but I was pleasantly surprised and find myself singing that tune in my head often.
TR: What about west Africa? “Boubacar”, a tribute to Malian guiatist Boubacar Traore, must be based on traditional licks that would originally have been played on a kora or ngoni, so it’s intriguing to hear them played on the oud. How did you get interested in west African music, and was it one of the influences at play in your improvised guitar work on Ghost Lights?
GG: This piece was actually written about 14 years ago and I had forgotten about it. I fell in love with Boubacar’s music then and wrote a few pieces that are really influenced by his melodic sense. It is a recurring theme in many projects and definitely present on Ghost Lights. For that record the connection between Benoît and Kenton and their rhythmic language being very influenced by west African music in general brought that out. I feel the connection to that language on the oud through Sudanese music as well, so that sound has a definite history on the instrument. I have not formally studied Sudanese or Malian music but am drawing my own connections on the instrument and trying to pay homage.
TR: Are you curious about other near and middle-eastern stringed instruments (saz, tar, setar etc.), I mean to the point of wanting to play them, or is the oud enough of a challenge and reward?
GG: I am but not to the point of playing them. Focusing on the guitar and oud is enough. It’s taken a long time to get to the point where I feel I have something to say on these two instruments and I still have so far to go that adding another instrument would just be too much. That said.. I really wish I could play sarod…
TR: I hear you’re already planning a 2nd Marrow recording – any thoughts about where you’re heading next with this group?
GG: We’re going to be developing out in all the directions that have been presented with this album and moving forward! …and we are going to have some special guests – if everything works out well we will have some amazing vocals and trumpet on the next one.