Paolo Tofani Krsna Prema - Area of Experimentation

Between mysticism and music

by Michele Bordi

I'd like to start straight away with "Dream In A Landscape", the project you'll be presenting together with Paolo Tarsi in Pesaro. It seems to me the title itself already makes an explicit reference to John Cage.

Yes, of course, also because both for me and, I believe, for Paolo Tarsi, he's a pillar, a historic milestone. I even had the privilege of knowing him and working with him on things together, and he certainly helped me understand how to find my way around the world of contemporary music. So my attitude towards him is without doubt one of great interest and reverence. He's a master.

How did this collaboration with Tarsi and the idea for this project come about?

Paolo and I met, and we realised we had things in common. He had the opportunity to organise this event in Pesaro, as had already happened in the past, and given our shared points of reference in Cage, together with the desire to also present pieces from our own personal repertoires, it was easy to find common ground. Besides, I enjoy working with young musicians and sharing experiences.

What can we expect from this show? Your personal reworkings of themes by Cage and Duchamp, some kind of experimental approach...

Certainly. You know, Cage and Duchamp were two people who worked in different ways, but what they had in common was the total freedom they left to the composer or performer of the future to interpret their compositions. There are written scores, but they always leave traces of the melodies in a very loose way, so as to allow you to work on top of them and stamp them with your own personality, your own way of living out the author's experience.

So what we can expect is a presentation of these essential themes that will leave room, both for me and for Paolo, to step in with different sounds and approaches. It will be an interesting experiment, because it's the continuation of a mindset that Cage's musical offspring have carried forward ever since 1950, when Cage decided to take the path of research. I think it's right for us too – even though I'm a bit past my prime, at least in terms of age – to keep moving towards that dimension of total freedom, where the musician can express himself without being forced to follow rules that sometimes imprison him and stop him from expressing who he really is.

If we were to do another evening the following day, something completely different would come out of it.

I imagine the fascination lies entirely in the infinite escape routes this approach offers, with all the stimuli they bring, giving free rein to what is, for you, a fundamental element: improvisation.

Absolutely. Improvisation is something that interests me in a very particular way, I've been working this way for years now, I deal with the total abandonment of the harmonic dimension and so I work mainly on sound, regardless of notes that escape standards such as scales or anything else. But the study of sound has been important to me ever since the Seventies, with Area.

Speaking of Area, I'm reminded of an old interview I read some time ago. It talked about how, within Area, there were these long discussions about the intellectual meaning of each piece, about its connections with the reality of the time, and you'd only start composing music once you were sure of what you wanted to express. This would seem to suggest a very rational, measured approach, which in a sense clashes with the pursuit of absolute freedom you're after today.

It's true, at that time there was a task, a mission: to be part of the youth movement, to help and help ourselves find a way to create a place, or a social dimension, that could give more drive or more space to young people who – just as today, unfortunately – were relegated to the margins of reality. So there was a need for targeted interventions, and Gianni Sassi was one of those who gave us the spark. But mind you, we're talking about a spark: the score, in the end, wasn't written down – although we did write some things down, because the phrases to be spoken at certain points were really complicated – but above all there was a lot of freedom. Each of us tried to interpret those experiences in his own way, according to his own sensibility.

Now too, at 70, I act the same way. After my thirty-year experience as a monk, I realised there are interesting things to share with others. Instead of Sassi, now my score is internal, and I tell things that draw on references coming from the reality of what I've studied, but which fit perfectly with today's human need to understand certain things in order to break free from the trap we find ourselves in.

So, to conclude, there is, in a sense, a dichotomy between the two eras, but ultimately the purpose remains always the same.

You've noticed some common ground between this approach and artists of recent years. Has anyone struck you in particular?

You know, contemporary music isn't a popular field because it's difficult, the environments and means are limited, and so what's really big today are the massive sonic events featuring major artists who draw crowds of hundreds of thousands of people. But this is an aspect that has always existed and always will. However, this is an area of music that doesn't explore new dimensions, whereas the artists who suffer, who create genuine diversity, do exist, but they stay in the shadows and try to live music with all its difficulties, without compromise.

Today there are interesting people around. I know Claudio Milano, a figure who uses his voice in a very particular way, and above all one of the few who doesn't imitate Demetrio (laughs, ed.). There are figures out there today, but you have to find them, searching hard.

Today it's perhaps even harder, given the overexposure that digital society has brought us, in a kind of musical bulimia.

True, but the thing is that when someone finally finds themselves and the need to communicate something through music, they have to be ready to live that experience. Sometimes living it isn't easy, especially in a difficult context like today's, where everything is used and discarded, and so the avant-garde musician, as always, ends up isolated with little support.

The few who do keep this trust, though - a bit like a faith, which ultimately transforms the way you live - are, in the end, the ones who open up horizons that many others, devoted to more commercial music, then dive into, using their discoveries. To me, these experimenters are essential in keeping music and the search for sound moving forward.

And how do you recognize this inner path, this road to follow faithfully?

When I left Area, I understood that that adventure - namely, finding solutions to social problems - was somewhat unreachable. It was a utopia, because there was a lack of awareness within us, and also within those who should have taken charge of the movement and given it a sense of direction. So I realized that at that moment the best thing to do was to try to understand who I was and find within myself the tendencies that work for my personality, and so this inner search gave me the chance to better understand how to change my communicative approach to music.

