ON BEAUTY AND CREATIVITY, WITH MENNO KUIJPER

I am interviewing Menno Kuijper, a great cabaret artist based in London, a very clear mind and a lovely person. I wanted to know more about his views on Cabaret and the way that music and song writing has become an important part not only of his career but also of his personal development. Our talk was long (it will give me scope for a second episode on Cabaret). This is an excerpt of our discussion.

Maria: When did you start writing?

Menno: From a very young age I was always writing stories, or singing or drawing, I used to draw loads, and all these things are about story telling, but just in different ways.  In my teens, and especially in my twenties, I gravitated much more towards the songwriting, but always more from the point of view of the lyrics and the idea of the song rather than melodically putting a song together.  I don’t really consider myself a ‘melody’ person as I’ve never learned to play an instrument and think ‘OK, I should work together with people who really understand music and melodies’, but having worked with composers I’m now beginning to think more in terms of melodies and instruments, how we could harmonise it...so that's quite new to me.

One morning I woke up and I had a melody in my head and I didn't know where it came from!  It was just there in my head, kind of sad and melancholic, and the words where just there!  So I quickly got my phone, recorded myself humming the tune and wrote down the words, and within minutes had it all down. I looked at the words and the thought “What the hell is this? What the hell is this song? Where did it came from?”  It's called “Fuck me senseless!” I just thought “How bizarre”, and I looked at the lyrics and I thought “Is this me?”, “Are this things I feel?”, “Is this desire on my part?” or “Is it just something that came out of a dream?” Who knows!

Maria: You are a very good lyricist.  Do you see yourself as someone who tells stories through music?

Menno:   I’ve always seen myself as a storyteller before I call myself a singer or a performer – its about the story telling.  I like to write, I like to perform, I like to sing, I like to draw, I like to put songs together... it's all about taking something and find the right way to express it.  So, what form is it going to take? What I really like is when something takes shape by itself, to have a very organic approach. And I think this is something I'm focusing much more now, like you have an idea and you just go with it, you don't have a plan, you just see what happens.

Maria: Has story telling help you survive to some extent?

Menno: Yes, I guess, I was always in this fantasy world.  I remember my mum, she used to check up on me when I was supposed to be sleeping and then she would say “You're still awake!” and I'd say “Yes, I’ve got too much going on in my head”. Now, of course, as a child, you don't have stuff like bills or your job to worry about, so it was all fantasy and weird stuff!

Maria: so did you get rid of so much stuff going on or you always got more?

Menno: Well, I think that from the age of about six-seven I got bullied a lot in school because I was quite girly, and not like a ‘traditional boy’, so I think it was part a escapism. My dad would say to me “get out of that pink cloud”, and by “pink cloud” he meant this fantasy world I lived in, because I was always bumping into walls or breaking things. I tried to sit on the sofa once and I sat over the side table instead and broke this beautiful lamp that my mother had inherited. So that was always like a drama because I was like “in another world” most of the time, so he just wanted me to get my feet on the ground. That's why he said “get of that pink cloud!”, and I never liked that because I didn't understand it, I would think “what pink cloud? I'm not on a cloud! I can't see it!”. But I would just be writing, writing, writing stuff...and then when I was a teenager I wanted to perform, I had seen cabaret artists and comedians on TV and I thought “Oh, I wanna do that!”. And I started doing some performing in high school. And then I started to write songs, but in Dutch.

Maria: Cabaret has to do with critic. It can be very political. Does that help you express your ideas?

Menno: For me, nowadays it’s even more like that, I have a clear point to get something across. As a teenager it was mostly whimsical stuff, but now I want to write a whole play about religious based homophobia, which of course, stirs up a lot of emotions.

Maria: The song you sang the other day “Equal opportunity shagger”, makes a point!

Menno: yes, and what's really interesting about that is that I've performed it in different places and it does make a point on how people today face online dating, and how we use apps and meeting apps for sex purely, how you commodify people and you don't see people as a person but just as a body, people can look at you as a collection of body parts, and “Do you have all the body parts that I want in one body?” Or “Do I even care about your body? --I just want a particular type of penis”. It get's broken down and compartmentalized so much.  It's not about knowing someone anymore.

Maria: that's interesting, specially coming from someone who also works for the beauty industry. Do you relate those thoughts to that other job?

Menno:  I see it as something very different and separate, I've never consciously related it to the work I do for hair salons (because I also work with hair salons and spas and beauty saloons).

