Entrevista com Damo Suzuki

Quando Damo Suzuki veio a Lisboa há dois anos atrás, aproveitei a ocasião para o entrevistar. O que se segue foi publicado na edição de Novembro de 2004 da revista Número Magazine, assim como está, em inglês.
É favor não esquecer que Damo está de volta a Portugal neste fim-de-semana: sexta-feira, com os CAVEIRA, na ZDB, e, no sábado, com os Soopa, nos Maus Hábitos.

DAMO SUZUKI
Turning European, I think I'm turning European, I really think so

Damo Suzuki, Japanese-Born, 54, pop industry phobic, has been doing this for seven years or so. That is, touring every underground venue in the world, improvising with local musicians, communicating through music. The Damo Suzuki Network, as it is called, is growing larger every time. Last June, when the ex-Can singer played in Oporto and Lisbon, he joined musicians -- or "sound carriers", as he likes to put it -- like Nuno Rebelo, Marco Franco, Scott Nydegger (Mécanosphère), Massimo Pupilo (Zu) or people from Sooba, the experimental act from Oporto. He didn't know them before, as it happens most of the time, one fact that pushes the freedom frontiers in terms of improvisation and "instant composing", a term that Damo likes to underline in his unique concept for music. Did it work? Oh hell, it really did.

You ran away from your folk's house by the time you were 16.
It was quite necessary to get out from Japan. Japan lost the II World War and so they had many things to develop. I was very curious about other countries, as I was quite good with geography. If you'd live in Ireland or England or Japan, you would have this sentiment to see other countries. It's different from here. Well, ok, Portuguese people were quite a sentimental people, with Vasco da Gama, but it was different. And today you have information. You don't have to travel anywhere.

Then you went to Moscow.
Yes, but before I were in America and Asia. First time I came to Europe was 1968. Since then I've been living in Europe. It's quite important for me.

Did you ever get back to Japan and stayed for, like, more than a week?
I did, but not more than one month.

You feel more like Japanese or European?
I don't like to have any kind of responsibilities and if you are connected to one nation, you feel some kind of responsibilities, like elections and so on. But I don't have that kind of feeling because no country in the world is good enough for me [laughter]. Maybe I'm being quite arrogant [laughter]. I think is much better not to have any kind of nationality.

Still, have you found something you could call home, in Germany?
No, it's not home. I have three kids, so that's where I have to stay, as a responsibility of a father, but that's not too much important, because "home" is some kind of answer I'm still looking for and maybe I cannot find it. "Home" for me is not a geographical place. It has to do much more with spiritual things.

And then, Damo met Can. Could you describe what happened that day you met Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit from Can?
It was 1970, April or May. I used to work in a musical play, in Munich. I was there only to get money to get back home.

That play was Broadway's "Hairs", right?
Yeah, I did it for three months. I was singing, and dancing and doing that sort of stuff. But it wasn't a pleasant job. I did it only for the money, because it was really very boring everyday. And one day -- I was used to make street music -- I was doing this happening and the members of Can were there, sitting at a café and watching me. They came up to tell me that they had no singer and that they had a concert that night and asked me if I could join them. I had nothing to do, so "ok, I can join you". It was fun, because, apart from doing music in the streets, I never thought on making music as my life.

What happened that night can somehow be related to what you do nowadays? I mean, you go to a venue, you don't know the people you're going to play with...
Today [this interview was set before the Lisbon's gig], I don't know two of them. Well, I met them at the sound-check... But it's ok, it's our communication.

How does it work? How do you set these lineups? Do you choose the people you're going to work with?
Most of the time, I don't choose them. Sometimes it's the venue that asks people to come and play. Others, like when I'm playing in small villages, where there aren't musicians who can improvise, I ask some people. I have a list of the "sound carriers" -- I call them "sound carriers" because it's better than the word "musicians". They don't have to follow theory or systems in music. We are free when we make sound at the moment.

Don't you fear not having that kind of communication happening one night?
No, it's being good every time, in a way. Just different. For instance, in Portugal I'm playing much more with experimental or free-jazz musicians, but if I play in England, I'll have much more rock music. So, it's different every time. And that's why I'm not tired. If you are doing the same kind of music everyday, with the same people, it's stressant... It's like getting a regular job. I don't like that. Our concerts are freedom. You can make much more creative things.

And how is it when you get to play this way with ex-Can members? Is it different?
It's not different, but it's like a football game. If you already played with someone, you know how he moves. So, it's much easier. But I don't like to take that easy work all the time. I like to do adventures in my life. It's really nice enter into adventure when you don't have a concept. Every moment you create is something. If you're playing composed old stuff, you cannot find this. And also the mistakes: here it is not a mistake, you can get another way to create; in composed music, a mistake is a mistake. Human being is not perfect. Everybody does mistakes. And it's important you accept other people that also make mistakes.

How do people react to your concerts?
Place to place it is very different. In some country, people are watching a little bit distant from us. In other, people are dancing all the way from the beginning. But I cannot say "this place is good" or "this place is bad". Actually, everywhere it's good.

When you left Can, you also took departure from music...
Eleven years. I didn't make any music in these eleven years. I was enjoying family and I really don't like pop culture. We were getting quite famous in Germany and also in England. That time, I met a German girl and we married. For me, family was, suddenly, much more important than music itself. I was quite fed up of music. Last Can recording I did was "Future Days" and it was for me the best LP. It was easy for me to get out of music because I thought I couldn't do better than that. So why should I continue?

In this Can book that was released two or three years ago, the late Michael Karoli says "It's beyond doubt that Damo became more professional the longer we worked with him. When he left us after 'Future Days' he was just at the point where he could have become an amazing fantastic singer."
[Laughter] I didn't know this. This is really good. He's isn't any more here and it's really nice to remember him.

And what made you turn again to music?
Oh, that was a really horrible story. I had a cancer. I was Jehovah's Witness that time and I made every operation without blood transfusions. In the first operation, chances to survive were 30% with blood from other people. I did it without. I survived but three days later it went wrong and then the doctor said he could only give 15% of possibility to live. "With or without blood transfusion, it doesn't matter; you don't have so many chances to live." It was a really hard situation, but I survived, without the blood transfusion. Since then -- anything like 18 years ago or so -- I've been feeling so good. I even had the feeling that I like to injury myself [ed: then I got why he ripped those filters off his cigarettes] and do the things that I really want to do, so that's why I came back to music. And besides that I like to help people telling them the way I survived this bad situation. If I can share my energy with the people, then it is really good. For me, music has always been communication. If we are in one room together with the audience, the audience doesn't know a thing, as well as the musician, as it is going to happen tonight. We are on the same stage. We are living the time together. So, it's quite important for me to be making music again. And I like to reach more than music, especially now, with all these materialisms. I'd like to change it a little bit. It's called the "Never Ending Tour". It's not only me. I'd like to continue this forever, but the day I go under the ground, perhaps there'll be new people that can take this on. Now, in the 21st century, we have so much information... For instance, when I was 13, I hadn't so much information like my kid. They have to change the next world in a better way. But we can make some kind of stone -- like when building a house -- and then generation after generation can change it. With music, I think is quite possible, but only if you do improvised music, because music is not communicated though industry. On another kind of music, the system is already there to get success, to become popular, to look good or any other thing.

Do you listen to music at home?
I do. Mostly, classical music. From today I listen only to my music. I record every concert, so there's enough material. I listen only to live recordings.