BBC's Cheb i Sabbah Interview

[Guest guest]

Cheb i Sabbah: Musical Spirit

 

You are working with musicians who are devotees of Krishna. When you

work with them it's very clean, everybody's very nice, everybody

smiles, everyone is very proper. The young woman singer will come in

with her Mum. It's one take only, you don't have to do the same part

twenty six times.

Cheb i Sabbah

Cheb I Sabbah is the producer behind one of the year's best albums

Krishna Lila. It explores and unites the traditions of Indian

religious music, north (Hindustani) and south (Carnathic). Cheb has

been active in World Music circles as a DJ, producer and musician for

over twenty years. On Krishna Lila he uses programmed beats and drum

machines to compliment and support the superlative real time playing

and improvising of some impressive Indian musicians. We interviewed

him on a rare visit to London.

 

What attracted you to this particular music?

My previous album Sr Daga was based on classical Indian ragas. And

for the first time I had the raga played in real time and then added

the beat to it, rather than sampling a little bit of this and a

little bit of that. Within that tradition of classical music, there's

another form called bhajans which are also based on ragas. The format

is much lighter and it actually has lyrics which ragas don't. So I

tried to apply the same approach to another part of classical music

from India, and not just the north of India but also the south.

 

The south is a lot less known. Everybody always associates the North

with Ravi Shankar, but when you talk about the south it's very, very

uncharted territory. So I was trying to present that: bhajans with

modern elements. And in between I tried to introduce short improvised

pieces. The music those people make every day, when I'm not there!

 

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When you first discovered bhajans how did they make you feel?

I've been listening to bhajans for decades, it's the kind of music I

listen to at home. It's very positive, very uplifting. Although

within bhajans there might be moods of longing and separation and

sadness at the same time it's very uplifting. It's much simpler than

ragas, with ragas you really have to sit down and listen and develop

your ear. Whereas bhajans right away lead you into the subject

matter, in this case being Krishna.

 

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The album was two years in the making. Was there any point when you

thought "this is too difficult to do"? Were there any real obstacles?

The only part that was difficult to do was when the computers

crashed! You are working with musicians who are devotees of Krishna.

They are devotional musicians. When you work with them it's very

clean, everybody's very nice, everybody smiles, everyone is very

proper. The young woman singer will come in with her Mum. It's one

take only, you don't have to do the same part twenty six times. So

that part is very nice.

 

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Is there less ego?

They are singing about God. It's not rock n roll by any means.

 

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Did anyone have any problems with your approach of working with

computerised beats?

They knew I was going to do something with it but they didn't know

how it all worked. But they had a sense of trusting what I was doing.

When I did the album K. Sridhar who plays the sarod took the role of

the "ministry of culture" guy. He would introduce me and say "look

this guy's cool, he's not Indian but he knows about India". I think

once they realised that I knew about Khrisna, and that I was genuine

they trusted that it wouldn't turn into a "techno trance" kind of

thing they didn't want.

 

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Were there any special moments you can remember in the making of the

album?

Everything was special. There's no shoes, there's always incense,

there was always an altar in the studio. One very sweet story is

about Radhika, the singer on "the North" section. K.Sridhar and

K.Shivakumar are her two uncles. One lives not far from London and

the other, who plays violin, lives in Bombay. She's a trained dancer

and singer but her style is bhajan. She has her own group and they

get hired to sing bhajans in temples or houses. To her her two uncles

are master master musicians. And she would have never dreamt that she

would play with her uncles. She just couldn't believe it.

 

In India and other places there's that kind of respect, according to

age and what you have accomplished in life. It's so rare and so

unique and so beautiful. You don't find it in the West. She had her

headphones on, she was singing and on the one side her uncle was

playing sarod and on the other her uncle was playing violin and to

her that was like "Wow"!

 

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Was it easy to put the two traditions side by side? Did they respect

each other?

Shuivakumar and Sridhar are both from the south. They are two of the

few musicians I know who can play in both styles. Most Hindustani

don't play Carnathic and vice versa. But if you look a little deeper

it all came from the south originally. In the north it sounds

different because of Persian and Muslim influences. When I made the

record some people said why are you putting the south first, why

don't you put the north first. But there was no difficulty really and

a true musician or a true listener would have no problem with either

one. The south is the source for a lot of Indian art and music. It

has been preserved because when the Muslims invaded they didn't go

that far down.

 

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Does this record have any kind of message?

Not a message. But there are different types of music for different

parts of the day. There's no way you could be dancing 24 hours a day,

so you have music for dancing, music for contemplating. On this album

I didn't invent anything, I was simply a conduit for something that

was already there. But it's the kind of music that invokes a sense of

surrender and devotion. That's the purpose of bhajans. I was trying

to bring that to a wider audience and make it sound different enough

to be attractive.

 

So somewhere something is working. It's a devotional offering, an

album that talks about Khrisna that maybe can bring something

positive to all of us. Ragas and bhajans are spiritual. The source is

spiritual: ragas were created by Lord Shiva according to legend. It

is spiritual music. At the same time the sacred and profane are two

sides of the same coin, you can't separate them out.