Maria: That has a lot to do with people who want to look good.

Menno: Or feel good.

Maria: We do live in a day and age where the physical is very much emphasised all the time.

Menno: Yes, if you look at all those girls in adverts and see how much they've been enhanced, through lightning, through make up, afterwards in photoshop their eyes are made bigger, the jaw line is made sharper...or whatever, so much of what we are presented is fabricated, and I am quite political about this. “Equal opportunity shagger” is about, “Lets be a bit more open minded”.

Maria: and it's a beautiful song.

Menno: I did it in a bar in Dublin, and one guy heard it and came to me afterwards and he was saying “Actually, that really made me think”, and that is to me a great compliment, because as a story teller I like to do two things: I like to inform and entertain. Together. But if someone gets more from the informing part that I do, that to me is the end goal. And it's not that I say “I know everything and this is what you should be thinking”, that is not what it is about, but obviously, you go through life, you observe things, and you want to address them.

Maria: what is beauty for you?

Menno: Away from performance?

Maria: Away from performance.

Menno: it's all about the eyes and the feeling a person has around them. At the end of the day if I find someone who is very grounded a very calm, then that's beautiful, ‘cause I tend to be all over the place and need someone to balance that.  And someone who is understanding and is open, that is beautiful. 

Menno and myself spent some minutes improvising, and this is part of what happened next. A most enjoyable morning!




 © Maria Soriano 2014, Singing4Health

FOOD, VOICE AND RISKS...WITH MOISES PÉREZ

Moisés Pérez is one of the founders of MuOm, the Barcelona overtone singing choir, very unique and beautiful music project that visited London last 25th and 26th July. They use techniques such as "overtone singing" and "throat singing", that come from Tuva, Mongolia, Tibet and also the Xhosa people in South Africa.
Moisés is the only Spanish person who has ever participated in a competition of troat singing in Tuva. He stayed at home for a few nights and I had the chance and pleasure to talk with him about music, singing, health, love, life and more... and this is a part of what happened.

Maria: What did you study?

Moises: I studied Biology in University as Undergraduate. But I've never felt a Biologist. Or nothing.

Ma: And how does one feels like “a biologist”?

Mo: I have never felt like anything. There are people who can say “I'm a biologist”. I studied biology. To “be”... I don't know “what” I am. But I worked in waste water treatments with natural systems and involved for various years in a government department for sewage discharges licenses.

Ma: And even if you “are” not a biologist, why did you choose Biology?

Mo: When I was a teenager, what was really doing was to study music in Conservatory, up to the professional degree: four years of guitar, sol-fa, two years of harmony, a couple of years of singing... but I was in a way “obliged” by my parents to study a degree... so I left Madrid to study in another city, expand myself and explore other disciplines. I started to do contemporary dance, theatre... joined an amateur Peruvian music group, in which we played flutes, and that was a great experience... but it felt like life was taking me through other paths, I was also very active in the ecologist movement, had a lot of meetings about it and music had to take a second position.

Ma: Are you vegetarian for environmental reasons or for any other reasons?
Mo: I started being vegetarian when I was 19, but well, I don't consider myself to be really a vegetarian, or I don't define myself as such. In the beginning it started because I had a shock doing some practices on arthropods in Galicia because a sea warm I had to kill to preserve it, and then I forgot about it and the bottle got rotten... that made me felt really bad about senseless and futile deaths, all that was really very intense for me. I don't know, but that was a very strong experience.

I have always felt very connected to nature, and this experience made me think and reconsider my way of eating animals. I've had many stages, sometimes I eat animals, others I didn't, for health and environmental reasons, but it was after a Vipassana retirement various days doing meditation ten hours a day, where I not just thought about it but I also felt it: it really came from inside, I felt I didn't really want to do that. I prefer to avoid it.

Since them I am more strict about it, but I still eat meat occasionally. For example when I was in Tuva, the nomads kill animals specially to give you meat, and I didn't felt like I should say no to them.

Ma: Are we what we eat? Do we sing what we eat?

Mo: It does affect the vibes. In our group we have the tendency to have a healthy way of eating. Not that we should be obsessed about it because that could also be insane, but going beyond if you eat meat or not, most of us look for ecological products, or raw products, with a lot of enzymes, with a lot of life energy, that in the end will have some repercussion in your body and your energy. And I'm sure that this will also help for singing.

