|
The Jet Sounds of Nicola Conte
The Millionaire
Monday, August 07, 2000 05:46 PM
Straight Outta Bari!
A short while ago, The Millionaire had the pleasure of chatting with
the charming Sr. Nicola Conte, the visionary responsible for the
international hit "Bossa Per Due" (better known in the U.S. as "The
Music In That Acura Commercial"). Nicola Conte is the vanguard of a new
Italian Jazz-Pop revolution and a thoughtful guy to boot. Part One of
our conversation appears here.
$$$: I have a lot of questions to ask
you, but the first thing is, basically, I know only your music. So let
me start from the beginning, since you're a complete enigma to
me! Tell me about your background ...You're from Bari?
NC:
Yeah, I'm from Bari, which is quite a big town. It's 200,000
people. It's on the Adriatic coast of Italy. It's basically
beneath [sea level], and I can see the Adriatic Sea from my window,
from my house. It's kind of a summer town. We had a lot of
influences here 'cause there were Arabs here, there were Scandinavians.
From the 17th century to the 18th century, we were a part of the
Borboni kingdom of Italy, which was based on a royal family, which had
kind of a Spanish origin, and then we were part of the Italian.
It's very different from northern Italy; I would say that's why we like
so much the bossa nova. We have kind of a Brazilian attitude, or
Latin American attitude, but mixed with a kind of European
culture. I'm in my mid-thirties. I went through a classical
[education]; I went to university. I got a degree in science and
politics, and I started DJ-ing when I was quite young.
$$$: What were you DJing when you first started? Was it acid jazz or Techno or...?
NC:
No, no. I never played that sort of thing. It was a few
years like that. I was 18 years old or something, and it lasted a
little while, like a couple of years, then I stopped 'cause I had to
finish my university and things like that. And when I came out of
the university, I took another two years time working with, kind of a
jazz field, booking concerts, you know, working with some very
important American jazz musicians. And then I started to deejay
again, because I was very much into jazz.
$$$: Hmmm. Interesting. And
there's always been an audience for that kind of things, (jazz, etc)
that you're playing?
NC: Oh, yeah, I
mean, here, we did gigs with 2,000 people, with two, three live bands,
deejay sets. It was something that never happened before in
Italy.
 $$$: It doesn't happen much here! [laughs]
NC:
But the real breakthrough came when the Fez came into existence, and
this was at the very beginning of the acid jazz scene in the early
'90s. This was the first club in Italy to play like real jazz
records, or bossa records and stuff. It's nine years old.
 I
started making records with a label called Right Tempo: the first Right
Tempo record came from Bari....it was a Paolo Achenza Trio record. It
was done in 1993 [and] included kind of a big hit for us. It was
a kind of a lounge/bossa track called "Fez Bossa", and it really got a
lot of play from all the, you know, "who's who" [among the] DJs of the
Acid Jazz scene. And then from that, we were trying to develop
our own sound, which is, you know, in some ways, at first inspired by a
kind of a Afro-American jazz, particularly kind of a late '60s, early
'70s kind of Afro- American jazz, plus a lot of influence from
Brazilian music. We had a band called Quintetto X, it was kind of
a bossa-jazz band, and we covered some Italian tunes by singers like
Mina and things like that. 'Cause we were at a point where we
were discovering our heritage, musically speaking.
$$$: I was wondering if, when you were
like growing up as a young hipster, you might have thought that
(Italian pop Diva) Mina was totally square; stuff like that, that you
grow up with, or take for granted because it's around you all the time.
NC:
Yeah, okay, probably you are basically right, 'cause I was thinking
that Mina was really square up until I was, you know, starting to dig
in more deeply into the arrangements and, you know, the sounds of the
music, and I discovered that it wasn't square.
[So,] we had the Fez and then we founded Schema [records] 'cause the
two guys who actually owned Right Tempo, they were splitting up at a
certain point, so we were almost lost because we were in between the
splitting, and we had to decide what to do-to stay with one of the guys
and stay with Right Tempo, or to stay with the other guys and form a
new label. And we decided to form a new label, which we gave an
Italian name to that, and that was a very crucial period because we
were very concerned, and tried to really push our Italian kind of
culture..... every time we were part of an international scene, that
was always speaking English, we were kind of, you know, we could have
been loser anytime, compared to the UK, which was always dominating
[the cultural scene]. We were really far from the United States
as well , so...
$$$: This is a bit of a digression,
but... was it a conscious choice to do instrumental music or music
without lyrics to make the appeal of your music more international?
NC:
It hard... those things that happen, it's just you realize that
people are living so far away... there are a few people... I hope that they are not that
few anyway! But, I mean, there are people who think with their own
minds and are developing their own kind of art, and sometimes these
arts have a lot of things in common between, you know, different
countries like Italy and the United States.
$$$: I know what you mean. But that kind of thinking isn't encouraged.
