Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Sandra Pfaefflin,
Pforzheimer Zeitung
Pforzheimer Zeitung: Ten years for the Orient House Ensemble – how has
your music changed in this decade?
Pforzheimer Zeitung: Speaking about your new record ‘The Tide has
changed’ you proclaim, that “humanism is a metaphor, consciousness is
the devil and amnesia is freedom“. Are you just being cynical?
Pforzheimer Zeitung: Two tracks on the album have the titles “We laugh”
and “We Lament” - what do you do more? And what do you prefer?
Pforzheimer Zeitung: Is this the Gilad Atzmon we know, when you say, that
making music comes in first place? What became of your political
engagement, your fight for freedom and the oppressed?
Gilad Atzmon: I am indeed primarily a musician, though I spend more and
more time writing. To be a musician is to search while knowing that you
may never find. As a writer, I borrow the same intellectual template. Unlike
the clichéd Marxists who always know what is good and who is bad, I am
much more excited about questioning. I am submerged in delight when I
manage to formulate a new query.
Pforzheimer Zeitung: Now that the Bush era is over, are you content with
what came next?
Gilad Atzmon: Not really, for me politicians are all equally bad. I do not
trust them, not even the ‘nice ones’. I somehow prefer to listen to artists
who search for beauty.
Gilad Atzmon: For the conflict to be resolved the Jewish state has to give
up on its tribal supremacist ideology. In categorical terms, Israel is not
different from Nazi Germany. It is ethno-centric and racially oriented, it is
supremacist and expansionist. For the situation to be resolved, the Jewish
state must go through a process of de-Zionification. I do not think that
Israel will jump voluntarily into such a process. I believe that Israel better
face a fierce wall of resistance. In fact today I launched a call to demand
leaders to impose No Fly Zone on Israel. It is clear that there is no
categorical difference between Gaddafi crimes against his people and
Israeli crimes against the Palestinians.
Pforzheimer Zeitung: What parallels do you see in your music and Black
music?
Gilad Atzmon: I know that people compare me with some heroes of the
Bebop and post bop era. I guess that for me music is more a matter of
energy rather than knowledge. This fact alone makes me romantic and
fierce. I guess that this is a quality you can hear in Bird, Coltrane,
Cannonball, Dizzy, Miles and others. However, I find it too embarrassing to
equate myself with these prophets.
Pforzheimer Zeitung: And what have you become in the last ten years: A
British Jew, a Jewish Brit or none of these?
http://www.gilad.co.uk/