Ma: Give us a recipe for a concert.
Some hours of fast, lots of water.

Mo: That doesn't make you weak?
Not really, I think that so that you can really lower your diaphragm is best that all that area is empty. And also a lot of being concentrated in what you have to do, so that external organizational factors can't affect you. I prefer to be in retreat and focused in what I am going to do. I also avoid chocolate.

Ma:Do you think that affects at all?

Mo: It does. It creates mucus. And on the days before a concert I avoid flours and dairy products.

Ma: So you think there can be mindful singing and mindful eating?(Laughs)
Mo: Yes... to me it's all linked. It's about how you live your life according to what you feel it's important, so you blend it all. Singing is part of my own process, the same as being part of consume co-operatives and creating them, so that you help the ecological agriculturist who respects and values environment, so you value this and buy from him. And these aspects are all important to me.

Ma: What matters to you?
Mo: To be well. I believe that the most important is to be well, because in reality everything external is just external. Maybe I give it importance because I want to promote someone's well being and with my actions I try to help to have a better world, to promote certain structures. But in the end what matters the most is to be well with yourself because you can be a great ecologist and very important, but be a jerk.

Ma: I recently had someone talking to me about how dangerous can it be to construct your identity in the things you do. “If I sing in this choir, that is my identity, that I do gigs...” so if you loose your voice, what are you going to do?

Mo: That has happened to me and it was a great lesson. It happened to me while learning khoomei (Tuva's throat singing) and later on in critical moments, like going to record a CD and loosing my voice, and with all the load of work that I was putting into the group, I am also trying to relax myself about this, as I have been putting some pressure sometimes on it to pull the group forward. In the end live was telling me “be calmed and quiet”, so I try to be as calm and fair as possible rather than being with lots of emotional ups and downs.

Ma: How are you now?
Mo: I feel fine! I think I am in a moment of my life in which I feel very much connected to something very and deep inside myself, my own life purposes, and I am feeling like everything will be okay. I am also an optimist!

Coming to England has also been a great step for MuOm, and it feel like we are finally coming out of our frontiers and even if it's symbolic, this means a materialization of our intention, so there is a part of me that is put to rest because of this.

Ma: Would you like to sing something?
Mo: Okay.

Ma: Whatever you like. And I might join...or not...I don't know.
Mo: I can make a drown for you, with a harmonic of 5^th, and then you can find where to fit in. I won't move too much from there.

Ma: You do as you like. But if you feel like moving... just do it.
Mo: Well, I might move a bit.

(Laughs)

Mo: You are a provoker!
(Laughs)

Ma: I can't help it!

Mo: Because this thing I've just done, I normally don't do.

Ma: Ah, so you do this sometimes?
Mo: It's inspired in the Chukotka singing.

Ma: Blimey, what is that?
Mo: I had before seen the Inuit singing in a video doing something somehow similar, but then I had the opportunity to meet this Chukotka woman and she showed me this. Chukotka is a part of Siberia close to the Bering Strait. Their singing is very interesting, very guttural and very ancestral. Inuit do it between two women together, I recommend you to see this because it's breath taking.

Two Inuit women place each other in front of the other and it's a vocal game with some rules and connotations. What they do is to make one kind of sound when the voice comes out and other when taking a breath in, in a rhythmical way. They can then make changes on their vocal game, and the other woman has to follow, and if she doesn't follow they laugh or just stop the whole thing.

It's very interesting because you can see what they do can get really complex in rhythm and it's really amazing.

Ma: In my case, I had no idea about this. I just have my headphone and I am “there”. I mean, I am must listening and reacting to what you are doing.
Mo: Yes, I can see. That is why you are a great provoker.

(Laughs).

And you took me to places where it's normally harder for me to get.

Ma: It's fun. I didn't know that there is an Inuit doing something any similar, as to me is about listening and because I am not trying to do anything or not doing it, that is just what I feel like.

Mo: And this is a good starting point, this is what I use to say to my students, that it's about exploring your voice. You can later shape it in a way or another in order to present it to an audience, but if you have not explored it you won't find certain things.

Mo: Also, after this you can create a work of conscience. If you put some conscience to what your are allowing to happen, you may find something you have done and then you can learn how you did it so that you can do it again. If you are able to retain what is was, that moment, perhaps you can even come back to it.

Ma: I understand that even if you don’t understand it or make the effort to retain it, once you did it, it's already in your “circuit”.

