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Transcription: DEEP FOREST: Clear Cutting Aired on the radio program Echoes on March 22, 1998, Sunday evening. Host: John Diliberto ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Tres Maria begins playing) John Diliberto: Your hearing Echoes and this is John Diliberto. When Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet cleared a digital path of a forest of central Africa seven years ago, they opened up a world of music and controversy. Although they had never met a Pygmy, or let alone been to Africa, they adapted the chants of the Pygmy tribes there to their own dance beats and electronic orchestrations. Seven years later their debut album, Deep Forest, with its Sweet Lullaby song, remained popular and influencial. Now Deep Forest has a new album called Comparsa, that takes them to Latin America. Kimberly Haas does some "clear cutting" with Deep Forest. (Sweet Lullaby is now playing) Kimberly Haas: Deep Forest rode out of the jungle on the backs of Pygmies when their 1992 debut became a world-wide hit. Ironically, the best known song on the album, Sweet Lullaby, had little to do with Pygmies. Eric Mouquet: The lead melody is coming from Solomon Islands which is not in Africa, it is in the north... in small islands north of Austalia. In the backround you have these water drums with the Pygmy youdles - and we always said that from the beginning but people are focused on the Pygmy (laughs). Kimberly Haas: That's Eric Mouquet, one half of the Deep Forest team that brought central African pygmies and Solomon island singers to the world. Their Deep Forest debut was a craftfully conceived and slyly constructed album that traded on dance beats, new age atmospheres, and world music exotica. And they've continued the trend on their latest album Comparsa. (Noonday Sun is playing in the backround.) Despite coming from one of the richest cultural trends in the world, Michel Sanchez says that they are more inspired looking outside of France. Michel Sanchez: It's true that we need to listen to some things which sound exotic for us, so if other people ask us to do something with French traditions, it's really interesting but we know all of those things about French tradition so it's not sufficiantly amazing for us. Kimberly Haas: The music of Deep Forest is a jiggsaw puzzle, only the pieces come out of different boxes. Michel Sanchez: Now we like to mix different cultures in the same song, but we have to find common points, and this is really the biggest part of the work because for Madagascar for example, we had 25 different cassettes and each time we want to do another song we have to listen to everything to find something which could fit with another culture. (Forest Power is now playing) Kimberly Haas: Orders can become blurred in the Deep Forest stew, and casual listeners will be forgiven if they hear Pygmies on tracks like Green & Blue. Eric Mouquet: No...it's not pygmies, it's voices from Madagascar, and there's children singing with youdles. This is one of the common points we can find in a different country. In Switzerland, for example, they are doing that, in the rain forest of the Pygmy and in Madagascar and sometimes in the Cranberries (laughs). Michel Sanchez: We find some common points between Cuba and Madagascar too. That's why we decided to focus on these chain of countries, and it's very interesting to see that very opposite countries could have the same kind of cultures, you know. Kimberly Haas: On the original Deep Forest album all of the voices were sampled from records and CDs. With Comparsa Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet have actually traveled throughout Latin America recording singers. But this is just the beginning for Deep Forest who cut and slice the songs to their own musical ends. For them the meaning of a language isn't important, just the musical quality of its sound. Eric Mouquet: For us, it's so easy to not take care in a way to the meaning of the lyrics because we consider it more like a musical sense, like melody only, not words. And that means that it would be more heart felt host, because in French we know exactly what the words mean, and we know that you cannot put this word after this one, so it's kind of a bizzare thing but with another language it's so easy to do if you consider that it's only music. (Tres Maria is now playing) Kimberly Haas: Deep Forest has some powerful musicians joining them on Comparsa, including mexican shemanic performer Jorge Reyes and jazz keyboardist Joe Zawinul. Long time fans of Zawinul's group Weather Report, Deep Forest say they met him after they heard him use one of their recordings to open his own concert. Eric Mouquet: At the beginning of the show, when the lights go down, it played Bulgarian Melody from Boheme, the Deep Forest album. I was very surprised, and he came on stage and played synthesizer at the end of the song just to link the song with it at the beginning of the show. So I was very impressed and at the end I said we should go back stage to say "Hello" and "Thank you for doing that, it was very nice of you". And he said something very strange, he said "You know you inspired me for my last album and my people", and we said "No Joe, it's just the opposite. You've inspired us for a long time!" (laughs). (Deep Weather is playing) Kimberly Haas: Deep Forest have been criticized for pillaging music of the world. But Eric Mouquet says they are following a tradition that goes back at least to Brahms. Eric Mouquet: Brahms, for example, he was not inviting Gypsies to play, he was just picking melodies and putting it in his composition. So, it was sampling of course, but it isn't like this. I really think that the sampler is a new tool, that it didn't exist before, but now it exist so we like to use it. (Media Luna is playing) Kimberly Haas: You can hear Deep Forest's latest global aquisitons on their new album Comparsa from 550 music. For Echoes, I'm Kimberly Haas. (Media Luna ends) John Diliberto: From their album Comparsa here's Deep Forest with an interlude called La lune se bat avec les etoiles ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ (La lune se bat avec les etoiles plays and at
the end John Dililberto gives the Echoes phone number to call to order
Deep Forest's albums.) |
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