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Cosmic Rocker
Cosmic Connections
www.mundovibes.com
November 2002
As a founding
member of New York's Organic Grooves, a stalwart of the city's
dance underground, and as a prolific producer, Sasha Crnobmja
has explored the outer galaxy of dance and groove music. Growing
up in Switzerland, Crnobmja's globablly attuned ear led him to
drumming and DJ'ing. Studying drumming with master percussionist
Cosimo Lampis of Brainticket, Crnobmja began a rhythmic quest
which continues to this day. In 1988 he and Benno Hotz founded
Go-Global, a party that played diverse music, combining musicians
and DJ's, in non-club venues.
In 1993 he moved to New York, initially working in fashion. Then
in 1995 he started Organic Grooves with partner Erica Lively.
The travelling event started in an apartment building basement
on the Lower East Side, where four musicians came together to
create music beyond the usual confines of rhythmic music. The
early events attracted a small but receptive group which steadily
grew through word of mouth. From the start Organic Groove's was
a fluid event, landing in settings ranging from Tribeca rooftops
to Brooklyn warehouses, always putting the music first. The band's
lineup evolves as people come and go and includes musicians playing
turntables, trumpet, keyboard, melodica, kora and multitude of
percussion instruments.The music is a melting pot of styles reflecting
Crnobmja's eclectic tastes, as well as the revolving crew of
musicians.Various types of world music, deep house and Afrobeat
all meld together to create a sound with its own distinct character.
The fact that Organic Grooves is still going strong after seven
years is testament of the collective's dedication to its rhythmic
roots. While other scenes have come and gone, Organic Grooves
still packs in a dedicated group of dancers who feed off and
give energy to the music.
In addition
to Organic Grooves, Crnobmja runs the Codek record label, which
he co-founded with Alex Gloor in 1996. Codek is a homespun operation
with an inspiring D.I.Y. approach. Codek releases all of the
Organic Grooves recordings, as well as Crnobmja's projects his
alias "Cosmic Rocker", which are often in colloboration
with Zeb or Alex Gloor. The label's most recent projects include
"Care of the Community: the Discerning Dancefloor",
a compilation of outer rhythms, Track and Field's (Mike Kohler)
"In Search of" and "Organic Grooves 4", twelve
tracks recorded live in New York.
MundoVibes
caught up with the extra-prolific Crnobmja via telephone after
just returning from a very long weekend of DJing in Puerto Rico
at an underground hangout.
MV: Do you
travel much to the Caribbean?
SC:
Well, in the Caribbean I've only been to Puerto Rico so far.
MV: Well, a lot of it comes to New York. New York is such
a microcosm,
such a musical melting pot.
SC: It is and it isn't. It's always in certain kind of neighborhoods
or in certain ethnic places. It kind of stays there. There's
just a few places where people venture out and try to connect
with other people. For example, in Puerto Rico, people probably
think J Lo or salsa music, but in the field I'm in there's really
a lot more in Puerto Rico, which I was surprised by when I went
the first time. They're really into music there, anything popular
and underground, from dance music to ambient to rock. They're
really into it.
MV: Do you try to be universal with your music?
SC: Yeah, absolutely. We don't really have a name for our
music style but we kind of have that sort of cosmic thing which
can by anything really as long as you like it. I'm basically
all about grooves and then when you get down to the roots you
ultimately end up Caribbean, Africa, Brazil cause that's where
all the dance music really comes from. Even with house music,
if you trace it all the way back you end up with reggae and dub,
cause they were the first ones putting out 12-inches.
MV: It's really incredible when you consider how much influence
Jamaica has had.
SC: And Puerto Rico has had a big influence, especially here
in New York in the '60s and '70s. And not just the music, but
art, the whole graffiti scene, break dancing, was really big
in the Puerto Rican community. And there are certain dances there
where you can see where the whole breakdance inspiration comes
from.
MV: I guess Puerto Rico is the place to go. Now, you grew
up in Switzerland, right?
SC: Yeah. I grew up in Yugoslavia actually, in Belgrade until
I was ten and then we moved to Switzerland. My teenage years
were in Switzerland.
MV: There's a lot of music coming from Switzerland now that
has many influences.
SC: Switzerland doesn't really have it's own music, really.
And the young people are definitely not into Swiss forkloric
music, so you look anywhere you can for good music.
MV: Did you find it pretty much an open environment where
you were exposed to a lot of music?
SC: Totally. It's pretty much the same as everywhere.It's
more when you start getting deep into it, you realize it's very
limited to what you can do in Switzerland itself, because there's
no music industry. It's a very small country, very conservative
so you get to the edge really quick and you kind of have to make
a decision if you want to keep doing it and you know you have
to leave the country. And that's what happened to me. I always
wanted to leave the country just because I wanted to live somewhere
else, I wanted to live in a bigger city. Not necessarily New
York but that kind of happened.
