Long before he turned his beloved Balkan Beat Box ensemble into an ancient-yet-modern MIDI-Middle Eastern hip-hop sensation with its positive politics to match its good grooves, Israeli-born saxophonist and composer Ori Kaplan landed in New York at the top of the 1990s, and turned its cool downtown scene into a hot, global jazz playground.
While playing with William Parker’s Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra and avant-jazz bassoonist Karen Borca’s band, Kaplan formed his own jumping, Israeli-ethno-jazz ensembles such as Trio Plus, the Ori Kaplan Percussion Ensemble and the Ori Kaplan Shaat’nez Band, running between Brooklyn and Manhattan to do so. Kaplan also happens to man the reeds for the gruff, Eastern Euro-gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello.
Now, with a summerlong series of EPs and singles designed with latitude and longitude as their guiding principles — June’s 33 Degrees East and July’s 33 Degrees South — Kaplan is closer than ever to finding his jazz roots, and twisting them like a spiced pretzel.
Listening to the wealth of thick saxophones, dense reed sounds and flute on a song like “Sahara Express,” I’m thinking that this is the most hardcore, straightahead jazz I have heard you play in some time. What solace does it bring you? What ire does it inspire?
I guess nowadays I see myself as the sum of my parts. If I focused on bringing certain aspects of my musical explorations in different stations in my life, it was because I was passionate enough to explore in that area, that I was on a search for something. Jazz was always a huge pillar. Becoming an improviser was the foundation of my musical outlook and expression, and that was very much the main focus of my “10,000 hours” spent on the instrument. There was a klezmer and Turkish, Middle Eastern and gypsy music passion from early on, but I did not know how to incorporate it yet.
Were there “traditional” jazz models to turn to as well?
I felt a strong connection to Yusef Lateef and Coltrane’s modal work, thinking they had found a thread to connect the dots of East and West. But I almost felt the same about Bird, and later, Archie Shepp. The feeling of pulse and polyrhythm, that tribal non-metric expression, is the same in gypsy music, the same in Middle Eastern, African music and jazz that I liked.
So for years I was taking it all in and trying to create my own sound. Some years ago, I got back to listening to my old vinyls — Mingus, Miles, Coltrane, Sun Ra, Shepp, Afro-Cuban and Latin band favorites — and realized that I am in fact very nostalgic. I yearned to surround myself with that vibe. I also noticed that I can be very minimalistic and not try to prove anything. I can convey in a small vignette what I feel. I think it’s sitting in the producer chair for my work with Balkan Beat Box that helped me mature.
I love the voicings of Gil Evans and Mingus big band that go back to Ellington. I was playing in big bands and small ensembles in New York for years. The scope was wide — from Mario Bauzá to William Parker, Butch Morris and Karen Borca.
What is jazz for you now, that it perhaps wasn’t when you started?
Today I can say that if I needed to be a maximalist and have a thousand expressive notes erupt out of my system, today it’s a very Zen place. A place of confidence and calm. A home to go to with rare flowers I can water. At my disposal and effortless, due to so many lessons that I internalized. Being able with one seemingly simple line, or a simple arrangement, to say what I was not wise enough to say before.
I remember you being a part of everything Knitting Factory early on — your Ori Kaplan Trio, your work with Little Huey. Certainly, you included the sounds of the Middle Eastern diaspora as part of it all, but for the most part you were playing saxophone and avant-garde jazz with aplomb and leading that life. Can you paint a picture of arriving into the various New York scenes you became part of, or even started?
It was very exciting to grow up into this in New York. I was a young punk who fell in love with bebop, then at age 18 heard on a dune in Egypt a cassette tape of the New York Art Quartet with Reggie Workman, John Tchicai and Roswell Rudd, and I could imagine myself as a voice in that world. I moved to New York with all of these sounds in my head — bebop, free jazz, shepherd desert flute music. The next 20 years was all about figuring how to incorporate it all and to be me.
I think my punk rock phase was free jazz. I see many similarities and parallels. Jamming bebop all over Harlem and the East Village, and yet the local desert shepherd was William Parker, he let me fly with my own voice within a flock. But I wasn’t meant for that solo troubadour free-jazz touring life. I started a year of world touring as a new up-and-coming alto sax trio and quartet leader, but my physical body resisted. I needed a change, something very basic was missing.
