ZiaZine July 2008 : 33
known to most simply as WOMAD. e festival brought together the talents of a number of disparate and yet creatively connected artists and the musicians’ natural tendency to congregate and collaborate inspired Gabriel to take it to the next level. “We found that the musicians would start jamming whenever there was an opportunity,” acknowledges Gabriel. “We originally thought it would be really cool to get some of the musicians from the festival to- gether, maybe with some songwrit- ers, because jams are sometimes great for those involved and pretty boring for everybody else. So we thought maybe we could harness this with songwriting and put a lot of people from around the world together with some producers and songwriters and see what they could generate.” e result of Gabriel’s initial WOMAD inspiration was a series of what he dubbed “Recording Weeks,” where the aforementioned wealth of performing, songwriting and production talent would collaborate on the creation and execution of fresh, original material. For a week at a time, in ’ and ’ and again in ’, Gabriel and his co-curator and World Party frontman Karl Wallinger invited some of the world’s greatest musical figures to participate in their writing/ performing project. Gabriel kept his on-site studio cafe open around the clock to accommodate the schedules and muses of his international cast and the results of each week were dutifully recorded on Real World’s state of the art equipment. “I’d always admired Karl’s songwriting, and in some ways he’s an English version of Prince; he can play most things and do it all himself,” notes Gabriel. “He seemed to be very interested in exploring stuff from around the world, so he was a great choice. He was a bit of a chain smoker at the time, which I didn’t enjoy, but his sense of humor was abundant and had us in hysterics in the wee hours when we were just trying to stay awake.” Although Gabriel recalls the three Recording Weeks A lot of people have been mistakenly quoting Big Blue Ball as my latest album and I’ve taken pains to point out that a lot of artists have instigated it. big blue ball is available from Real World/Ryko on June 24 as being the most fun and satisfying recording experiences of his career, the economic realities of flying in musicians from around the globe and housing and feeding them for a week ultimately became insurmount- able. e last Recording Week took place years ago. “at’s unfortunately why we stopped doing it, because we couldn’t find a way to make it pay,” says Gabriel. “Just getting people to travel, hotels, accommodations when they’re there, the additional people we need on site—it was cost- ing a fortune and not selling records as a result. If this record does well, we might have another opportunity.” Just as the cost of the Recording Weeks became unwieldy, the amount of material generated over the three weeklong sessions accumulated to a point where it was hard to wrestle them into a releasable form. “ere were so many tracks record- ed,” remembers Gabriel. “We had a lot of great musicians who would fire away furiously during the week. Normally you do some tidying up work every day after recording, and we didn’t because we were so desperate while everyone was there to grab their performances and not do the homework, if you like. People would look into it and think, ‘Ooh, let’s have a go at that,’ and then realize, ‘is is a nightmare, it needs so much sorting.’ And [former Jules and the Po- lar Bears keyboardist and renowned producer] Stephen Hague was the man who was brave enough to take it on in the end.” Given the stellar array of talent that graces the credits of Big Blue Ball, it’s a pretty safe bet that the album will generate more than cultish sales figures. With contribu- tions from former Crowded House/Split Enz sparkplug Tim Finn, jazz great Billy Cobham, Living Colour gui- tarist Vernon Reid, Irish chanteuse Sinead O’Connor, Prince protégé Wendy Melvoin, musical chameleon Jah Wobble, gospel/soul shouters the Holmes Brothers, Congolese Soukous giant Papa Wemba, well-traveled French drummer Manu Katche, singer/songwriters [≥] [ JULY 2008 + monitorTHIS! + 33 ]
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