September 27th, 2007Albarn takes Chinese monkey show overseas
PARIS (AFP) — After more than 15 years as one of the leading lights in British pop music, Damon Albarn is this week preparing for the international debut of his latest project.
A founding member of leading Britpop band Blur and one half of revolutionary “virtual” group Gorillaz, Albarn has turned his attention to the unexplored terrain of mixing ancient Chinese folk music, opera and circus performance.
“Monkey, Journey to the West” arrives in Paris on Wednesday for an 18-night run at a theatre in the French capital before heading to Berlin next year.
Albarn, like the reviewers who saw the show debut at a festival in the north of England in June, is at a loss to describe what he seems to have invented.
“What it is I don’t know. Maybe it’s a kind of the first sort of world music opera,” he tells AFP in an interview. “All I know is that people like it.”
The show is based around a 16th-century Chinese fable featuring a magical journey to India by the Monkey King to collect sacred Buddhist scrolls and rescue China from moral decline.
Albarn has written the musical score, his Gorillaz collaborator Jamie Hewlett has done the visual side of the show and the production has been overseen by acclaimed Chinese director Chen Shi-Zheng.
“If you try and define it as an opera, you’ll probably be disappointed. If you call it a musical you’d be totally wrong, and if you call it a show, you’d only be kind of taking it on face value,” he said.
Acrobats, gymnasts, martial arts experts and jugglers perform to Albarn’s music, played by a band featuring Western and Chinese instruments with electronic enhancements.
Albarn, who went on an artistic pilgrimage to China with his co-producers, says he wrote the music using traditional techniques where possible, making use of the five-note pentatonic scale found in Chinese folk music.
“I kept it very simple. I just used one of the earliest examples of the pentatonic scales in China, and I just developed a kind of system of conversation around that.
“There are some elements of songwriting still because my technique as an opera composer is very naive, even if I learnt a lot from doing this.
“There aren’t any Verdi’s arias in there yet!”
Despite his candor about his opera-writing ability, Albarn has become one of the most versatile figures in pop music, constantly reinventing himself and his sound.
After finding global fame as the frontman for Blur, arch-rivals of Oasis for the spotlight in late 90s Britpop, Albarn has gone on to set up Gorillaz and more lately The Good The Bad and the Queen.
Gorillaz, whose music is written by Albarn, is a virtual band made up of four animated characters drawn by Howlett.
The Good The Bad and The Queen is a sort of pop “supergroup” comprising Albarn, former The Clash bass player Paul Simonon, ex-The Verve guitarist Simon Tong and the ex-drummer for Nigerian star Fela Kuti, Tony Allen.
In between times, Albarn has founded his own record label, Honest Jon’s, which he used to release the album “Mali Music” in 2002, a collection of songs recorded by artists from the West African nation.
He plans to continue evolving and takes a swipe at bands which are stuck playing hits years after their initial success.
“Lots of people are still playing the same music that they were when they were teenagers. How is it possible?” he asks.
“I don’t understand that. How can you be an old man playing the music you made when you were a teenager? (You have to) play the music that your life has brought you to. It’s important to develop.”
“Monkey, Journey to the West” is a co-production between Chatelet Theatre in Paris, the Staatsoper (State Opera) in Berlin and Manchester’s International Festival in Britain.
The production will travel to Berlin in July next year.
