We found out about London band Chavo whilst searching for bands to play Nazdrove. We were totally surprised when we heard their songs and thought 'Oh my!! We've got to get them to play Nazzers!'. Anyway, on with the interview. Photos of chavo are from them playing at Nazdrove. Photos by Nick Royles.
Ok, can you introduce the band and its members to our readers?
Sure. It’s Jim O’Brien on Mandolin/Accordion/Vocals , John Viola on Viola/Violin/Mandolin/Vocals, Ido Basso on Bass/Trombone, Dave Price on Percussion, Uncle Nola on Guitar
You formed the band 5 years ago. What were your initial reasons and inspirations for starting the band? Are those reasons as relevant now as they were then?
Three of us met up after not seeing each other for a few years, it was a wedding actually. Turns out we were all still into the same thing, I had been looking for the right people to work on a Romani/Klezmer project, and Nola and John who’d until recently been working together as a viola and guitar duo in Tabasco agreed to help out. In fact we played together that night, always prepared we’d brought our instruments and so proto-Chavo began. We played as a three piece for a year or so but every time we were invited to play a club or something large we always felt we didn’t have the power to pull it off. So began the search for the drum and bass combo that is now well and truly the backbone of the band. Even now I sometimes forget they’re their, slowly introducing a piece on mandolin until it’s their turn to up the ante, it still gets the hairs on the back of my neck and does wonders for your confidence.
Can you tell us about your musical backgrounds prior to the band?
Most of us have been playing this music or something like it for years, John Viola is a composer first and foremost, writing for film and TV for the past ten years, he was also a founder member of the late great Menlo Park, and part of the US/UK outfit The High Class Family Butchers a sort of Bluegrass crossover. Jim joined them on mandolin and accordion while he was studying Romani music at Goldsmiths. Alon and John had been playing their own Klezmer compositions as Tabasco for a few years too. Dave Price studied percussion with Stanislaw Skoczynski at the Chopin Academy in Warsaw before returning to London and getting involved in the world famous Gecko theatre company as well as being the drummer for Aqualung. We don’t know where Ido comes from, he doesn’t talk about his past.
We should talk about your album that was released this year. Can you tell us about it? When and where was it recorded? Was it fun to do?
“Boundary Lane” is the closing chapter of a sound that we’ve played together for the past five years, it’s a homage to the traditional music that has influenced our musical careers. Early on in the year we started to write music that would widen the sound and experiment with the form. But we realised we didn’t have our own record of the traditional sounds that we’d worked so hard at developing, sweating it out playing Serbian weddings and Balkan club nights. So before we recorded the new, wider sound we thought we’d make an album of the traditional stuff, we picked our favourite tunes, some our own and some traditional, chose a good variety of tempos, went into the studio and recorded live with just two room mics. Sitting in a circle and doing live takes is the single most beautiful aspect of being a musician.
Tarantella Caltabellotta is a good one. This is an old tune from a mountain town called Caltabellota in Sicily. Every Easter the town brass band play this same tune from 4am in the morning until midnight, no other tune is played. At midday they take a brief break when a local army band march in and play one or two military tunes. Soon as the army band finish the Caltabellottese band strike up again and literally chase the army band out of town. The crowd goes wild and the party carries on. Happens every year. Tarantella Caltabellotta is not the real name of the piece. It’s called La San Michelata but after seeing those guys play that tune over and over again there was only one name for it. I was down there the other week. Our version had already gotten there. As soon as they found out I was in Chavo they bought me all sorts of weird and wonderful Sicilian liquors.
Another favourite is Syrtos, it’s a traditional Greek dance which we turned our own over the years, credit has to go to Uncle N for pushing through a strong arrangement. There’s this section about half way through (around 2 mins) that we call the ‘elephant groove’, for it’s heavy plodding feel, it gets lighter as the instruments play solos. I love playing it. Sometime in clubs, when the crowd are up for it, it’s not always advisable to slow the music down but with Syrtos they seem to go wilder.
Lyrically I think the Romani lines in Ásél Láké that loosely translate as
I have been caught by Hungarian men.
