9/20/2023 0 Comments Jam session jammer![]() But now that I think of it, almost a year on, I am just thinking that the limitation of the lockdown created situations that we are able to grow from. And then you were like so believing in this thing and I was like ‘we cannot glamourize struggle as a departure point for art’. Like when shit hits the fan, when things are bad, that is when artists go to work. Togar, do you remember, there was a quote by Toni Morrison that you had printed out and you had in your studio? It was at the beginning of the lockdown, fucking everyone is confused and you read this Toni Morrison quote and it kind of goes along the lines of like ‘now is the time for artists to get to work’. Because it is not only hearing the other, but it is allowing the other to influence your own actions and then bring it somehow in some result together. That is like the concept of deep listening. So it is listening, but also this listening is allowing the other to transform yourself. I just really like this way of connecting. Yesterday, for instance, Mette, Pennie and I were dancing, and I was wondering if we influence the people who are playing? And then I wonder we listen to the people who are playing, but we can also listen to the people who are being silent, no? And I wonder about the other people in the room. It is a very powerful act when everybody just comes to the same feeling and the same situation, when it is coming to the climax of the song. And that I think it is a very, very powerful moment. It does not matter exactly for what or the purpose of it, but it is just a fact of connecting into the same syntony in the same space, in the same context. So there is this sense of proximity when we are all together in this space and listening to each other. We are in the same situation and many times we are sharing the same space, but we are in completely different syntony. Something I really enjoy about the jam sessions is the encounter. That it is not just about playing whatever, but it is also trying to listen what the other people are doing, and trying to do something together in the moment. And something that I learned from you is the importance of listening. And it has been almost a year that this jamming has been happening constantly. I think it is a really simple way of coming together. You are not playing good, this is not your song, it is our song, it does not sound good.” But then, I have a different approach here, because I can do whatever. ![]() And I am always pretty scared because my dad was saying, ‘no, no chaparro, no. For example, for me my approach to music is more as a listener, but never as an interpreter, or touching the instruments. And then not all of the time you open yourself to do things that you do not know. ![]() I see it as a way of releasing energy, you know? I guess when you already have a practice, you are already somehow contained by some structures. ![]() Because it was not palomazo, or a poetry-jam, but it was more about like an act of joy. And then, when you first explain the concept of jamming, then I understood it differently. Well, the first time I heard the concept of jamming or jam, it was from poetry, because in Mexico City they do jam or poetry or poetry-jam. And it has this sense of improvisation, but it is quite different, because they are musicians and they respect more or less the structure. In my experience-because my dad is a musician and I used to help him to connect the equipment and this kind of stuff-they do not call it jam, they call it palomazo, and it takes place at the end or at the beginning of playing whole songs. The theme of this conversation was about/around “jamming” and what it does to us as jammers and as listeners. Driven by the need to update each other’s states of mind, it looks into our lives as practitioners through a re-imagining of these habitual spaces as “moderated hangouts.” Germination state is an ongoing sequence of discussions / jam sessions derived from everyday life. It aims to promote a knowing and respectful awareness of the infinite languages spoken in the world. This particular date and time was chosen to correspond to the curfew in Amsterdam and to correspond to International Mother Language Day, a Bangladeshi national holiday that was formed in 2000 and which has since expanded to a global level. To be any number of sensations are better put in sounds instead of words. On Sunday, February 21st, 2021 at 21:00, Tropical Tap Water recorded its fourth iteration of Germination state, a jam session of ten musicians who during the pandemic regularly got together to (safely) release tension, strengthen bonds, meditate, get and be lost or found, to get warm or cool off, to be south, north, east and west.
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