A Human Project

We've been enthusing about Belgium's great brass'n'acoordeon outfit Jaune Toujours for some years: maybe in these post-Think Of One days people will finally take notice. Andrew Cronshaw hops off to Brussels to catch them live in action.
Despite some slight controversy in the local Forde press about their relation to folk or traditional music as some might perceive it, Jaune Toujours proved a mighty live band when they played at 2003's Foorde festival as part of the cotingent of rrots bands brought by European Broadcasting Union folk music producers.

Led by singer Piet Maris, with his energetically-pumped small accordeon plus a hot rythm unit of double bass and drums and a wild and incisive trumpets and reeds section, they have a very fully-formed, complete sound and rhythmic approach whose components and inspiration are difficult to pin down. Not like a fusionist thing where now you hear this influence, now another; this is so natural that it feels like it's always been there. It seemed to me on that first encounter that I was hearing a present-day roots music that couldn't come from anywhere but Brussels, but I didn't know enough about the place to have any idea why.

The launch concert of their new CD Barricade, at Les Halles de Schaerbeek in the Arabic quarter of north central Brussels, presented the opportunity to see them playing on home turf to an audience which understood the Flemisch and French of their lyrics, and perhaps get some sense of what goes on there that might generate music like this. Te gig was indeed a stormer, well worth the trip. There was considerable coverage in one of the Brussels dailies the next morning. But, Piet says, it's not that the Belgian public is carrying us on their shoulders. We are known for what we do, but it remains something...too dissident to be loved. The lyrics are quite charged; there's a lot of social commitment in them. Maybe that's why I connected also quite well with Robb Johnson. (British socially-committed songwriter Johnson wrote an introductary fR piece on JT back in 2001.)

One recurring subject is that of the plight of migrants. There's one song on Barricade called Réfugiés Sans Frontières - and there I'm taking the point of view of someone who comes to seek asylum, and I just let him talk and explain what kind of a situation he's in, and how he looks at what's coming. I want to let people recognise themselves in another situation, and that way humanise the problem so they will have maybe a little bit more sympathy or compassion for people in that kind of situation.

Migrants to Belgium have a major influence on Piet Maris's musical career and that of JT and his several other projects. Jaune Toujours' influences are quite diverse, but the main lines are Balkan ideas, some Latin ideas, and then some other traditional elements, from here-especially the tradition of the little brass bands in every village, that have somehow survived with their way of playing. As to the Balkan elements, in '93 or '94 I met a Gypsy, a Rom, from Slovakia, Laci Polhos. He was a singer, and they were looking for an accordeon player. I didn't know the songs, nor the style, but as I had to do it for free I said yes, no obligation on that level, I can learn, I'll do it. And so we explained to each other everything we knew with hands and feet and a lot of gestures, because I didn't know the language either. But bit by bit I learned to speak it, and I learned the music and repertoire. And after that I began travelling there, and with interest in the Roma music in Slovakia I startedlooking into the other genres of Gypsy music. And then all of a sudden this brass thing struck me again, because I went looking further and came upon the tradition of Serbia and the brass bands there and in Macedonia, and that was really a revelation.
Sadly, the deterioration of Laci Polhos's voice made further music-making with him impossible. We invited him a couple of times to Belgium, but though he's not that old he cracked up his voice due to the bad conditions. He's still living in Slovakia, in one of the squatted villages, which don't even exist on maps. It's close to the Polish border. Imagine, the winters are cold, the village has just one fixed water point in the centre, a couple of houses have electricity, with all the rest tapping off the electricity from them. It's very dangerous.
It was really a pity, and I didn't know what to do. I thought of starting all over again with someone else from the village, but then you'd have all these jealousy things and frustration, which I understand. So for a time we worked on this repertoire just with some musicians here. But then we met two girls who'd migrated from Kosice in Slovakia to Belgium, and have been here four or five years. We met them when we did some of the Romany songs in a concert in Ghent, where they now live; there's a big Romany community there. We were the talk of the community because here were these Belgian guys playing these songs, which for them are kitchen, garden and house songs, really everyday stuff, which they don't think is really worth presenting to other people. I didn't try to play them like a real gypsy would, I tried to play it with my luggage, with my knowledge of things, and mixing up some of my typical ways of working and plaing with their tradition. But we were doing it and they were very curious, and the two girls, Katarina Pohlodkovà and Lubica Macovà, were at the concert. I invited them to sing along, and from that moment on they stayed. It was very good to have them, because while in everyday life they were listening to R&B, they know the Romany repertoire from when they were children.
It's a long-term project. It has been, it still is, a human project as well. They didn't have their papers in order, so we tried to sort that out, and with the music and the fact that we were doing concerts, we tried to arrange their immigration case as well, and now it seems that we're getting close to a sort of arrangement for that.
The band Mec Yek, is separate from Jaune Toujours but personnel move between the two, and the Slovaks guested on JT's Camping del Mundo. Two 5-track Mec Yek CD Eps have emerged: the first, Caravan 2000, before Katarina and Lubica joined and the second, Caravan 2002, since. They, likeJaune Toujours, are released by a label and management company caled, naturally, Choux de Bruxelles, which comprises Maris and his partner, film-maker Sarah Baur. (A JT tour earlier this year featured the band playing to one of Sarah's films).

