#23 – Ola Onabulé

00:00:00: Music

00:00:29: Ola welcome to Zurich and the "Zurich Jazz Talks". But welcome to Zurich and great to have you here. 

00:00:36: Thank you very much thanks for having me here.  I'm loving it so far. That's that's great to  

00:00:39: hear. Let's start out with your own music. I  bet you must be getting tired of explaining to  

00:00:46: people what it actually is. Can you do it one more  time, please. Well I'm not really tired of

00:00:52: talking about it because I'm still discovering  it myself. I'm still redefining you know who I  

00:00:57: am on a daily basis. I've gone through so many  musical journeys, from having grown up in a house  

00:01:03: that was filled with the music of the 60s, The  Beatles, Motown all of that kind of stuff. And  

00:01:09: then in the' 70s, you know, acquiring my own sense  of music that I liked: James Brown, Earth Wind and  

00:01:16: Fire some of that kind of stuff and then  in University someone introduced me to Jazz.

00:01:24: And so when I first started singing, I wanted  to be like all of those Heroes. It  

00:01:30: was only maybe into my third album or so, that I  started to feel like I wasn't expressing any of  

00:01:37: my africanness. So I started an exploration of how  I can Infuse all of the music I loved with some of  

00:01:44: the elements of what it meant to be a Nigerian or  West African. And that's a voyage of discovery  

00:01:52: and exploration that I'm continuing till today,  you know. Your music not only builds one bridge  

00:01:59: but but many of them: between continents, between  cultures, between musical worlds which connection  

00:02:05: is the one that's most important to you, most  dear to your heart? Well if you'd asked me that  

00:02:12: question maybe 10, 15 years ago, the answer probably would have been  

00:02:17: something about building a bridge between West  African sensibilities and Western sensibilities.

00:02:26: But the Journey's widened. I've met people from all  over the world in in the intervening years and so  

00:02:33: I think, that the the most important connection, is  just any human connection. When you sing songs  

00:02:42: that maybe have their roots in Western culture or  African culture to someone from China and they get  

00:02:51: it, you know, that makes you stop and think, okay  so there's more to this that meets the eye. When  

00:02:56: you, you know sing a chaa, a latin-based groove  to someone in Mexico but you sing entirely in  

00:03:05: Euroba or in English, you know, so you've altered  even their format. It makes you think and it makes  

00:03:11: you grow and it makes you reassess what you're  doing and who you're doing it for. I was going  

00:03:16: to ask you about this, actually. You're singing in  front of people who may or may not speak English  

00:03:20: at all. Does that do something to you or do you just not mind? Well, it really does do something to  

00:03:31: me and it wasn't a concept that I'd considered  prior to finding myself in that situation. You 

00:03:38: write in the language you write and you don't  know that it's going to take you to countries  

00:03:43: all over the world. So when you find yourself there,  for instance when I sing sad ballads, people  

00:03:54: respond regardless of whether or not they speak  English, in the same way at the same points in  

00:03:59: in the songs, you know, regardless. And often  enough people come up and say, I don't know quite  

00:04:06: what you were talking about, my English isn't very  good, but I felt what you were saying. So I

00:04:14: think speech and language, that  aspect of human expression is a much younger part  

00:04:24: of our interconnection, than song and music and  guteral primal sound. I think, those things, it's almost  

00:04:32: like wolves howling. It just hits you, where it hits  you and you don't really need to know what they're  

00:04:37: saying. You just think of something profound is taking  place. Now you're singing  

00:04:44: with a big band with the Zurich Jazz Orchestra  where actually somebody has arranged your own  

00:04:48: songs.What kind of feeling is that  for you? Oh it's it's phenomenal! I write and  

00:04:56: and I write the songs on my own. I do a great  deal of the instrumental arrangements for  

00:05:05: a rhythm section entirely on my own. I don't have a  partner to bounce ideas off, So by the time a song  

00:05:12: or an album is finished, I'm so saturated with it, I don't want to hear it ever again in the format  

00:05:19: that I wrote it. So it's just so amazing. I feel like almost like a childlike wonder  

00:05:28: when someone else takes it away and brings back  this intricate, sophisticatedand, you know, bigger than,

00:05:38: way bigger than what I perceived,  you know, when they bring this thing back and  

00:05:43: it sounds like that. It it never fails to amaze and  impress me! The songs that we're talking about now,  

00:05:51: they're not only songs but they, as a  as a sequence of songs, kind of tell a story.  

00:05:57: Would that be a  blueprint for like a documentary or a musical  

00:06:04: one day? What a great question. Yes, a musical  would be a phenomenal idea because there's one  

00:06:12: story that runs all the way through the songs.  It started with an event I witnessed. I wrote a  

00:06:19: song about specifically about the event I was  witnessing. And once I was done with that song, I got a sense that this profound thing I'd seen: A man had been shot in his car his wife was  

00:06:35: filming and their three-year-old daughter was on  the back seat of the car and it all unfolded in  

00:06:40: a little - it was the early days of live streaming - and it all unfolded in this little three four  

00:06:46: minute clip and it was over with. I thought  is that it? Do I now scroll on to the next video  

00:06:53: with full of kittens, cute kittens, or what? I  thought no, there has to be more to it than that.

00:07:00: It was a signifier, both the event  and the format through which I was witnessing  

00:07:09: the event, felt very much to be a signifier of the  times we're living in, because very quickly people  

00:07:14: started to comment under it. And it's all of that  stuff. So if I could write a musical, that  

00:07:24: kind of showed us as we now are, through this  event, that would be a real dream come true. It's  

00:07:32: something I'm beginning to work on. I'm begin to  sketch ideas for. It's early days yet, but I I hope,  

00:07:39: that I can get it done and that it will still be  something people want to see, you know, presented  

00:07:45: in that way. Please be sure bring that to Zurich as  well if you can. I'd love to. There's actually two  

00:07:51: kinds of people, one one kind of people says art  needs to be political and the other kind of people  

00:07:58: says it mustn't be political in any way. What  do you say about that? I think life is political,  

00:08:07: whether or not we're actively involved in politics.  I think everything we do adds to  

00:08:16: the greater whole of the movement of people's  lives, economically, socially and so and so forth.  

00:08:23: But with regards to art, in a weird kind of way, I  try not to be political in my music, but I won't  

00:08:31: shy away from describing a social truth, no matter  how uncomfortable it is. And if someone else wants  

00:08:39: to attach a political interpretation to what I've  written, that's cool. But I have no Illusions or  

00:08:49: delusions of trying to change the world with my  music. Music can't change the world, you know. Big  

00:08:57: scary politicians can change the world if they  want to. But getting people to  

00:09:04: a place where you're not just passively absorbing  the the events around you, whether they're happy or  

00:09:13: they're sad. I think a musician has always done  that. They've always sung about the good times  

00:09:19: and the bad times and the sad times and the happy  times. So I'm part of that tradition, hopefully.

00:09:25: Thank you so much, Ola, we do look forward  to hearing your Musical. We do look forward to  

00:09:30: hearing a lot more from you - fingers crossed - yes fingers crossed do appreciate you taking the time .

00:09:35: Thank you for having me Susanne, really enjoyable  thank you so much. Thanks so much Ola.

00:09:39: