Xylouris White: no fans of easy listening

Tom Peeters
© Agenda Magazine
27/11/2015
(© Manolis Mathioudakis)

When Giorgos Xylouris, master of the Cretan lute, improvises with the charismatic Australian rock drummer Jim White, the result is musical fireworks that offers a new future to age-old traditions from the island of Zeus.

The lutenist/singer Giorgos Xylouris represents just one branch of a Cretan family of musical royalty. His father, Psarantonis, is a virtuoso on the Cretan lyra. His late uncle Nikos Xylouris, also a musician, played a key role in the protest movement against the military junta. Both – like Giorgos’s uncle Giannis, who taught him to play the lute – had their artistic roots in Anogeia, a herders’ village in the mountains where the folk
tradition has always been kept alive. “It is located close by the cave of Zeus, less than an hour’s drive from here,” says the lutenist, who now lives in Archanes, outside the island’s capital, Heraklion. Together with the drummer Jim White he has settled down in front of a laptop for a Skype session. “The two of us making music over here was the logical next step in a story that goes back over 25 years,” adds the Greek musician, who livened up many a local village festival and dance with his father and other family members when he was young, before moving to Melbourne, Australia. There, he came into contact with the local rock scene, and met Jim white in 1988. Their two bands, Xylouris Ensemble and Dirty Three, would later get together. Despite earlier plans for closer musical collaboration, however, White, now living in New York, went to see his friend on Crete, where Giorgos and his Australian wife had settled three years ago. The first result of their joining forces came out earlier this year: an album entitled Goats that is an inspiring ode to a musical life and to an island with the energy of a continent.

Did people on Crete not find the combination of your two instruments a bit strange? Giorgos Xylouris: It’s true that percussion doesn’t have such a great tradition here, but over recent years it has cropped up increasingly in bands, so the ears of the public have got used to it. And the presence of pop music on television and in ads has something to do with it too, although those drums are always softer. That’s too banal and too slick for us. We don’t just want to relax the audience’s ears: we would rather give them something they can take home and think about afterwards. The recipe for making music these days is too soft for me. If an old guy were to pick up his lyra, young people would probably say, “Sounds good, but we can’t listen to it for long.”
Jim White: We are anything but soft, and yet people all over the world are crazy about us. In Athens, in New York, everywhere, we attracted the Cretan community. But what really strikes me is that they are genuine aficionados. They can feel, too, that something is happening when we play, that our music is tied up with their traditions.

How do you rework those traditions?
White: Our work often emerges out of improvisation, but Giorgos also teaches me the traditional rhythms, dances, and melodies. We elaborate further on that in the studio.
Xylouris: They are traditional forms, but we perform them in our own way. In one sense, it takes us back to the days before Christ. To harmony, to the period when drums and rhythm were discovered and, later, string instruments and plucking. When I was a child, I listened to traditional soustas and the syrtos, and as a young musician, I tried to master the technique of playing them on my lute as well as I could. I still like listening to old recordings, from, say, the 1920s to the 1980s. After that, a lot of music, with the arrival of the digital age, became more easy listening. But we’re no fans of easy listening.
White: On the other hand, we don’t pretend to be or to sound “old”. Everything I have ever done as a musician – from drumming in Dirty Three to my film music to sessions with PJ Harvey, Will Oldham, Nick Cave, and Cat Power – is a part of what I’m doing now. I learned a lot from those old cassettes Giorgos has, but also from my first steps on the rock scene in Melbourne in the 1980s. It’s not about being “old”, but about doing something specific with the feelings those traditions give you, and about remaining yourself while still engaging in a conversation with your fellow musicians.

Your first album is called Goats. Why?
White: A while ago, we saw a goat high up in a tree, on her hind legs. Mighty! They’re all crazy about goats around here, both in the countryside and on their plates.
Xylouris: Goats have a long tradition and a special significance on Crete. Zeus landed here, fleeing from his father, Kronos, who wanted to eat him. He hid in a cave, where he survived on goats’ milk, and when he cried, his mother asked some goatherds to dance for him and to stamp hard on the ground with their feet, so that Kronos wouldn’t hear his wailing.
White: Wherever Giorgos goes, tradition follows him. [Laughs]

Giorgos, what was it like going back to Crete after all those years in Australia?
Xylouris: Australia was a different world. I learned a lot there and travelled around a lot; I got to know musicians and new music and played at folk festivals. Here, everything is familiar and good, but I have continued to work with my foreign musician friends.
White: I’ll definitely keep visiting as often as I can. You know, we may live on different continents now, and our roots are quite different, but after working so closely together, I have become convinced that, deep inside, we come from the same place. Over the last three months, we have recorded so many songs that we could bring out several albums straight away.

Are you particularly looking forward to the Brussels concert?
White: Yes, because, after three visits, this will be our first time at the top of the bill. As support act for Bonnie “Prince” Billy in the AB, Godspeed You! Black Emperor in the Cirque Royal, and Moriarty in Flagey, we could only play for 45 minutes each time. Now we can make our set more dynamic and we will be able to cover the whole range from electric to acoustic.


XYLOURIS WHITE 2/12, 20.00, Les Ateliers Claus, 
www.lesateliersclaus.com

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