{"id":42758,"date":"2017-04-13T19:04:57","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T18:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/interview-with-musician-chris-eckman-one-of-glitterbeat-recordss-two-founders-about-the-birth-and-spirit-of-an-adventure-born-in-mali\/"},"modified":"2020-05-04T23:37:20","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T22:37:20","slug":"glitterbeat-origins-and-philosophy-of-a-versatile-label","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/glitterbeat-origins-and-philosophy-of-a-versatile-label\/","title":{"rendered":"Glitterbeat: origins and philosophy of a versatile label"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Awarded\u00a0five time in a row as label of the year at the Womex 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 the young label Glitterbeat has now spread its wings. Interview with musician Chris Eckman, one of the label’s two founders about the birth and spirit of an adventure born in Mali.<\/span><\/h3>\n

Updated on October 15th, 2018<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>Listen to the Glitterbeat playlist<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n


\nCan you explain how you got involved in Glitterbeat, a label born in 2013<\/span><\/h6>\n

It\u2019s not something that happened like\u2026 \u00a0like we woke up one day, and we decided to start a label. I started going to Mali, about 10 years ago, just as a traveler looking for new musical experiences, not really to play but I was more interested to go there as a listener. I was just trying to learn about music I guess. I needed to go to some place I had never been before and listen to traditions or musics I hadn\u2019t experienced. So I went there for about 4\/5 weeks\u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n


\nWhy Mali?<\/span><\/span><\/h6>\n

A friend of mine in the late 90\u2019s had gone there to do some field recordings, and he released this field recordings on a label out of Seattle -where I\u2019m from originally- called Sublime frequencies. My friend released two albums for them, one was done in Morocco, the other one in Mali. When he came back from Mali with the recordings, the music was quite new to me. I had been listening to African Music for years and years but mostly Nigerian , Ghanaian, more beat-oriented African Music. So it was something very different to my ears and I sort of became obsessed not only with the music but with the Idea of going there and visiting. So that was my introduction.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Tamikrest, Kidal<\/em> (2017)<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

So out of this trips I started going there with friends, with a good \u00a0friend of mine called Peter Weber who for many years has owned this German label called Glitterhouse, and through this trip we met a young group from Kidal called Tamikrest, and through that meeting, we ended up doing a collaboration. Peter endend up to be manager for Tamikrest and, little by little, after we had done this and I had gone back a couple of times to produce a few more records with other artists, we decided to start a label to release this music. Our goal at first was more or less to release the music we were producing there. Peter and I have been friends for many years, we thought that maybe we could make a sublabel to Glitterhouse specialized in this music from Mali that we were very obsessed with and for about a year we were associated with Glitterhouse and then we set up our own company.\u00a0
\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u00a0took it step by step : we didn\u2019t have this sense that we were going to start a label.<\/span><\/h3>\n

\nThe music of Mali was very different, what did catch you so much (Mali is very present in Glitterbeat\u2019s catalogue)<\/span><\/h6>\n

CE: Mali is where we started with, the music we knew, the place where we had made some friends. It all developed very naturally, we weren\u2019t running around Mali trying to sign bands, and \u00a0trying to be record company people, we took it step by step : we didn\u2019t have this sense that we were going to start a label, we were just meeting artists and some of them asked us \u201cwould you like to \u00a0produce the record ? can you help us get labels?\u201d- we said \u201cyes maybe\u201d, and the relationship started on this basic level.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the thing with Malian music -although it\u2019s a very diverse music- but throughout the country there is a relationship to what we know as \u201cpentatonic scales\u201d and \u201cblues\u201d. To people that are well aware of African-American music, the connections are obvious. This music travelled from that region to the islands in the Caribbean and then onwards to the shores of Northern America and it has come back in a way. So there is a sense always of this familiarity merging with a music that is quite unfamiliar at the same time. It\u2019s a strange middleword between these two things, I think, for the western listener. And I think that\u2019s what attracted me to it. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n


\nTalking about your encounter with Tamikrest, their first album Adagh was relased on Glitterhouse?<\/span><\/span><\/h6>\n