NC: No, no. Not at all. But it's more true because
of that, because it's just something that you are developing on your
very own, in your own house, you know, in your own private lives, and
after that, it comes out so strong that it reaches people really far
away.
When I did "Bossa Per Due", which I guess you like, it was
like... there was my very first record under my name, but I was working
two years before that to try to work with the kind of machines and
stuff, you know, like computers and samples, things like that, because
what I wanted to do is try to make some music that, it could have been
modern the way it was done, but that [has] a kind of a mellow sound,
like not this hard drums, like hard breakbeat drums. It could
have a melody on top of it and some strange things going on. But
most of all, I really wanted it to sound Italian
and not sound like just "Lounge" or just Bossa. And so every
sample that I chose for that was a sample that had a certain kind of
feel to it. And it should have been something that was perfect in
myself, so I mean, that is me. That is the music that I
dream about, and it was kind of, you know, someday, sometimes, became
something real without being too conscious about that.
$$$: I actually wanted to ask you about
something you just mentioned! You can always identify that sort of
"Italian" feel. The music sounds stylish. You have obviously
given this some thought: can you actually articulate what you feel
gives something an "Italian" sound or that captures that feeling?
NC: Yes. I think that this has got
a lot to do with the kind of a romantic feel towards things and a kind
of a sophisticated appeal .... I think that it's really part of... or used to be...
very characteristic of the Italian sounds. Whatever has been done
in Italy during the '60s or the early '70s, even the real crap, always
had a certain kind of a...uh.. I mean, you can always find like, maybe,
you know, a drum sound or a keyboard sound that is not that bad anyway!
A lot of the Italian composers, they were very sophisticated
musicians. They were classically trained, so they know everything
about harmony, and they know how to build a melody and put some strange
chords beneath them, and they had at the same time this kind of feeling
for jazz as well, so they were always putting say, an organ solo here,
a jazz arrangement of the horns there, and they always had these very
strong feelings for bossa nova, 'cause they were smart enough to dig a
certain kind of music that was coming up from other countries.
$$$: They weren't snobs.
NC:
Yeah. I mean, they knew what bossa nova was about, and what they
were doing is, they were taking bossa nova rhythms and chord sequences,
and putting on top of that a kind of opera singing, like all the Ennio
Morricone stuff and... they were using almost like opera singers, like
female singers who had classical training...
$$$: Like Edda Dell'Orso..
NC:
Yeah; and building a melody that you can actually sing like a soprano,
and that's how you have, like, "Metti Una Sera Cena" and all those
great, almost-bossa Italian tunes. But they were something very
peculiar [to] Italy, because you don't find very [many] opera singers
[any]where in the world that can, in the end, sing pop tunes!
[And] I think, I mean, the use of strings and maybe the use of a
harpsichord...... [the composers] were really, you know, very
young-minded; you can find those psychedelic tunes that really sound
like garage-psychedelic America tunes...turning into kind of an Italian
state of mind. These other musicians were very flexible.
They were able to play everything and sounded real with what they were
doing.
$$$: You could tell they weren't
condescending about it like, "oh, this is just that rock 'n' roll crap
that people are into".
NC: Yeah,
yeah. But I mean, everything that was kind of rock, they were...
I know some of those musicians, 'cause Antonella Vannucchi and all the
other musicians were playing with Piero Umiliani and Piero Piccioni;
they were jazz musicians. In the early '60s they were playing
"real jazz" on a very high level, so whatever they'd be doing, they
were always approaching the music like jazz musicians, but at the same
time, like studio musicians; someone comes into the studio, gives them
the score and says, let's play kind of a psychedelic twist and blues
and things like a shake, or whatever, whatever it was. But a
shake with a jazz musician's mind, so there was always something weird
about it.
$$$: [laughs] Yeah. In the best possible way.
NC:
Yeah, in the best possible way. So, coming back to myself, when I
was starting, you know, doing my records, watching all the old Italian
movies; getting videotapes and listening to the records, and then with
my kind of a jazz heritage and Brazilian heritage, I was kind of trying
to think in the same way as those musicians but in a very contemporary
way. So I'm not an arranger; I'm not a classically trained
musician... nothing like that.
$$$: Do you have any proper musical training?
NC:
I know about music. I can play a little bit of piano, a little
bit of this and that, but you know, I started music when actually I was
very young. I played classical guitar. I've never played,
apart from few like underground bands, but the main thing for me was
just considering music from a kind of a DJ's point of view and
trying to bring to this a kind of an arranger's point of view.
