Music has always been global
A stroll through Stuttgart with Branko Arnsek

Monday midday/Stuttgart:

Tina Saum/flanerie is meeting musician Branko Arnsek for a walk. As they stroll from Rotebühlplatz to Schlossplatz, the sounds of everyday life filling their ears, he talks about unfamiliar sounds from around the world.

Why are we meeting in front of the Rotebühl Center?

I've been teaching pop, rock, and jazz at the music school for 25 years.

What's important for you to convey?

Above all the technical aspects, it's primarily about showing possibilities and providing inspiration. I like to expose my students to music they're unfamiliar with. This can foster an openness that can then be applied to life in general. Perhaps that's why one student once told me that my music lessons were also philosophy lessons for her.

Who or what sparked your passion for music?

As a teenager, I listened to the radio a lot. Two editors at the former Südwestrundfunk (Southwest Broadcasting) particularly shaped my musical taste: the jazz-loving Joachim-Ernst Behrendt and Ingeborg Schatz, who had a program dedicated to non-European music. Thanks to these two, I discovered a wealth of excellent music that I'd never heard before—it was fantastic! For me, music is good when it nourishes the ear. When you hear someone playing with 100% energy. When you hear that a piece of music has something to say. When it simply rocks, you're completely captivated; it grips you so intensely that afterward you might not even be able to say whether the technique was good or bad, or what instruments were used.

Which musical discoveries have impressed you the most? Gamelan music, for example, from Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and Bali. It uses specific metal instruments that sound like bells. People sit together, striking these differently sized and small metal instruments with a stick, creating an indescribable acoustic atmosphere with just five notes. It was completely foreign to my ear when I first heard this music. I know folklore from my homeland of Slovenia, formerly Yugoslavia. In Slovenia, folklore is influenced by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and in Dalmatia, in southern Croatia, also by Italy. Folklore usually sounds unfamiliar to us because we move through a completely different soundscape every day.

What interests you about folklore?
Folklore is part of a culture's traditions: people make music as amateurs because they can use it to tell stories from their daily lives and express their feelings. Through this music, I learn a lot about different cultures and the history of a country. But folklore is also a story of migration, as it is composed of various influences. Music has always been global.

How did you, as a passionate music listener, come to make music yourself?

I've always wanted to make music. I actually wanted to play piano. At the music school in Sindelfingen, where I grew up, they told me back then that it wasn't possible at the moment. But if I wanted, I could learn bass right away, as there were still openings. And that's how I got into bass. When you play bass, you deal a lot with rhythms, and I like that about it. I then studied bass in Switzerland and still play swing and jazz to this day with various bands in different lineups, all over Europe.

We've now arrived at the bar of the art museum, where you've also performed. Here, however, you didn't play jazz or swing, but salsa. How did you get into salsa?

I heard the record "The Sun of Latin Music" by the New York salsa pianist Eddie Palmieri on Berendt's show in 1973 and was immediately captivated. I still enjoy listening to that record today. I saw him live at Zapata and was able to tell him that it was primarily his music that got me into salsa. I think all music has its own codes and secrets waiting to be discovered: While producing my first salsa piece, I found that the rhythms worked differently than I was used to playing them. At a friend's apartment, I met musicians with whom I founded my first salsa group in 1982. I was living with this friend at the time; he's married to an Argentinian woman. Her daughter, who was three years old at the time, taught me my first words of Spanish, which allowed me to speak with my new fellow musicians. Currently, I'm producing my second salsa CD, titled "Eres la tierra mas linda," with my current orchestra, Tokame, which has been around since 2002.

Interkultur Stuttgart / Tina Saum