MV: And how long have you been in New York?
SC: Ten years now.
MV: Did you have a vision or did things just fall into place?
SC: I wouldn't say I had a vision, it's just the things I
was already doing in Switzerland and the
things that inspired me in the first place, I just kept on doing.
Like with Organic Grooves, I did something very similar already
in Switzerland.
MV: Was that "Go Global"?
SC: Yeah, we did "Go Global" soundsystem but we
soon started playing drums. I wanted to incorporate live music
with Djing from the beginning I got into it because to me it
made so much sense. And it was good, but as I said, you kind
of reach a certain level where it's just not going anywhere.
And I came here, not even for music. I came here to do fashion
because I'm a trained tailor. So this guy kind of convinced me
to come to New York "hey, you should come, blah blah
blah" and I came and I was making clothes for a little
bit. And, I don't know if you remember the shop Liquid Sky? I
was designing for them when they first opened on Lafayette. But,
fashion is such a weird thing. You do stuff for other people
and you never get credit. I really got tired of it, so I started
my own thing. I started 'Go Global' with Erica. Even after we
opened the shop I really had enough of fasion, because I'm just
not a fashion person. I like the making of it, the working with
fabric; making a bag or making a pair of pants was good but I
couldn't deal with fashion people so I decided 'fuck it' I'm
going to do music and do what I love.
MV: And you found like-minded people.
SC: Yeah, Erica and I already were doing the whole clothing
thing, we'd done a few parties just for fun, you know. She knew
a lot of people and I was Djing. Then we met Zeb at (Club) XVI
and he had a similar background. He was born in Italy and grew
up in London, but we had similar music backgrounds. It all fell
into place.
MV: And now you've almost got a mini empire going on here
with a party, a label and the like.
SC: You know, it looks from the outside maybe but Erica does
some things and I do the label but it all together looks like
this bigger thing. But for me, I don't look at it as "an
empire". Because there's a few things happening, and yes
maybe Erica and I are overseeing the things but only because
we're probably the most responsible out of the whole bunch. And
then everyone kind of relies on us being the ones pushing it.
Everyone kind of has their own thing, really. AndOrganic Grooves
is the same way; all the musicians involved have their own projects
going, but that's just a way for us to get together and do what
we like.
MV: So, in terms of how Organic Grooves operates, it really
is a loose collabortation of musicians.
SC: Yeah, each of us are very strong individuals basically.
And we all have experience in music, have played in bands, etc.
We all got tired of that formula of, you know, you have a band
and you rehearse these songs, blah blah blah. It was more like
we just got together and we just played all night. But with time
it developed to where each musician really knows when to play,
what to play, and feeding off the crowd. If we play in a setting
where you would sit down and watch us play we did this
one time and it was the worst gig because nothing comes out then.
It's really important for us to have the people dance and react
to what we do and then you keep going and you kind of push higher
and higher until you have this energy going. It's a different
type of band really and it's hard to describe it. You know in
jazz music, where you have a theme, everyone knows the theme
and then you have the guys do their solo or they express the
song in a way. And if you change the musicians, the song may
sound totally different but you recognize the main theme. So,
with us the DJ plays the theme and the musicians do their improvisation,
they add to the whole vibe. That's how it works.
MV: I always wondered how that can work. I've been to Organic
Grooves events and I've always been amazed at how seamless it
is.
SC: Yeah, you have to listen and be aware of what's going
on. You can't just be there and look at your guitar and play.
You always have to be aware: where is it and at what point are
we here with the whole thing so you play the right thing. Otherwise
it can be really disturbing if you're totally out of tune with
everyone in terms of just vibing. Like playing heavy metal or
doing some crazy solos (laughter) and everyone's just looking
at you. It has a lot to do with really feeling it out.
MV: Does it take time for musicians to grab that vibe?
SC: No. I think it's more a mental thing. You have to understand
what this is all about. It's not about how good you play or showing
off your skills. It's not about that. You have to understand
the whole concept and the fact that you're playing for the people
and you want to keep the vibe. Right now the crew is really tight
and we never have to talk about it, it's just something where
you look at each other and you know what's going on. And that's
kind of cool.
MV: You've been in New York for this long and it's incredible
considering so many scenes have come and gone. What do you attribute
that to? Just staying true to your roots?
SC: I think so. You know, you see a scene and it can be maybe
for a year and then something new comes. But because no one can
really pigeon-hole us so in a sense it's never over, you know?
For example, if you take any music genre like drum-n-bass, you
know they reached a peak and it was defined years ago what it
is and what it sounds like. So, there's nothing you can change
about that. In order to move on you have to change completely.