So....I'm not playing, but I'm telling you what I really would like to
hear and choosing the samples to create this kind of mood for the
musicians . On my album there's going to be over 20 different
musicians. Every one of them is playing kind of a particular
role.
 $$$:
"Bossa Per Due" is so seamless; unlike a lot of sample-based dance
music, it's very melodic; there's chord changes and a melody... I was
never quite sure whether it was put together from samples, or whether
it was actually being played by musicians in the studio, or ......?
NC:
Yeah, It's mostly based on samples, but we'd been working a lot in the
studio to actually quantize every little thing and make it sound
natural. So that means that not all the samples are just starting
on the beat. We've got a lot of things starting off
the beat. There are a lot of things pushing a little backwards, a
little upwards, to make it sound like more of a natural, human kind of
swing. And then on top of that, there was a friend of mine who is
a kind of a free jazz player, and with him, we composed this
melodic line that is sung by Paola, and he played a little organ, and I
cut the organ parts up and, you know, put it here and there, except for
the solo at the end, which is done live and it's saved like that.
Everything else is actually samples.
$$$: And you're working on a full-length album now?
NC: Yeah, it's ready.
$$$: So there are a lot of live musicians on the new album?
NC:
Yeah. Over 20 different musicians. I'll have a live Sitar
on [some] tracks. Live tablas, plenty of horns, like flutes, that
sort of stuff. Acoustic piano, Farfisa organs, Hammond organs,
jazz guitars, like, you know, semi-acoustic Gibson guitars, three
different female vocalists, and what else...double-bass, standard jazz
bass and...you know, things like that.
$$$: Do you have a title for the record yet, or are you still thinking...?
NC: Yeah; "Jet Sounds".
(Not to be confused with the 12" /7" double single set that came out earlier this year--ed.)
NC:
I decided the title of the album while I was doing that track, and I
decided not to actually change my mind and just call the album Jet
Sounds.
$$$: It occurred to me when I first contacted
you, since I didn't know you at all, that I wasn't even sure if
"Nicola" is a man's or a woman's name...I didn't even know! I
thought perhaps "Nicola Conte" might be the woman singing on "Bossa Per
Due".
NC: No, the woman singing is a
friend of mine. Her name is Paola Arnesano. She's a jazz singer from my
town. She doesn't [usually] sing like that. I mean, she has
that kind of tone, but she's [not] used to sing[ing] that way. She was
really very sweet to try to understand me and to sing like that.
$$$: What does she usually do?
NC:
She was a kind of... in Italy there's plenty of, let's say, jazz
singers who probably are missing the point about jazz, but they are
very well-trained, musically speaking.
$$$: Right, I know what you mean.
NC:
And some of them have got a very nice sound with their voice, but
sometimes they're just basically singing the wrong song!
$$$: Are they showing the Acura commercial in Italy too?
NC: No, no. I've never even seen it.
$$$: Oh, it's ubiquitous here. People
hear ["Bossa Per Due"] more than they would if it was like a giant hit
on the radio. And the commercial itself goes along with that
vibe. It's out to people driving Palm Springs and lounging around
in a really expensive hotel by the pool and stuff. Are you making a lot
of money off of it, I hope?
NC: Um... not really a lot.
$$$: I hope it's helping you. As long as people know who it is that's doing the song!
NC:
Oh, yeah, well, the thing is that, my record is going to come out in
the United States on the ESL label, the label of Thievery Corporation.
So, they actually hooked it up with [the Acura Commercial]. They did
everything for that.... my album is going to be released over there the
first days of September, and there's going to be a new single out
before that, which is a new track that I'm just finishing now, and it's
going to be released immediately, because I'm very happy about
it. It's called "Forma 2000".
$$$: I'm really looking forward to that and the whole album too. It's really exciting.
NC:
There's a new tune which I'm very happy about. It's called
"Dossier Omega", which is obviously inspired by the Italian
exploitation kind of spy movies. It's kind of a psychedelic funk
beat, and it has that kind of a female vocal singing in almost Indian
style: it's a very psychedelic tune - it's got a four minute sitar
solo, and it takes you like... it's almost like an LSD trip, so it's
.. You know, it's one chord and it's a sitar playing a solo on
top of it.
$$$: Perhaps people with latent psychological problems shouldn't listen to that track.
NC: [laughs] I don't know... It takes you somewhere! I don't know exactly where.
I'm very much of a fan of classical Indian music... sitar things,
you know, the classical raga and stuff and all the kind of things that
has been done during the late '60s with the sitar. You know, things
like the Bill Plummer album on Impulse or things like that: I'm very
much into that.
$$$: ... and one of the few pop sitar
players is Alessandro Alessandroni; right there in Italy, too.
There are only a handful of pop sitar players.
