The politics of time. FMP and the music business: art, revolution, responsibilities.
Interview with Peter Broetzmann
Milano, May 8, 2011Words + Photos: Gian Paolo Galasi
Artwork: Peter Broetzmann
 |
| Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy (public photo archive) |
For human life …
For human life anyway, yeah, people don’t like it, but our society is so fucking boring because everything …
… it doesn’t work either …
It doesn’t work at all, no … I mean look at your country, look at my country, and look at all that they call democracy, and that’s a joke …
… think about Europe …
… man, what’s happening in Europe nowadays, it’s a joke …
People always talk about planning things, but actually I don’t know what they’re planning to cope with that situation; not before the so-called ‘crisis’, nor after, in order to sort out of it …
Yes, and for sure politics developed in this ways, none of these guys we call Government care about people anyway …
No, they care about money …
It’s about money, it’s about … I don’t know …
They care about power …
For sure not about normal people in the streets, not at all anymore …
You know, one of the things about power is that you can be, in a way, distant from yourself … we were talking about responsibilities in music: having power is kind of the opposite maybe … I don’t want to talk about Berlusconi, because it’s silly … [Peter laughs] … yes, because it’s an easy target to shoot at … but the thing is, why he likes living like that, and why he is admired? Because maybe people around him will ever say that it’s ok, nobody can criticize you … and troubles, they always come from left-wing … so it’s a way to avoid to manage with yourself, personally …
Yeah, yeah. We will not talk about Berlusconi, but you know, I remember times in Italy, the first years I came down here to play all the big festivals organized by L’Unità, by the Socialists. Italy was a different country in these times. Berlusconi’s just one stupid guy, but look at my government there … Madam Merkel’s so fucking stupid … she’s kind of clever, but she has no idea what to do and what is going on. And the same if you look around …
Maybe she’s able to manage with things, but …
Yes, she’s administrating things, she has abilities to build up networks just to sustain power, that is her. Look at this little Napoleon there … man, what a crooky he is… And so on, you can name them all, and is everywhere the same. Look at the development: when I was young, my first front country was Holland and Amsterdam, because it was very close and through the art business I had connections very early. It was for me always great to go to Amsterdarm, because there’s much more openness, breath a much more open air; but it’s such a racist society nowadays, it’s just about money and power, and underdogs have such a bad hard time; same in Denmark, that was always a country that welcomed everybody, frankly opened with good social ideas on building up a community; nowadays all government are moving more and more to the right-wing. I wouldn’t call them fascists, but they’re on the way; and so, anyway what’s going on on the Balkans, that’s what we would see later. So the whole idea of this Europe, even in the very beginning might have had some good sources, but it doesn’t takes people in to work for the whole thing, it just excludes people, and it’s just something up there, and there being interested in money, dealing with money, means having power, and that’s what they like. And I’m very often in the States, and I stay sometimes longer, I left Chicago as a town. I remember it was the election days, when Obama was elected I was in town, and I remember what kind of hopes people had. Now he’s doing worse than Mr. Bush ….
When he tried to change the welfare system, there was a huge right-wing campaign against Obama, using those images, like KKK, and nobody talked really about what he really wanted to do with insurance companies. In some ways, political communication is a kind of perversion of art. Republicans was using the same elements that Fluxus was using, images: the face of Obama and the triple K under his face, but in order to prevent people to have the possibility to analyze things; so it’s really the opposite of a form of art. As far as Obama himself, maybe even some Democrats were thinking that having a good black guy as a flag, could be good in the election times …
… but the black guy had to learn very fast that he depends on other powers, and other powers is money, and they said ‘no’, then he has no chance, and on the other hand I know people who went to school with him, and all of them said that he always was like an anchorman, a good actor. If you listen to his speeches, they are perfect; but at least what he says, it’s fucking nothing all the time …
If, as you said before, the stream is narrowing, and if you want to take part of that, you have to proof that you will be faithful, when the decisions will be taken, so it’s very difficult to try to change things … and on the other hand, it’s difficult to stay outside and mind doing your own thing, so alone, because all things other people would do, will have a feedback on your life, so as a single person you can only try to find and share resources, use your mind and keep yourself informed … and try to share all of this with other people, in order to build something better …
That’s very interesting. Travelling through the States, sometimes by car, and not taking just the big highways, driving so the country and the smaller town, you always find very interesting people who do that. They get out of the society, and they do whatever they want: they make their own farms, their own art communities, whatever, but I don’t think I could do that.