There's a lot of artists that have been doing drum-n-bass and
now they kind of work in different scenes, and you have to reinvent.
You change your whole alias and you start almost from zero again
in a different scene. Where we are more like in between all these
little scenes and the formula we have is the same but of course
the sound changes over time. The sound now is very different
than from five or six years ago. We kind of managed to stay with
the new sounds, we progress but the formula we found is so basic
and that you don't have to change. It's the sounds, the sounds
change. Maybe the drum patterns change but that's just music
and if you stay on top we can progress along with the progression
of different genres.
MV: In a sense your creating your own music. You're outside labels.
SC: Yeah, totally. See, with dance music there's not much you
can change about it. I'm talking about dance music in general:
music that makes a body move is always the same in a a sense.
I mean, you can play rhythms that are hundreds of years old and
you're still going to feel it and it's going to make you move
your hips or tap your foot. That is never going to change. You
know, even with all of these African rhythms or Latin stuff,
the basic things are always the same. You may change some of
the sounds or how you bring it, but in the end you go back to
the main groove and there's not much you can do different.
MV: I always consider it to be the bassline that gets me moving,
which is the simplest form.
SC: Drum'n'bass really is the essential. We all recognize
that fact that if you stick to the roots you're going to stay
the longest, basically.
MV: How do you transform this into a studio project? Do you
record live?
SC: We do record live. We do both. We sample, we program
things, we record live, we combine many different ways of making
it sound the way we want to make it sound. There's different
ways to do it, but in the end because of the mindset, it's always
going to come out the way we sound. Maybe it could be more electronic,
or whatever, but we're always going to end up having that kind
of organic sound. It's always going to be about the rhythms.
MV: Are you deliberately going low-fi?
SC: Well, low-fi has to do with gear and expenses and money
and that's the thing we don't have. So, we have to do the best
thing out of what we have. I know what is possible if you have
a big budget. But, we're so flexible and there's no studio costs
and that's how we're able to do it because we're really self-sufficient.
And that's how we want to keep it. And every CDs going to sound
different from the one
before and no-one's going to tell us it's no good. All of the
tracks that we produce I play at the parties and that's the best
test. If I play a track and people go crazy then I know there's
something. I have usually the basic tracks and then we work from
there, we record the instruments. You have to have the basic
groove and it has to be good.
MV: And are you the person at the board?
SC: I'm the one that spends most time with it. So, I do the
production with Zeb. And if Zeb is busy doing other stuff then
it stays up to me doing it. So that's the whole thing with being
responsible, so if we decide to make an album I kind of take
charge and then just do it.
MV: Well, I spent a lot of time this summer with the D'Afro
Disco CD and liked it very much. Your moniker, the Cosmic Rocker,
is a defining word because the music does go into that realm.
I sort of think of you guys on the same plane as, say, Don Cherry
or Sun Ra, in terms of your influences.
SC: Don Cherry, definitely. I have to say, Sun Ra, I actually
discovered when I moved to America. I never came across Sun Ra
in Europe but Don Cherry had some tracks that I used to play.
So, there's something that definitely stuck in my head. But Sun
Ra, I would say that goes even further. He's on a higher level,
you have to go even deeper. In the same way, you have musicians
like William Parker that's like dealing with people who are so
deep. And we actually did this kind of remix, it's called 'Black
Cherry'. A guy from Aum Fidelity gave me a CD of William Parker
and the drummer Hamid Drake and it was just the two of them.
It's improv jazz and they're kind of the top notch in that scene.
So, we did a remix album but it's not called a remix, it's called
'Black Cherry' via the sound science of William Parker and Hamid
Drake because I used a lot of their sounds and samples. But when
you listen to their stuff you really have to be on a different
level. It's not something you just put in and listen to. So,
Sun Ra, I think the planet is even further away that he lives
on. But definitely-Takuya, who's plays keyboards and trumpets
he actually was more into that. And I think he even performed
with some of the people that performed with Sun Ra.
MV: Graphics seems to play a big part of Organic Grooves identity.
SC: Yeah, definitely, it was always important. That's Alex
Gloor, who's created the graphics from the beginning. The flyers,
the images, the covers, everything. You know, today I still listen
to music by the look of it. Sometimes you can almost see the
music. I remember the early '90s with house music there was no
visual aspect and it seemed faceless. Our art reflects what we
do. It's a visual look that is
not about styling, that's for commercial stuff.
MV: Speaking of commercial, do you ever feel like others are
appropriating what Orgnanic Grooves has developed. Or on the
other hand, have you been given huge cash offers.
SC: No, it's hard because what we do is very unpredictable.
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