At that point we didn\u2019t have Glitterbeat. Because Peter owned Glitterhouse we started to release the album through his label. It was a very strange new kind of music to be released on Glitterhouse, but It was the shortest line between A to B. It was also a way to be sure things would be done right in terms of legal contracts, and things like that\u2026 Peter was being also protective about the situation, because the guys in the band were really young, in their early twenties, and they had no experience outside of Africa at all. I was with Ousmane (Tamikrest\u2019s leader) the first time he was in Paris, in Berlin, in Europe. It was a huge adventure for them and something that, if you have lived in the desert for your life, was quite a shift of perspective.\u00a0I was producer of the first three albums of Tamikrest. The first one Adagh, we recorded it in Bamako in this quite famous studio called studio Bogolan (originally started by Ali Farka Toure). They were an interesting group, because, as much as they came from the middle of nowhere, and Kidal is really in the middle of nowhere, there was a place there called Maison du Luxembourg financed by the Luxemburg government, and they had a very small laptop studio set up. And when we met them they said they had some songs recorded, and when they sent them to us I was surprised, I was like : \u201cWow !\u201d They\u2019ve actually done some studio recording with overdubs\u2026 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So when we recorded in Bamako they were quite aware of how the process worked, and they were leading te process as artists always should. So it was a great experience, we worked very fast and I think we recorded the album in five days. It was a joyfull experience. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nYou talked about blues, but in certain Glitterbeat\u2019s productions you also can feel a strong rock\u2019n\u2019roll touch\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/h6>\n

Artists in Africa know so many things ! For example Ben Zabo has a very deep understanding of rock music, he listens to rock music himself, hence the sound of his album : again it was made quickly, so there was no chance to change the vision or the assemblage of the band. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Ben Zabo, Ben Zabo<\/em> (2013)<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

I was there as producers often are, just to make sure that the car doesn\u2019t drive off the road. As long as the car stays on the road, you just stay out of the way, you let the band do what they do well. Tamikrest is the same, the rock influences on their records has nothing to do with me : they love Dire Straits, Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix\u2026 they\u2018ve listened for years to Bob Marley. This conversation with rock music and now with electronic and hip hop music is a long established dialog in West Africa. It\u2019s not something that is by nature or by definition brought by Western producers or record companies telling the band to add drums to their songs or things like that. That\u2019s how the music sounds like when they are making it!\u00a0
\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

My job is to clarify the sound, make sure that the vibe in the studio is great, that everybody is relaxed, that the songs seem to be functioning.<\/span><\/h3>\n


I\u2019ve produced maybe fourty records for other artist over the years, maybe seven or eight of those in Africa. And everytime I do the same way : the idea is that it\u2019s the artist\u2019s record, not my record. My job is to clarify the sound, make sure that the vibe in the studio is great, that everybody is relaxed, that the songs seem to be functioning, but as far as re-creating the material from the ground up, that was never what I saw my role as, as a producer, whether in Bamako, in Ouaga, in Seattle or in Slovenia where I live now. There are a lot off approaches, but mine was always that it needs to be artist- driven.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nOn what criteria do you choose the artists?<\/span><\/span><\/h6>\n

Since four years, we\u2019re not a Malian based label anymore, we work with artists from Brasil, the Us\u2026 but now, unlike the first years, a lot of artists come to us. I think we are just looking for stuff that we would go into a store and buy. And we never lost that. Probably after four years we\u2019re more confident about this approach than ever actually.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nCan you tell us about Lobi Traor\u00e9\u2019s record, that came out in 2010, after his death?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h6>\n

Lobi is a great story. I saw him on stage on the third time I was in Mali and I was just thrilled, the show was even better of course that I expected. And yeah\u2026 At that time we were making the Dirt music* record, and he said we would come to the Studio. Well, we were thrilled about this. And the next day he was coming to the studio\u2026 to make his record !\u00a0He was ready to go ! So I had to explain to him that we had to finish our record first. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>

Lobi Traor\u00e9, Rainy Season Blues<\/em> (2010)<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

