By Ziad Nawfal
As one third of Sun City Girls, Alan Bishop is one of the towering figures of the American musical underground of the last 30 years, and his musical output knows very few boundaries, whether in his solo guise as Alvarius B., or through the global releases of the Sublime Frequencies label, which he’s operated with Hisham Mayet since 2003. Sam Shalabi is a key musician in Montreal’s experimental scene, with Egypian roots and a decisively warped approach to music-making. He is best known as a founding member of the Shalabi Effect quartet, and appears regularly in various free improv and avant-rock ensembles. Shalabi recently founded Land Of Kush, an intriguing orchestra inspired by the Egyptian big-bands of the 60’s and 70’s, which has released two records to date. Sam Shalabi and Alan Bishop are old friends, but their duo at Plot for a Biennial, the music section of Sharjah’s 10th Biennial, sees them collaborating for the first time.
How and when were you approached to participate in Sharjah Biennial 10?
Sam Shalabi: Haig (Aivazian, associate curator of the Biennial) approached me over a year ago over email. He explained to me at length what the Biennial was. I didn’t know much about it at the time.
Was your performance at the Biennial initially conceived as a collaboration?
SS: When Haig first invited me, it was still sort of vague. He knew musicians in Montreal, and suggested different persons that I could collaborate with, but no one specific. I did not decide anything at the time, and waited until we actually met. At a certain point, Haig mentioned the Sublime Frequencies label, and expressed an interest in it, and in collaborating with someone from the label. Alan’s name came up, and I said that I knew him, I knew Alan, and if the Sharjah people were willing to do it, well… He was very interested, of course, and I literally phoned Alan to talk to him about the project. That was it. We’re friends, but we don’t see other much, since we live on different sides of the country. I respect and love what Alan does, and I thought that this was a really good chance, a great opportunity.
Were you given any guidelines, any musical directions for the collaboration?
SS: Not at all. As far as I was concerned, the one thing I knew for certain was that I wanted to incorporate stuff that was pre-recorded in Sharjah, in addition to live instruments. I thought it would be a good idea to try and use the actual place, the environment that we’re in, and do the piece here. To figure things out once we arrive here, and not come with pre-conceived ideas.
Alan, did you follow the same impulse, with regard to the piece?
Alan Bishop: I think I was in Cairo, when we received the approval to do the duet. The festival wanted us to write an 800-word text explaining our concept for the piece. Since I was in Cairo, Sam was nice enough to write it, this vague blurb, which mentioned that we would use field recordings and incorporate them in our piece. An electro-acoustic concept of some sort, but without definite areas of coverage or definitive directions. He just wrote up an ambiguous text which described what we knew at the time, which wasn’t much, really. When the Egyptian revolution occurred, it really affected both of us in similar ways. We were in regular contact at the time, because of the events in Egypt and the Sharjah collaboration as well. I think the Egyptian revolution has been somewhat of an inspiration for the direction of this piece. It was a case of a situational happening that influenced the manner in which things proceeded, between the beginning and where we are today. When we first arrived, we had some loose ideas that we had discussed over the phone, but not how we were going to coordinate them specifically. We had a list of ideas and things, and when we got here, one thing sort of led to another. It’s been gradual, it’s still developing. We only started to feel comfortable a couple of days ago, when we rounded out how the entire piece was going to be outlined. There’s room for improvisation and some spontaneous moments, on top of the basic outline of the piece.
Did you agree from the outset to use local sounds and soundscapes?
AB: Yes, that was the reason why we came early. Neither one of us had come to Sharjah before. Being here ahead of time gave us a chance to sink in, get a feel for the environment, to utilize some of the external phenomena and incorporate them in our performance.
Once you arrived to Sharjah, were there any types of restraints imposed on you?
SS: Not really. I think that in certain cases, when you go to a certain country, it takes you a while to figure out its different layers. In some places, it’s obvious that you cannot use curse words, or show nudity, that sort of thing. But the other, less obvious layer is the weird stuff that you don’t know. For instance, you might reference a certain ethnic group, or say a certain phrase that seems innocuous to you, but in this specific country, it causes a catastrophe. There’s no way you can know that, and it takes some time to figure it out.
AB: There’s always going to be the dynamic of coming to a new place, getting your surroundings figured out, and morphing into them. Nobody has mentioned to us what we can and cannot do, the organization and the facilities and the office here have made it very easy for us, they set us up in a great spot, with all the equipment we needed. We have complete freedom to develop the piece, there’s a bond of trust that means that by the time we get to the show, there will be something to present. It’s been very easy-going.
SS: It’s true that nobody has told us what do, and that we have complete freedom. But the funny thing is, they know us, they know our work, and they are probably aware that we might do certain things that might bother some people, although that is not our intention. Based on Alan’s work, and based on what I do, they must know that it’s a possibility, but they’re okay with it.
AB: I think that inviting us here is the Biennial ’s way of showing that they are being more progressive, moving in new, challenging directions, introducing some other stuff that they might not have shown in the past. They’re just moving along, the Biennial is getting more tolerant, perhaps.
SS: I don’t think that at any point, during the time that we’ve been here, we asked ourselves a question such as “What’s really going to shock?” We’ve just been doing what we normally do in this kind of situation: we’re reacting to what’s around us.
AB: Yeah, this is where we are, and we’re reacting to where we are. It would be the same if we were doing a piece in New York, or in Brazil. This is what we do, and there’s nothing different about it, the geography and the local customs and situations are going to dictate how you create in that area, and it’s going to inspire you to do what it is you do. And that’s all there is to it, a reaction in normal activity.
Alan, now that you have a clear idea of what the piece is going to sound like, do you feel that the work represents a continuation of your output with Sun City Girls, and of your continuing interest for the music(s) of the Middle East and North Africa?
AB: There are some threads that are common, yes. My work is always going to be a continuation of Sun City Girls, because I was an integral part of the group, it is part of my vision. It is me, no matter where I go and what I do. But I’m always trying to do different things as well, and try to move on, but there’s always going to be derivatives, and this piece does have derivatives.
Sam, a few years ago you formed Land of Kush, an orchestral project that is informed by Middle Eastern music and your specific Egyptian cultural heritage. Do you feel that this present piece is aligned with the Land of Kush project?
SS: Not really, it’s a very different approach. There are definitely things that are continuous, but bear in mind that this here is a collaboration, whereas in Land of Kush, the pieces are composed entirely by me. At a certain point, once the music is done, I ask the vocalists to write the lyrics, since I prefer not to write any myself. It’s different in that respect: we’re building this piece together, we’re doing it from the ground up, from scratch. There are definitely some aesthetic aspects that carry over, but this is a wholly different thing. It is more open, for one. His music is like that, he is like that, and that made the process more interesting for both of us. We don’t really know what we’ve done; we’ve actually come up with something, but we don’t really know what it is we’ve done.
AB: I think we’re finally going to know when it gets executed on stage, because you really can’t recreate it in this little room. Until we actually get out there, where there is a lot of space to move, and deal with it, it’s really conceptual. We’re imagining it, and we’re working through the process, or at least part of the process. It’s exciting too, because at this point we’ve basically thought it out as much as we can and we’ve prepared and we’ve rehearsed little sections here and there, and by the time we get there, on stage, we can actually go through the whole thing and see what it’s going to mean. There’s enough openness and spontaneous possibilities to give us some freedom and enable us to live in the moment as well. It’s not all conceptual. It has the best of both worlds.