They’ve been drinking for a week,
Let me die!
are a particularly favourite. This is not as it may first seem a description of possible violence but rather that they are forcing him to take part in a drinking binge.
There is a connection to things Romany. In fact, I'm told that there are Romany members in the band. Can you tell all? How important is this in the band's makeup and identity?
There’s a small Romani connection. My mother is of Italian Romani descent. Her family moved to Liverpool from Naples. She’s a Deponeo you can find them all over the north west of England but nowhere else in the world. Over in Italy the name Deponeo doesn’t exist, apparently the original name before migration was D’Apollonio, clearly of Greek origin. That’s really how I became so embroiled in all things Romani. I don’t think it defines our identity but for me personally it is what drives my interest in the various musical styles and dialects of Romani culture.
Can you explain the name of the band and your reasons for choosing that name?
Erm…touchy point. Is it always this way with band names? It’s always been a sticking point largely for what it represents in English but it basically means boy or son in Romani, in fact now that Kalderash Romani is standardizing Romani across the globe it should really be spelt Shavo but I like the controversy around it as Chavo. People really have an opinion on it; they either despise it or love it. Sometimes they just laugh, I rather like that.
You sing in Romani as well as English. Is that important to you?
Yes it is important but not for reasons of affinity. I just love those old songs. And it has taken (is taking) me many years to learn how to deliver them properly. But it’s brilliant how people respond to them regardless of whether they understand the language. It’s an interesting fact that many people often respond more positively to vocal music regardless of whether they understand the lyrics.
It is my understanding that while Romani Vlax is the most widely spoken Romani language, Romanies in Britain speak a more anglicised version. Has mainland Romani or our own tweaked Anglo-Romani influenced your lyrics?
No it hasn’t, although I’ve always wanted to write a song using Anglo-Romani and English, I’ll probably need to seek out an expert first though.
Do the band members who are Romani have much of an insight into their Romani ancestry? For example I am always fascinated to find out more about when my family came to the UK, where they have travelled and where they feel most connect to.
Speaking for myself (Jim), when my family migrated to Liverpool they became sedentary almost at once and our Romani past was hardly ever mentioned until I was about 11 or 12. It’s a sad fact not just amongst Rom but all migrants that a new country means a new life and indeed in some cases a new identity. This is what happened with my family, and while all stories are not lost, the gap in the generations where the denial took place means a lot of information has simply gone with them to the grave. I say write down or record everything you can of the older generations. That is a mistake of mine I’ll always regret.
Again, for the Romani members....is being a Romani a large and visible part of your identity? I recall when we were younger, we were told not to tell people that we were Romani as there was so much prejudice, but as an adult I am much more upfront about it being a large part of who I am.
I wouldn’t say it was a major part of our identity as a band since we also have a Jewish population as well as good ol’ Anglo-Saxons. But for me I’m very proud and open about my Romani roots, yet that is also because my livelihood and safety no longer depend on it. There are millions of Romani living today that face such racial prejudice and violence that roots are not high on the daily agenda, and while nearly all European governments are either actively involved in this discrimination or are turning a blind eye, I hope that the growing interest amongst people wanting to know more of their Romani past might switch them on to the plight of the Rom in the present.
Obviously Gypsy music has influenced you. Can you be more specific and tell us which Gypsy musicians in particular have influenced you?
So many…, obviously the ‘Taraf’ go without saying, The Hungarian, Romani Rota are a big influence for us too. Ando Drom and Parno Graszt two other Hungarian string bands are masters of playing Romani dance music from that region, in our early days we worked hard to develop the easy energy they are capable of switching on at a moments notice. We’ve still a long way to go.
We’ve got an old vinyl copy of a Vujicsics Ensemble album called Southern Slav folk music it’s not Gypsy music officially but we loved the way they would play fast harmonies with two prim-tamburas (a small Balkan lute) and we’ve used that technique, but with two mandolins, for much of our own material.
It's not just all about Gypsy music. What other European folk music has inspired the band. [I have read that you have been influenced by other European folk musicians from Spain, Italy and other southern countries.]