When I came back to do the Tamikrest record six months later, he heard that I was coming but I was there for a very short time and it was very clear there was no time and not even the money to make a band record. So I propose to him \u00a0: may be just come buy with your accoustic guitar to do like a really raw \u2026 \u201cJohnny Hooker sitting in front of a microphone\u201d. He came and it is still to this day one of the most remarkable thing I ever saw. He sat down on the chair, he didn\u2019t move :<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c- Do you want some water? No.
\n– Do you want to have lunch? No.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He recorded for two hours straight, then he had to go to a wedding, and\u2026 we had a record. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately it was a strange feeling because literally the morning that I got the finished artwork for this album \u201cRainy Season Blues\u201d, I got an email from a Malian DJ who\u2019s on the radio in the UK and he told me Lobi had died. I was just going to send Lobi the artwork so that he could take a look at it. It was a very strange, surreal situation, but yeah, I feel lucky to have worked with him at some level. The record came out in 2010. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nWhit the years, Glitterbeat has broadened it\u2019s palet, going far from Africa…<\/span><\/span><\/h6>\n

Music\u2026 Culture by nature is always a hybrid. People often have this idea that cultures are pure, but anybody who thinks about it more than twenty seconds, with an open mind, will realize that cultures have always been changing. Maybe they are changing faster now, that\u2019s for sure, digitalization and the level of communication we have of course leads to that but, we are always thinking about this golden moments when cultures were better and more pure, and etc\u2026 but this was probably never the case, you know they have been playing electric guitars in the Congo since the 50\u2019s! We can never stop the conversation between cultures and that\u2019s a good thing. There\u2019s nothing more fascinating to musicians than to play with people that are coming from a different angle that they are used to. And one of the sad things about these collaborations is that if some guy from France or the US goes to Bamako and plays with some musicians there, it\u2019s automatically considered like \u201cwhy don\u2019t they just leave these guys in Mali alone? Let them play their music\u2026. Yeah, I\u2019m sure some of these collaborations are not been done on a very fair level, but when I talk with Ousmane \u00a0he says : \u201cdo you think Robert Plant can sing on our record ?\u201d and this kind if things. Musicians that have open minds they want to play with other musicians that have an open mind : it\u2019s not really that important where they come from , the music that can be made is exciting\u2026 and music based on the roots is also fine. They can coexist together, I think we are in a stronger place when all of it does exist, or coexists.\u00a0
\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s long over due that we start to abandon these ideas of World Music.<\/span><\/h3>\n

\nSo I guess you\u2019re not very keen on the \u201cWorld music\u201d concept?<\/span><\/span><\/h6>\n

Well, I never liked this term very much, I think it\u2019s something that we felt right at the beginning when we started Glitterbeat .. I think there was probably a time when this concept of worldmusic made some sense, it was a time when the really well intentioned and inspired people in the music business wanted to broadened the palet of what was listened to in the Western countries, and they felt that if they put a lot of this music together it would be easier to interest people. I think we\u2019re well passed that stage and it\u2019s long over due that we start to abandon these ideas, because you can see it every day : Africa itself is urbanizing very quickly, the music in urban Africa is becoming more and more conversent without any record company like Glitterbeat or producers like myself standing in the middle. It\u2019s becoming more and more conversent with global sounds and global trance, and no one is going to stop that, that\u2019s just going to happen. The digital world that we live in speeds us along, and it\u2019s going to be where we go and at this point we just have to say that artists that are releasing their music themselves (on bandcamp or whatever) are contemporary music artists. \u00a0I think we should show them more respect than that actually. There is a lot of people that have the same feeling that it\u2019s just time to say: this is music from now, it just doesn\u2019t come from Berlin or London or any other European or American urban place, but it comes from Cape Town, Nairobi or Hanoi, and it\u2019s just music that\u2019s being made today, by contemporary musical artists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read next:\u00a0\u2018Quebra Cabe\u00e7a\u2019 by Bixiga: S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s band integrates urban sounds into their afrobeat<\/a><\/span><\/h5>\n