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<  Goran Bregovic  ~  dhennin.com: Interview 2002 for the new album "Tales an
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Interview in august 2002 for the new album "Tales and Songs from Weddings and Funerals".


You wanted to creat a record on your own name which your producer presents like your "first true album ever". Are you going to stop composing for the cinema?

Goran Bregović : For me these small "tales" are like small film musics, except that there are no images. They are proposals for the own scenario of the listener.

Which film did you make for yourself for these musical "proposals" ?

I come from a country where the stories always deal with weddings and funerals. My music is between the two. Thus its funny or sad mood. I came to the cinema by chance. Before, I was making rock'n'roll, I sold during fifteen years millions albums before my first disc reaches occident. In this one, there are all kinds of sound experiments, sometimes complex. It is somehow a schizophrenic album that oscillates between simple and complicated things.

Is this different from writing a soundtrack ?

I was lucky enough to work with directors, whereas Emir Kusturica or Patrice Chéreau, who do not really need composers. They are directors who like to take risks with the music which can be aggressive or melodic. They rarely asked for illustrations of their images. A good film gives immediately the signal. It is like a living body : it accepts or it rejects. I watch the film only at the end, when the score is almost finished. For the director, it is often the occasion to see his film differently. The music changes pretty much the strength of an image. A film without sound, it is completely different.

You gave recently a concert for the festival of Saint-Denis, are there in your album pieces you interpreted there?

Not really. For the basilica, I created a kind of liturgy for three monotheist religions. It was a command, like we did with composers before. I have recently been asked to write for a cello octet. I like that. It is not by chance if 90 % of art history of our civilization were commands. I made last year the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris with my music, but now, I work more and more for the theatre which is something more natural for me, less "hysterical" than the cinema where there is always a great pressure. My temperament makes me prefering quite things.

How was born the idea for the Orchestra of the weddings and funerals ?

From an ambition to play with a symphony orchestra. When I came back to the "concert" form, I first played with a traditional band, orchestra and choir, but removing all wood instruments (clarinets, etc.) that I found too harmonious. I recomposed this orchestra as I imagine the "human" music, not perfectly tuned, more natural. I replaced the trumpets by a gypsy brass band, which requires a shifted play compared to a symphonic score. I also added traditional drums, and computers. In the chorus, I have only male singers coming from orthodox song tradition. And for the female intonations, I have the Bulgarian Voices. All that gives the feeling of a great freedom.

You are said to make gypsy music

I would say that it is the contemporary music of a composer influenced by the traditional music, like most of the composers in history. It intends to be artistically strong while being contemporary.

It is hard to imagine that you were a rocker?

Well, I started to play in traditional music bars very early, at the age of fifteen, then in streap-tease bars at seventeen. I played a sort of local rock'n'roll, like French rock'n'roll.

When you work with artists such as Iggy Pop or Cesaria Evora, it is the confrontation of the universes that interest you?

People with whom I worked on my soundtracks were often enthusiastic because I did not compose for show business, and commercial films. I experienced their participation like a kind of autograph of personalities. Iggy Pop, in my musical youth, represented a significant character.

What are the topics you approach in your album?

I wrote in gypsy language because my Serbo-Croatian language does not exist any more. One speaks either Serb, or Croatian, or bosnian. Gypsy is a simple language with few words. That enables me to focus on the sounds of the words. It is in the tradition of the Slavic texts, somehow pathetic. If the people do not understand, that does not prevent them from singing with me, even if unfortunately I do not have gypsy roots...

Unfortunately ?

But because everyone wants to be a gypsy. It is like wanting to be a cow-boy. I was born in a family very distant from this culture. My father was a colonel. It is surely why my universe is also influenced by the military music.

You live in Paris and work in Belgrade. From which country do you feel you belong ?

My emotional territory, is between Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo. I have the three passports : Bosnian, Croatian, Serb. If one day, I stop somewhere, I would like to live in this territory. I feel myself deeply yugo !

How do you explain your particular relationship with France?

When I sold my first record of Time of the gypsies, as I was coming from such a small culture, I said to myself it is incredible : there are hundred thousand French hearths that have my record. That made me feeling strange to have so much success in a country which gave half of the culture of other civilization. That gave me confidence. I think that the war was the revealing element of my own culture. That made me an emigrated artist. Paris welcomed me and allowed me to feel like an artist and a yugo. It is one of the few places for that.
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