It's work that goes hand in hand, I think, between personal research, which obviously leads into questions of spirit and existentialism, and once you've clarified or better understood this kind of grounding in reality, you can truly start to optimize yourself at your best. It's like when you buy a new gadget: you can start using it right away, but the best thing is to read the manual to get 100% out of it. You see, up to that point, like others, I went by instinct, and the results were what they were; now things go better because I think I've understood who I am.

So, the development of consciousness is the necessary foundation for doing better at whatever you do - whatever it is you do.

This somewhat confirms what many say: it's not the tool that's decisive, but the hand of whoever uses it. Regardless of technological or cultural progress.

Technology is there, and the important thing is to use it, not let it use you. If you know what you want, you use it, you seek it out, you go find the things that interest you. For instance, right now I'm making a lot of use of my iPad, an object usually meant for playing games, and instead I've found there are ways it can make it easier to have control, and even to create sound packages with colors that are really interesting. So it's better that these things exist than not, but you must never forget who you are, so as not to end up trapped by technology's allure. Otherwise you end up with technology making the music, and you're just a puppet at its service.

So you sense a kind of risk of falling into the mental patterns or procedures that technology implicitly imposes, at least if one doesn't have clear ideas.

Exactly. You see, a lot of young kids buy a PC, throw a few sounds into it, and feel like they're Stockhausen, if you know what I mean. But there's a whole dimension to explore before you get to a certain point, and only then do you finally manage to understand what you're doing and why you're doing it.

Tofani, on this occasion I inevitably went back to your historic album Arbeit Macht Frei. I realize, even though I didn't live through those years myself, that forty years have passed, but the lyrics of "Luglio, Agosto, Settembre nero" are still tragically relevant today.

Yeah, unfortunately so. That's the harsh reality. We had identified certain issues that, instead of being resolved, have only been made worse by today's reality. I'll tell you honestly, at the time we were paying close attention to what was happening, and maybe we had some intuitions about what would happen in the future, which is why we pushed in a direction that ultimately cut us off at the knees. Everyone involved in music production at that time wasn't exactly on the side of the Palestinians, so when we presented that kind of work, the title alone already made people a bit wary of us. That somehow shut us out of the commercial level that might have made us more present in the reality of the moment.

Unfortunately, as you can see, that intuition was right, and the problem is even more acute now, and it always will be. There will always be the fragile man: the one who wants everything, the one who won't give anything up, and the one who has to suffer the consequences of others.

Curious coincidence: another band suffered the consequences of a provocative title or cover, in that very same year: I'm referring to Museo Rosenbach with their “Zarathustra”.

Yes, as I was saying, especially in that period – as is still the case today – it was hard to do things that went against the mainstream. Some survived, some didn't. In fact, we too had to give up at a certain point, or at least I did, because I understood that before coming back to say something that could carry weight in social reality, I first needed to explore myself. But there were plenty of bands back then who tried, and got catapulted right out of the scene.

Incidentally, they too, like you, reunited recently after decades of inactivity. Despite the considerable differences between the two bands, both you and they have tried to look forward rather than play the nostalgia card: a new album for them, shows for you, with little interest in crowd-pleasing self-indulgence. There still seems to be a real appetite for this kind of music, which was never really abandoned.

You're right, and the amazing thing is that at the end of every show we always find kids, very young musicians, who come up and ask questions, wanting to understand how to start down a path of rupture. That's a fantastic thing - it's not just the sentimental old fogeys who tell you “I saw you live that one time, thirty years ago...” but also fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds just starting out. They're the future, and it fills me with pleasure and satisfaction to help them. If nothing else, we can say we've done something useful.

But what differences have you noticed between your solo experience and life in a band like Area, or the others you played in even before them?

You know, it's like they say: every age has its own colour and flavour. From the very start I always tried to find groups that offered stimulation and helped me go deeper. Of course, the musical peak was obviously with Area. Before that I had a solo career, and I was close to signing a contract with Island, but honestly I was a bit tired of playing alone. Of them I only knew Demetrio, because we'd met when I was in Califfi, but I'd seen that there were interesting people in that collective, so I dropped the solo idea. Later on, well, time passes, the band's energy starts to run out, and so each of us went our own way.

Now I'm very happy that these reunions are possible, but I'm even happier when I get to do things like what I'll be doing with Paolo in Pesaro, because that's where the essence of who I am now lies, rather than going back and revisiting musical themes that by now feel pretty outdated to me.

So I imagine the future still involves keeping some distance from Area.

I think so. The future is still all to be built, but I think that for me, as I imagine for the others too, the important thing now is to keep exploring; that's what I intend to do until the end of my days, because I like moving through different territories.

And it's also great to collaborate with other musicians, whether they're highly skilled or not. Even those with less skill matter, because they often bring a lot of enthusiasm, which is contagious for old folks like me, who by now have whatever energy we've got left (laughs, Ed.).

To wrap up, would you like to leave us with a thought, a memory of Demetrio Stratos?

Demetrio was an extraordinary person. I miss him a great deal, because I'm convinced that if he were still with us – I remember that when I left Area he stayed pretty neutral about it and we kept working together – we would have kept doing a lot of things. We would have had a lot of fun, even doing experimental stuff.

He was a unique person who sadly passed away, but each of us has debts to pay, and when the debt collectors show up, you have to settle up. In the philosophy I follow, it's written that debts and illnesses must be paid off as soon as possible; it seems he had a big debt, maybe it'll be settled in his next life.

(18/09/2014)