That’s where Balkan Beat Box started. We spoke a lot at the start of the BBB, an ensemble which was as much about the process of fusing jazz, samples, synths and tech-rhythm with Jewish, Balkan/Eastern European and Middle Eastern musical traditionalism and gypsy punk, as well as those multiple worldviews. What is your take on its start, and where the BBB is now?
When I met Tamir Muskat in the back of Firewater’s van, we clicked immediately. He changed my outlook. He is a super producer and an uncompromising artist, and there we started a 25-year-old musical journey and friendship. I was sure of one thing: I wanted to communicate with my generation and still be totally me, uncompromised.
I was touring as a member of Gogol Bordello for three years at that point, and I was very inspired by Eugene Hutz and his magnetic powers as a performer. When BBB started, we clicked with Tomer Yosef who brought our own slant on what was already a kicking world movement. Suddenly we were at the epicenter of a fresh world sound, one that inspired others.
I feel that I had to go through my whole New York jazz journey to have the tools and wit and diehard loyalty to that sound for BBB to have some of its signature sounds — to be horn-based and beat-based. I mean, we started the band with just one drummer and one horn — very tribal. And BBB just put out its sixth album, Wild Wonder. We never made the same album twice and always pushed the envelope. At times, the pop world sampled us into a hook that billions of people know with “Talk Dirty” and “Worth It” and acts such as Fifth Harmony using that. We never tried to repeat and regurgitate the same stuff. That’s the engine that keeps BBB pumping till this day.
Why did you wish to commence your newest solo work — actually, your first real solo release under just your name — with a series of jazz singles and EPs, as opposed to a wider album project?
This was the great idea of Daniel Haaksman from Greedy for Best Music, a Berlin-based label. He is a great DJ-producer in his own right. We live in an algorithmic world, where even I listen to mostly playlists or assortments of things I love. We all create compilations. Why not in fact treat each song like that, give each piece its right time under the sun?
I love the idea of jazz singles. This reminds of Eddie Harris and Les McCann’s “Compared to What” and Hugh Masakela’s “Grazing in the Grass.” What can you tell me about the intended identity of each of these releases? Some of its sounds are honking and haunted (“Sahara Express”) while “Free Love” sounds airy and sensual. Are you looking to have each of the tracks digested in one jolt — a moment within a frame, set by the EP’s parameters?
I love the idea that each one of the releases can fit into a slightly different mode or playlist. Like a world of its own. Yet when one listens to the full work it also is obvious it’s part of the same larger-scope work. If an eclectic radio station plays “Sahara Express” it has a vibe of its own. The DJ can fit it in many other ways. “Free Love” is Latin, dreamy and upright bass- and piano-driven with a thick horn arrangement and a nostalgic vibe. “Pepidu” shows my love of Afrobeat — it’s Tony Allen meets 808 with Ethiopian jazz bop lines.
The idea behind 33 Degrees South, North, East: Why have you given this new music coordinates? What does it all mean to locate sound as such?
These EPs are a bit of a travelogue and they refer to my musical journey, which took me to different continents and coordinates in my soul. It’s also the speed of the vinyl, which is in many cases the portal through which to explore much of our music. I can’t wait to take this on the road. I’d like to do it in a setting of a brass band uniquely tailored to each of its rich and gentle textures. Heavy on percussion. Upright bass and piano. I hope to start a live thing like that soon.
Though so much of these EPs are all you, my guess is that you can’t help but work collectively. Anything or anyone you want to shout out for making these recordings sing, or look the way that they do?
The art for each of its covers is made by my life partner Pepi (@studio_pepi) who inspired a lot of the music. Itamar Ziegler from BBB played bass and Uri Kinrot played guitar on “Pepidu.” One of the great experiences was having Tamir Muskat mix the music. Tamir was wearing a different hat, as we normally create from scratch, and here I came with the full works ready for their mix. I expected radical moves, yet the things he did were just tweaked and fine-tuned in a relatively minor way. Though I learned from the best in the past, now there is always much more to learn in the future. JT