NC:
Yeah. I know him. I had a couple of phone conversations
with him, and this is another thing; at one another point I was feeling
that something was happening here in Italy that some of us should have,
you know, taken [our] heritage and, you know, [make it going around
again?], so possibly, you know, [I] was taking [on] this weight.
$$$: Well, you're doing a hell of a job so far.
NC:
[laughs] I'm really kind of a... I really don't have any other
options, like, I had to do it, if you understand what I mean.
$$$: I completely understand. That
in itself is an achievement, you know; realizing what comes naturally
to you, what formed your talents and going with that and exploring
it. A lot of people never have that kind of insight, so....good
job!
NC: Yeah, and then I am very surprised about what's happening with my tracks 'cause I never...
I mean, I think I'm kind of ambitious like everyone [who] is
doing something and is putting it into the public eye. But I
never thought that people from other countries would like what I was
doing, and still I'm very surprised. I'm very, like, "is it
possible?!"
$$$: It's always surprising.
NC:
Yeah, but the thing is that, if you say that it sounds like Italian, it
makes me really surprised, because whatever effort I [may] put into
that, I don't really know how to actually make it sound Italian!
I mean, it's not kind of a....mathematical combination of
things! On the other hand, we'd been checking out all the Italian
writers, and it was very much like... it's not only just music, it's
just trying to develop a sense of our cultural attitudes, and so,
digging all the books and all the magazines and all the movies and all
the records and trying to really understand what was the point.
You know, 'cause Italy has always been a very important country for
European culture, but now, it isn't anymore; I mean, Italian movies are
not that interesting anymore, or they're trying to be too
Italian, if you know what I mean. You got "Cinema Paradiso," you
got Roberto Benigni and all those things, but they are not like
Michelangelo Antonioni at all.
 $$$: No. [laughs] That's for sure!
NC:
..... we are living in a country [but] we don't feel like it's the
country that it used to be. So we had to go backwards and discover what
we really like: you know, like having suits tailored in a certain kind
of way, you know, I had to go to a tailor to have a suit
tailored in a certain kind way. And they're all parts of the same
kind of [aesthetic]; It's not just a fashion thing.... and it's not
just myself; there's lots of other people here who are working towards
those things. If you see the cover [of the record], there's one
guy who takes care of the graphics, and there's another guy, friend of
mine, DJ. His name is Fillippo Bratta, and he's much like me and
probably in one year's time he's going to be out with a record, and
it's going to be as good as mine. We've got a lot of musicians,
lawyers, people like that, which are very much into what we are
doing. But they are not doing that for the money in the first
place..... 'cause we are not rich yet! [laughs]
I mean, we were lucky enough 'cause we were coming from kind of a
middle-class family, so we had time, that probably other people did not
have, to develop our ideas without worrying too much about paying the
rent.... another thing that I thought had a very important role in kind
of my development as a human, I've been lucky enough to live a small
part of the '70s in Italy, 'cause it was really different [than it is]
now... You know, listen to the music.
Interview with Nicola Conte
For Luxuria Music
E-Mail
This Story to A Friend
Print this page
READER THOUGHTS
(You must be logged in to add your thoughts!)
- From:
Iris_OSirus
I'm so relieved to know I'm not the only one who thought Nicola was the woman singing on the "Bossa Per Due" track!
- From:
Kahuna_Kawentzmann
I?m sort of embarrassed to not know any of Nicola?s recordings. I?m
just buying old records in the past couple of years. Since about 95. I
don?t know why, but the scene in my town is pretty lame recently.
- From:
ufo
Bravo "Forma 2000"! The only piece I have by Conte and it's very suave and smooth, at both 33 and 45!
- From:
pan
"Almost bossa-Italian", could this be the title of a new musical genre?
Nicola did not sound like he was making "gobs" of money from the Acura
commercial-that's not right.
- From:
deletedThe_Martini_Guy
I grew up in Italy in the early 70's and remember some cool stuff. Bravo Nicola! For capturing some of that vibe in your music.
- From:
Niteliner
Excellent, Mill! Your subject is a very deep, introspective individual.
Great job on plumbing his depths. Coincidentally, I too was initially
confused by his first name.
- From:
litlgrey
I'll always treasure the day Ianwill agreed with my whole heart. Swoooooonnnnnn.
- From:
wpaul
Un grosso saluto a Sir Nicola e a tutto il FEZ !!!
- From:
ianwill
Bty. How'd you keep Luxotron from interupting every time you said "Fez"?
- From:
ianwill
I agree whole-heartedly with Mr. Grey. I am very excited with the
development of Italian "Jet" sounds and can thank Luxuria for putting
me here and now as it is developing.
|
|
|
|
Step up to a better administrative job
MAGAZINE ARCHIVES
Recent Features
Recent Reviews
|
Straight
Outta Bari!