No?
No, I mean, my business, if we talk about music, I have to travel, I depend on support money, not for myself but the clubs need money; if clubs disappear, we do not work anymore. I’m in the middle of this shit and I have, willing or not, to deal, because I want to work with my guys, and running away it’s not my cup of tea.
 |
| FMP Box accompanying book |
So, FMP starts working again, after having some difficulties …
That’s a long difficult story. After George Cables decided to give part to FMP, to some other persons, these other persons fucked the whole thing up …
Really?
Yes, and then, he always was working in Berlin as a social worker, and yet FMP was his sight business, but at the time he had to go in sanktionen and then he moved away from Berlin, then the other persons really have fucked up what he left … he started again, but he had to realize that working in the music business nowadays, without any support, is so difficult. You have no functioning distribution anymore, you have here small things, you have there small things, and the market, because producing cds is so easy and relatively cheap, is small but overcrowded, and the ninety per cent of it mostly is shit. And so, it doesn’t function anymore, and now he decided a year ago that I would do my last thing, my box with tapes out of the archives, and things like that. I’ll make a nice book and that’s the end of FMP. The box is out, and it is not only beautiful, it is a great document, the book is fantastic with all the last 40 years of European improvised music in there, it’s really great. But to get into business again, nowadays it’s impossible.
How if someone would like to know about that music in the next, say, forty years? The risk is not to have really a continuum, and I don’t talk only about FMP, but about all people making something in their own right, with a vision to realize and other people experiences on their back. Because, usually, behind an artistic development there is a human development; so the risk is to break with the relationship between generations … what will happen in the next fifty years?
But there we come back to the younger people, it’s really up to them to develop other ways of doing things. I think the guys around me, like Ken or Mats, all of them are trying to continue that thing together, it has to work in other ways I think. One of the good things of the development of the last twenty years is that the domination of American music is not there anymore; European brought in a lot of new ideas, a lot of ways of doing things, and if you look at the developments in America, there’s not coming very much; I mean you have some good guys, some good players, and you have the same in Europe too …
There are many in other parts of the world, like in Israel …
I have a couple of friends traveling a lot going to far away places, in the Middle East, in the West Sahara and in countries where now a little kind of revolution takes place, in the Northern African countries; there’s a strong new music scene going on to it, from Lebanon to Algier to Egypt to everywhere, but it will take time to develop, and of course it has not very much to do with what I was growing up, which is jazz music. But I like to go to the Middle East very much, I had set in Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt … It’s another way of doing things, on Marocco, a lot of good musicians. The danger is, beside of that moment for them music is a kind of tool of making some part of freedom for them, or contributing to all development in this countries too, to open up things, but of course if there is really something good going on, I’m afraid that the music business will come and fix it in.
Maybe it’s not only a matter of money. Sometimes when I go to exhibitions, and I see works of people like Shirin Neshat, as an example, I think: ok, she’s talking about Iranian women, here in Europe; we allow her to talk about it, so at first sight we feel more liberal than governments in that country, and maybe this feeling is delivering us from taking care of the real situation, as a matter of self-excuse, and this is part of the problem. I can invite the Master Musicians of Joujouka or Tinariwen to play here, and it’s good for them, because they earn money, but at the same time we can feel ourselves as free from our duties …
I see what you mean, yes …
So we have to be aware of that and discuss about that also … I mean people like me that write about music … you are doing your own thing playing, that’s your duty, but I have this feeling … There is an Israeli documentarist, Eyal Sivan, who drew back his last documentary about Jaffa and Israel politics through the advertising imagery from Cannes Film Festival, because he doesn’t wanted to risk to legitimate Israel democracy, as liberal, because it allows a moviemaker to show a movie that is 'in opposition'. So, he opted for talking about that issue instead of presenting his documentary … it’s a matter of being aware of the contradictions that are taking place …
Yes …
No comments:
Post a Comment