Music has always been global
A thought through Stuttgart with Branko Arnsek
Monday afternoon / Stuttgart: Tina Saum / flanerie has arranged for a walk with the musician Branko Arnsek. While listening to everyday sounds in the ear from Rotebühlplatz to the Schlossplatz, he speaks of strange sounds from all over the world.
Why do we meet in front of the Rotebühlzentrum?
In the music school, I have been teaching for 25 years in Pop Rock Jazz.
What is important to you?
Above all, I am concerned, besides the whole technique, to show possibilities and to give incentives. I like to confront my students with their strange music. From this an openness can develop, which can then also be transferred to life in general. Perhaps, therefore, a student said to me that my music teaching is at the same time philosophy teaching for them.
Who or what aroused your passion for music?
As a youth I heard a lot of radio. In particular, two editors of the Südwestrundfunk at that time coined my musical taste: jazzaffine Joachim-Ernst Behrendt and Ingeborg Schatz, who had a program for outside European music. I got to know a lot of good and never heard music, thanks to these two, it was fantastic! Music is good for me when they give food to the ears. When you hear how a man plays with 100% energy. When you hear that a music has something to tell. If it is easy, you will not remember anything, it will bind you so much that you may not even be able to say whether the technique was good or bad and what instruments were there.
What musical discoveries have impressed you greatly?
Gamelan music, for example, from Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Bali. For this purpose certain instruments made of metal are used, which sound like bells. People sit together on these differently sized and small metal instruments with a stick and produce with an only five tones an acoustic atmosphere that is indescribable and was when I first heard this music the first time quite strange to my ear. I know folklore from my homeland Slovenia, then Yugoslavia. In Slovenia folklore is characterized by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and in Dalmatia, and in the south of Croatia also by Italy. Folklore sounds mostly unfamiliar to us, as we move around every day in a completely different soundscape.
What interests you in folklore?
Folklore is one of the traditions of a culture: people make amateur music, as they can use music to tell their everyday experiences and to express their feelings. Through this music I learn a lot about different cultures and the history of a country. Folklore, however, is at the same time also a history of migration, since it is composed of various influences. Music has always been global.
How did you come as a passionate musician to make music yourself?
I always wanted to make music. Actually, I wanted to play the piano. At the music school in Sindelfingen, where I grew up, they said to me that this is not possible at the moment. If I wanted I could but immediately bass learn, since there are still free places. And so I came to the bass. When you're playing bass, you're busy with rhythms and I like it. I also studied bass in Switzerland and I still play swing and jazz with different bands in different bands and across Europe.
We have now begun with a coffee in the bar of the Kunstmuseum, where you have already appeared. Here, however, you did not play jazz or swing, but salsa. How did it come to salsa?
I heard the record The sun of latin music from the New York salsapianist Eddie Palmieri in the program of the Berendt in 1973 and was immediately enthusiastic. I still like this record today. In the Zapata I experienced it live and could tell him that especially his music brought me to salsa. I think every music has its own codes and secrets that need to be explored: While I was producing my first salsa piece, I found out that the rhythms work differently as I was used to. In the apartment of a friend I met musicians, with whom I founded in 1982 my first Salsa group. I lived with this friend, who is married to an Argentinian. Her then three-year-old daughter gave me my first words in Spanish, so I could talk with my new music colleagues. I am currently producing my second Salsa CD entitled "Eres la tierra mas linda" with my current orchestral Tokame, which has existed since 2002.
Interculture Stuttgart / Tina Saum
MUSICIAN - COMPOSER - PRODUCER - TEACHER
BRANKO ARNSEK
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