We just love to play knees-up music. While we mainly nod to the south east of Europe we’ve sometimes dropped in an Irish medley or an Italian Tarantella, we don’t claim to be experts at playing this stuff but the important thing is that the audience are into it, bizarrely the Irish stuff almost always invariably goes down well. We’ve always wondered whether it was something like the change in the rhythms that spurs this or the switch to a major key but it’s probably just that everybody likes an Irish tune when they have a beer in their hand.
Do you see Gypsy and Klezmer as musical cousins, given that migrant Gypsy and Jewish communities over the centuries seem to have lived and travelled in close proximity?
Yes certainly, we feel there is much shared history between the two musics, and musically speaking there is much that is related. Some have suggested that a lot of Jewish music survived the Holocaust due to Romani musicians keeping it alive but we mustn’t forget that Romanies were the only other population besides the Jews who were targeted for extermination on racial/ethnic grounds in the Final Solution, known as ‘O Baro Porrajmos’ or the ‘Great Devouring’ in Romani.
It’s difficult and probably not worth trying to pin down a Gypsy music as a genre in itself. The Rom have historically used music as a means of income amongst other trades, with instruments passing down the generations. But as professional performers they would mostly find employment outside of their own culture, other groups such as Serbs, Croats, Slovaks, Muslims and Jews who would often want to hear their own music. This is how Gypsy musicians developed their reputation, by learning to play everything for everyone. If I was trying to pinpoint the real differences in Klezmer and Gypsy music I would say listen to the fiddle players, their techniques are often defined by their culture and can be quite unique. We play, steal and adapt songs from both cultures and find that they evoke similar emotions although Klezmer can sometimes be really dark.
You're described as a folk dance band. Is it important to get people moving at concerts? Which of your songs really gets the crowd swinging?
Certainly, we like to see people moving that’s what keeps our energy up too but they don’t have to if they don’t want to. Sometimes it can get too fast and you can see the entire audience running on the spot. That must be knackering. The key is to sway to the music, swing to the um-pa, like a belly dancer and not try to keep up with your feet. You can go on forever like that.
What have been some of your favourite gigs? And why?
My favourites are the club nights. We played a Balkan beats here in London once and the crowd were really up for it. Boshing all sorts of stuff. You could see it in their eyes. The DJ was playing some Serbian brass with fat beats underneath, probably a German thing, which is a big sound. There’s at least twenty odd musicians on that record so it’s quite daunting to follow up as a little five piece...no four piece at the time as we had no drums. But it didn’t matter. As soon as we struck up the crowd were behind us, instantly. I don’t think it was our band necessarily. This audience wanted to have a good time. And once that enthusiasm gives you some room to breath and get down to it, it’s a snowball effect. They make us happy, we do a better show and make them happier and so on and so on. I never want to come off stage on those days. We had a good Larmer Tree festival, probably our biggest crowd to date and I’ll never forget the time one show organizer turned up with a home made papier mache cock as a hat. Complete with balls, with her own hair as the pubic hair of said knob, didn’t matter how the show went that day it was a favourite.
Is this album your only recorded output so far or are there other recordings that we should track down?
There’s our take on an old Bulgarian tune called Ganka’s song out on the Bellowhead compilation album Umbrellowhead. Our old friend Andy Mellon from Bellowhead has played trumpet for us a few times at gigs and on recordings. Bellowhead decided to put out an album of music that the members of the band were involved in outside of Bellowhead time so Andy kindly put us on. I believe it’s a popular tune amongst the Bellowhead folk.
Can you tell us where we can get your cd from and finally what's next for Chavo?
Yeah sure. Just go straight to our website chavo.co.uk there’s a few ways to buy the ‘Boundary Lane’ album on there via iTunes, CDbaby or Amazon.com
We’re currently in the middle of recording our difficult second. Except that it’s not that difficult really, rather we’re having loads of fun playing around with the songs, changing the instrumentation, widening the sound and bringing in other cherished influences; Western revenge films, early Rock’n’Roll and Blues. While Boundary Lane was a collection of songs, hopefully what we’ll have at the end of the second is something more thematic, filmic even. But then again it’s not finished yet so who knows.
Chavo at Nazdrove with Penny Metal DJ
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