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Intervju: Vashti Bunyan

Vashti Bunyan om fortid, nåtid og fremtid - og hvorfor hun selv mener hun ikke spiller folkmusikk.

Ronny Svendsen 

Del på Facebook21.01.06

Folkgenren har en aldri så liten renessanse de siste par årene med artister som Devendra Banhart, Six Organs of Admittance, Espers og en rekke andre. En av 2005s mest bejublede artister innen folkgenren var britiske Vashti Bunyan, som ga ut sitt andre album på 35 år.

Vashti Bunyan ga ut debutalbumet Just Another Diamond Day allerede i 1970. Platen floppet kommersielt og Vashti trakk seg stille tilbake. Mens hun oppdro sine tre barn og levde et fredfullt normalt liv jobbet kultkverna sakte men sikkert og da hun på slutten av 90-tallet kom seg på Internett oppdaget hun at hun slett ikke var glemt. Just Another Diamond Day hadde oppnådd en status som en av den britiske folkscenens klassikere, sammen med blant andre band og artister som Incredible String Band, Forest, Nick Drake og Anne Briggs. Backet opp og inspirert av blant andre Devendra Banhart begynte hun å skrive låter og synge igjen, og fjorårets Lookaftering står fjellstøtt som en av årets beste skive i sin genre.

Vi tok en prat med Vashti Bunyan om fortid, nåtid og fremtid, og fikk blant annet forklart hvorfor hun selv mener hun ikke spiller folkmusikk.

- Congratulations with the new album. You've still got the songs after over 35 years. Are they recently written or taken from a stack of songs written the last 30 or so years?

Vashti: Thank you! I didn't write anything from the time I finished recording Just Another Diamond Day in 1968. Well, maybe one, but I never did finish it.

- I know you've been reluctant to people putting the label "folk" on your music. But to me, and I guess a lot of other people, your music is definitely folk along the lines of Anne Briggs and Nick Drake. It's green fields, rurality, tenderness, longing, sadness and hope - somewhat like taken from the middle age. What do you think?

Vashti: It is a hard word for me to discuss. It makes me think of very stuffy and strictly traditional music which I was always trying to distance myself from when I was young. This music is narrative and it is gentle - like a lot of folk music but I wanted it to be something quite different and to have its own name but I never can think of one!

- Was there a single event that made you interested in music as a young girl?

Vashti: No not a single event, but I was always fascinated by recorded music. My father had a big collection of classical music and I remember not being able to understand how a person's voice could be coming from a flat round surface with a needle running over the top. I think I ruined many of his lovely records trying to find out...

- When and how did you realize that you could write songs?

Vashti: When I went to Art School at the age of 17 and shared a house with a friend who taught me to play guitar. We both started writing songs - but she was a poet and I was just trying to write popsongs like Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly.

- How do you write songs? What comes first, melody line, text, chord progression or a feeling/mood?

Vashti: It's a mystery to me. Sometimes a whole song will come to me - somewhere like the supermarket. The Same But Different came to me there and I had to run home to record it. Even the string parts were all in my head - all at once. Sometimes it takes longer - and some songs are an amalgam of two or three ideas that end up as one song. The words usually come after the music.

- Is this different now from the 60s?

Vashti: If you mean is my method of writing different - well yes. I used to only write with a guitar but now I have a Mac and a small keyboard and a little mixer and a music program - so I can make demos of the arrangements that are in my head. I cannot read or write music but now I can communicate with other musicians in a way I never could before.

- What are the Vashti Bunyan songs you're most pleased with?

Vashti: Of the old ones I like Rose Hip November for the way it was an improvised arrangement recorded in two or three takes at the most. More recently I'm pleased with Wayward and for the similar way that everyone just played it and we only played a few times together before recording. But also I like Hidden and Same But Different because I arranged them myself. But then again I like Feet of Clay because Max Richter's string arrangement gave the song a different life. In truth I like different ones on different days - and on some days I am pleased with none of them!

- Do you have a day job or is recording and playing music a full time project now?

Vashti: It is now a full-time occupation in that there has been so much to do in the way of interviews and radio shows as well as the actual music. It's strange to have my family take a back seat for the first time in all these years. It is no coincidence that I started to record the new album just as my youngest child went away to college. I missed him so much but my life changed shape dramatically and had a big space in it -which I filled with music.

- Do you read a lot?

Vashti: No not really. More now than I used to when living a farm life. Then there was hardly time to think let alone read or write.

- What inspires you from day to day?

Vashti: Humankind. Endlessly fascinating in its variety and complexity. Understanding it would take more than one lifetime..

- Are you touring? Any chances that you'll take the trip to Oslo and Norway?

Vashti: I am starting live shows with one at the Barbican in London February 4th. After that I hope to go to Europe and then back to do some festivals in Britain and hopefully USA at the end of the year. I would love to go to Norway - and it has been mentioned..

- Can you tell us a little bit about your future plans?

Vashti: I hope to record some more - always my favourite thing to do. I would like to write a piece of music that isn't a short song for once.. and also to write down the story of my earlier musical times.

- Finally, what are your favourite albums of all time?

Vashti: A long list but easily coming to mind are:
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
Beach Boys' Pet Sounds
Blue Nile's Hats
Devendra Banhart's Oh Me Oh My the Way the Day Goes By...

Omtale av Just Another Diamond Day kan leses her på groove.no (6/7)