Jaune Toujours' line up has no guitars, no keyboards, in fact no chordal instruments except the bass end of Piet's accordeon. I used to work with guitar players, but the guitar got in the way of the accordeon chords and vice versa. A lot of accordeon players in band don't use their bass end, and often they want the accordeon just for some melody lines and the sound of it. But in my way of playing, you have this bass part so you have to use it; I couldn't leave it out. I liked the idea of playing rhythmically, so that's the way I play. And the fact that I'm singing together with the accordeon means I have to stay a little bit less complicated, because I have to support my own voice. Maybe in the very beginning it was a sort of limit of my capability, but I built it into a sort ofhouse style of my playing. And there comes also the idea from the punky way of playing, with these basic chords and these rhythms. I play along whith the rhythm section. But after all these years, their patterns aren't usually all that basic any more.
The JT horn section expands and conracts depending on availability of its members, who are all busy gigging players working with a clutch of other bands and projects. One of the five availale trumpeters, all of whom played on Barricade and at the launch gig, is Piet's brother Bart, who until recently also played with Think of One.
They're joined by Mattias Laga on soprano sax and clarinets from bass to pocket, and drummer Théophane Raballand. The latter, together with bassist Mathieu Verkaeren, who has a lot of salsa experience, has a strong influence on the rhythm patterns.
For most of the songs, Piet explains, I come with an idea, like a pattern for the chords and a rough structure, and then we beat it into shape. And then come these influence. Sometimes like Latin, but it's never pure Latin, it's more like an atmosphere or an influence. And that's for everything we do, also in other projects. We don't try to play Latin music or Balkan music. Our opinion is that there are people who do this a lot better than we do! They were born in it; as you would say in Asterix terms, they fell into it when they were a child.
The Schaerbeek show featured for Più Lontano, as on the album, a heavenly choir of accordeonists. They materialised on the blue-lit gallery above the band, and at chucking-out time from the venue they led the way downstairs to the post-gig party with Piet at the helm. I used to teach accordeon, and I had, I still have, this pool of 40 to 50 pupils who went to my accordeon courses. The courses were linked to an organisation here in Brussels called Muziekpublique; it's the one we organised the launch concert with.
Pressure of gigging meant he had to give up the accordeon teaching, except for a monthly group session. That has evolved into a band playing in Brussels' biennial Zinneke parade attired like the police accordeon band of the early 1900s, including stick-on moustaches for both genders. They also appear at the outdoor quarter parties held in the city during the spring and summer. It's really a sound experience for outside, not the kind of project you have to sit down and listen to; something you can see pass and march away, and taste a little bit of accordeon atmosphere.

I'm also working on an Arabo-Andalusian repertoire with the rest of Jaune Toujours, but it starts as a duo with a Moroccan singer who lives in Brussels, Laïla Amezian. Normally if there is an accordeon in this repertoire, it won't use the chords-you can't because they're working with quarter-tones, which I haven't got. (Many Middle-Eastern accordeonists use quarter-tone tuned melody reeds, but they usually use the bass side only to drone.) But I combine chords so that I can compensate for the lack. We did some concerts already, and the maghrebi people who are living here in Brussels look at me first like I'm coming from outer space, but they evidently hear what I'm doing and when the concert's finished I really get a lot of positive appreciation.

Camping del Mundo was, like the first album, mostly sung in Flemish; Barricade is mostly in French. Any reason for this francophone drift? It's quite a delicate matter, because of all these linguistic conflicts. But I didn't think consciously about it. I just take the language in which I can express myself the best at the moment, and depending on the subject. If we made the sum of all the complet CDs we've recorded as Jaune oujours, we now are on a 50/50 linguistic balance. It's very politically correct for Belgium!

Jaune Toujours have a couple of London dates in July (28th at the National Theatre summer stage, 29th at the Spitz), with perhas more in the UK to be added. More at www.choux.net