Kevin Clark: Once Upon A Song I Flew

By GRAHAM REID

Local jazz albums are a rare commodity, and good ones even more so.

But Kevin Clark's long-overdue debut - we won't count a slice of ancient vinyl, On Saturday, which featured music from a Brian Edwards television show for which Clark was the bandleader - is not only very good but provides a musical autobiography of the Wellingtonian's long career and diverse interests.

With 13 original tracks which have their origins in Celtic, African and Indian music, as well as the jazz ballad tradition, the album Once Upon A Song I Flew is a finalist for jazz album of the year at the forthcoming Tui awards.

It covers the musical journey that trumpeter, pianist and composer Clark has been on.

Born in the East Cape region of South Africa in 1940, Clark was initially musically self-taught. At university - inspired by trumpeters Hugh Masekela and Dollar Brand - he started playing jazz with black, white and coloured musicians.

The hymnal Sikelele uMandela (Bless Mandela) on the album signals his political position on apartheid, which was dividing his country at the time.

On graduating as an architect he headed to London in '63 and caught the r'n'b boom of the period. He worked as an architect by day, had a small jazz band by night and joined an r'n'b group.

"They weren't very good. I put my foot in it when I asked one night what they did for a living and everyone went quiet, then said, 'We're musicians. What do you do?"

Architectural interests took him through the Middle East and North Africa - he has lectured on Islamic architecture - and introduced him to the music of that region.

"I have a bachelor's degree in music as well as architecture and have done research into improvisation in the Arabic music of northwest Africa. It has connections with Spanish music and that of Africa south of the Sahara, which the Arab world of the east doesn't have.

"So I followed all sorts of musical connections from there - and into Cuba and America. I did a thesis on Cuban music," says the man who helms an eight-piece Afro-Cuban group, Los Gringos, in the capital.

The attraction of classical Arabic and Indian music is the improvisational quality which it shares with jazz of the Afro-American tradition.

"There are different kinds of music in the Arab world and there has been a resurgence of Arab pop like [Algerian] rai. But I got into the classical Arabic music which is not so westernised or pop-ified yet. There are similarities with jazz improvisation, and jazz is a classical music - very much so when you hear it played with so much spirit and conviction in America, as opposed to a bunch of students hacking away in a pub."

Clark speaks of how musical strands can also be followed from southern Africa into Brazil, because the Portuguese who colonised that region took their slaves from Angola rather than west Africa.

"So you get different African influences in Brazil as opposed to the Caribbean and Cuba. The word samba comes from Angola. I did a research paper on black South African jazz and it parallels the development of American jazz and the corruption, or otherwise, of European polkas brought by the Dutch Boers which were influenced by African rhythms.

"I find that fascinating, the clash of musical cultures and the hybrids it spawns."

Clark, who came here in '67 with his New Zealand-born wife, may be scholarly in his background but his career hasn't been without its humorous moments.

On Once Upon A Song I Flew there is the Indian-influenced track Raganometry, with Dave Parsons playing the drone instrument tamboura.

He and Parsons, who also plays sitar, enjoyed a brief period of fame in the early 70s under the period-sounding name 40 Watt Banana. He recalls playing a university concert at which their support act was Split Enz.

Their single Nirvana, featuring sitars and tabla drums, even went to No 2 on the charts in Fiji.

"It was written very tongue-in-cheek but the lyrics were all deep and meaningful, about nirvana and life. We'd been asked to do something for Happen Inn or Ready to Roll or one of those things and EMI got hold of it.

"It's been picked up again now for a compilation of 60s psychedelic music. The guy doing it asked me about the band and if we were all into dope. I disappointed him by saying we were all straight and always have been. We probably won't make it on to his record now," he laughs.

Not that Clark should worry. He has his own excellent album out, the prompt for which was Broadcasting House being knocked down.

As one who had recorded dozens of session there down the decades, from The Cocktail Stylings of Kevin Clark ("nice light stuff like Bacharach, but challenging because you have to play very accurately") through to esoteric music for the Concert Programme ("where anything goes under the guise of contemporary music"), he wanted to rescue some of his tapes for his family's sake.

But the boxes weren't well-catalogued. It would be time-consuming and expensive to edit out his sessions, and there would be a substantial fee for each track if he wanted to use them on an album.

After talking with producer Dick Le Fort he decided to re-record some of the material for Once Upon A Song I Flew.

"So really the album was written over a long period. Celticrocity is probably the oldest tune and you can hear a kind of Emerson Lake and Palmer 60s influence - they were a great group. I still have a whole lot of vinyl of people like [70s progressive rockers] King Crimson and Focus.

"That was European rock using European roots as opposed to American. It's the same with European jazz now, it has its own European tradition as opposed to American jazz which has come through the black blues and gospel traditions."

Throughout his long music career Clark has explored all these traditions and more, and since retiring from architecture in '97 has had even more time to give to what has been a lifelong passion.

He finished off his BMus, travelled to Cuba for research, and is presently a part-time tutor in jazz studies and Latin jazz for the Massey Conservatorium of Music.

"I was self-taught in music originally but formally trained on trumpet. The piano I learned by accident, but when you start to play jazz you have to understand the keyboard to understand harmony. So I just started picking it up, but since have had lessons from all and sundry. It's been a hotchpotch musical education."

Clark also plays as often as possible and isn't precious about the what and where. He established a fortnightly Sunday-afternoon jazz session in Paremata a year ago with guests who might be young players or professionals like trombonist Rodger Fox or saxophonist Colin Hemmingsen. He also plays piano ("wallpaper music") in a hotel.

He is equally willing to get into a silly waistcoat and play with the Dixie Dudes. He can claim he has played just about every restaurant, cabaret and jazz festival in the Wellington region in the past 35 years.

"You name it and I'll do it. I even played at the opening of the New Zealand Dog Obedience Trials a while ago," he laughs. "It was sousaphone and trumpet. That really set the dogs alight."