Mo: It's easier. Easier to do it again.

Ma: So with practice it can happen again by it's own. Even if you where unable to retain that moment, your body did it, so your body has in a way “learned” it. It's there somewhere. It will be easier to let it happen again. Even during a singing lesson, sometimes the singing student's anxiety for trying to do again something that came out “well”, like “gosh, I did that right! I want to do that again!”. And that makes exactly that you cannot do it again!

Mo: Maybe its more about “re-cognizing” so that when it happens again, you can recognize it again, and so when you have recognized it a number of times, you can then produce it, more than forcing yourself into it at all cost.

Ma: I believe that if you did it once... you know you can...
Mo: I also explain when teaching overtone singing techniques. The body is wise. Students are exploring and sometimes comes out something really sharp, and that is the way to go forward... so if you put your ear in it then your body can register it without having to look for something specific, because there are so many micro movements and adjustments that one needs doing that we cannot really have all that in mind at the same time. There are so many factors that is very complex to think about all this. Your body processes at a much faster speed if we don't put the rational factor into it. So if you put your internal ear instead of your head, then your body can get there on it's own.

Ma: The body on it's own before your mind. The mind is fast... but the body can be faster.

Mo: Of course. Rationalizing it's a process that can take time, so this is passing through another circuit.

Ma: Maybe If you don't risk to do anything new, you won't know your voice well enough.

Mo: Yes, because your voice talks about your limits. So if you really begin to truly explore it, even if it sounds however it may sound, it doesn't matter, or if anyone can think aesthetically what the f*** are you doing?

Ma: Exactly. This recording we have just done, we may want to display it publicly or not... but is not about that.
Mo: No... it's important that one has fun too.

Ma: Did you have fun?

Mo: Yes.
Ma: Me too.

 © Maria Soriano 2014, Singing4Health

IT'S FLAMENCO SINGING TIME!

I did something really special this Easter holidays, and that was to spend some days in Almeria (Spain), where my family comes from. I had the chance to listen to Lidia Plaza and her group of flamenco musicians (David Rodriguez -guitar, Salvador Martos -percussion and Chochi Duré -accordion) at La Guajira.

Lovely music, very well assembled musicians, a good choice of repertoire, with modern and early flamenco pieces (as it corresponds to a living tradition) and superb interpretation by the voice of Lidia Garcia. I couldn't miss the opportunity of a short interview on how singing makes a flamenco singer feel. She noticed me inmediately as I walked close to the back door, and came to find me, and warmly agreed to meet us after the concert for a chat.

How did you start singing flamenco?

It runs in my family. My father used to sing flamenco and

play guitar, so I've been listening to this kind of music since I was a kid. I didn't start singing myself until I was 29 years, so that was quite late. I joined a music school in Roquetas that had a flamenco workshop with flamenco singing lessons, so there I went.

Do you think that singing flamenco has ever help you personally?

Yes, a lot. It's given me confidence, and happiness, I can wind out when I've had any problem. Singing renews me inside, it feels like my cells are being renewed. It's regenerating, it makes me feel alive, and when I'm on stage I enjoy it to the maximum.

When I sing in public I try to make others feel how much I am enjoying it so that others can also feel that adrenaline and sense of renewal and well being when they listen to something that they are enjoying.

Do you feel that there is anything specific to flamenco singing with regards to emotional expression?

Yes. Flamenco singing is pure feeling. Depends on what palos you sing you get different emotions, some are happier, like tangos, alegrias and bulerias, that were performed by our ancestors to celebrate popular parties. But the mine singing, the seguidilla, the soleá, it's about suffering and difficulties that people had to go through in a tough area. It's a very special kind of singing, with lots of suffering and it comes from a very deep place inside one. They express how people could cope with the everyday hardness, how people used to live in the past. That was the way they used to express it, by singing.

If I tell you singing and health, what comes to your mind?

If you sing, your mood improves, you can really become happier and you get closer to an authentic state of health.

What are your projects for the future? What do you aim for?

What I really want is to sing and to be in a stage and share music with people, an audience to enjoy with me. That's what I always want to do, with disregard of the fact if I record a disc or I become famous and all that fantasies, but my biggest wish is to sing... I am already fulfilling it!

 A lovely night in front of the medieval arabic castle of the city, that ended with a walk in the warm andalusian night. I highly reccomend Lidia Plaza and her ensemble for performances in UK.

SEE VIDEO