A while back, ChartAttack sat down with 1 Giant Leap's Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman to discuss their ambitious project. Catto and Bridgeman went across 25 countries worldwide to capture what they dub the "unity in human diversity" through audio-visual means. Fortified with their laptops and recording equipment, Catto and Bridgeman captured and synergized diverse musical interpretations of 12 "big question" themes, ranging from concepts of love to God to death.
From this they've produced a CD (and in-progress DVD) that brings together a wide array of novelists, musicians and film stars: Dennis Hopper, Michael Stipe, Baaba Maal, Brian Eno, Neneh Cherry and Robbie Williams are but a few of the people who contribute. It merges together Western music and recording technology with indigenous sounds and myriad viewpoints. Here's what they had to say:
ChartAttack: Tell me a bit about the project: 25 countries traveled, over 300 hours of footage recorded. How did this all come about?
Duncan Bridgeman: We started off just making an album. To do the demos, we'd stolen a lot of things from CDs and cassettes and things all over the place. When Chris Blackwell became interested in our project, we said that we wanted to do some field trips, to replace all the things we'd stolen and meet the people [we sourced] and have a cup of tea with them and pay them. Y'know, do it properly. Then Chris said, ?Why don't you make a film, or make a DVD?' 1 Giant Step
So we went home, sat down for a night, smoked some herbal cigarettes and came up with the idea of 12 tracks for the DVD. What we wanted to do was use the medium a bit more, make it more challenging. So we decided to make 12 short films, each based on an unanswerable question: God, sex, money, inspiration, et cetera. As we traveled around making our album, we'd interview subjects both famous and not famous about these questions.
We took our demos with us on our laptops so people could hear the music and join in. Basically, we took the studio out of a small dark hole with a red light and made it into the world.
I understand that instead of hitting the road with a large Rolodex, the process of meeting people was very viral. Basically, one artist or celebrity would tell someone else about the project.
Jamie Catto: As we went along we were going into the Rolodex, trying to set people up along the way. We were trying to get hold of people like Speech and Michael Franti, getting confirmation that something was set up properly, or commitment from people who had said ?Maybe.' There was this constant production behind the scenes.
You went with a preconceived notion of what you wanted to do, but this project must've evolved quite a bit.
DB: Originally we were just making an album and the album has grown exactly as we wanted it to, plus the extracts that have just happened. As for the level of celebrity involvement, we had no idea. This cult of celebrity has gotten a bit out of hand, but it certainly helped this project to get into the forefront. Basically, people are hearing African music, Indian music, Maori music that maybe they haven't heard before, especially in this context.
JC: And maybe if we didn't have Robbie [Williams] and Michael Stipe and Neneh Cherry, you wouldn't be so eager to come and interview us. It definitely pushes us more to the front of the shop. It's not racked in the world music section ? it's racked in the front next to Travis and Madonna and things like that. More people will get the album and then hear someone like Baaba Maal, love it, and then go to his album and experience the purer force. In that way, this album acts as a bridge that makes people like Baaba more accessible.
Now, you've heard the critique that you're appropriating different cultures and then representing them in ways that aren't indicative of those cultures.
DB: Yeah ? they were willing. We didn't go there and hide behind the tree and record the tabla player. We met him, we vibed with him, we paid him, we credited him on the record. And he loved the idea.
JC: That was the thing. We didn't go out and originate a track in India with a tabla player and then build upon that. They were all overdubbing, track upon the track. The idea is that cultural purity is being lost in a lot of ways on the planet already, but it's a lot stronger than people give it credit for. This is what we wanted to show. We in a way have homogenized these cultures and their music into a new form of music. But still, their culture shines through when you hear a Senegalese guy or an Indian guy singing. It conjures up that place.
DB: It's kind of the idea of two things being true at the same time. You get all the diversity, but you get the unity of the harmony and the rhythm that is true to all humans.
Friday July 19, 2002 @ 04:30 PM
