Mat Fox Interview Jan 08 Interviewed by S.D-H Ruben fox is present What did you want to be when you were 10yrs? I probably wanted to be a train driver; everybody wanted to be a train driver back then. I don’t know if you know but when I was small, the world was black and white. There wasn’t any colour, lots of grey people. You’ve see them in films, walking around and the trains had lots of steam coming out the tops: like in those children programmes with puffs of cotton wool coming out of the tops of the trains. That’s what it was like when I when I grew up. Everybody was poor and unhappy. When did you decide to be a musician? After college; the main spur was working in Safeways supermarket. I wanted to make sure that I did whatever I had to do to never to have to do that sort of work ever again in my life. I decided to work real hard at the music and then things just happened. What’s the weirdest gig you’ve ever played? Glasgow year of culture. It was a bit of a bender really! I was playing with Eddie Reader, who use to be the lead singer of a band called Fairground Attraction, who did the song ‘It’s got to be…Perfect’ and we were in this hotel and there was this thing called the BIG GIG and we were to be the final act. At about 11 o’clock these to people carriers arrived to pick us up and then drove us through the centre of Glasgow to this park which was filled with about a million and a half people. There was this massive, Massive screen with this picture of Sheena Easton’s face (80’s celebrity) on it in pink, like something out of the film ‘Apocalypse Now’. The whole time, because the van had tinted windows, people were ramming their faces into the window trying to see who was in the people carriers. It was very strange. We got there and played for 2 minutes and went. If you weren’t the Musical Director what would you be doing now? Oh…I’d probably be teaching. D’you mean 10 o’clock at night, talking to you…I’d be sitting down having a drink (mat laughs). Some kind of teaching! It’s all I know, I can’t change a plug or build a shelf but I know how music works. If you were stranded on a desert island, what one piece of music would you bring with you? One, well that’s quite tough. The thing about desert island music is that it’s either music that reminds you of something or its music that you want to take to inspire you to do things. They’re kind of two different things. I think I would want a piece of music that you could do… I really like the ‘Symphony of Psalms’ by Stravinsky, it’s an amazing piece of music and everything else is in there; the soul stuff’s in there, the Africa thing is in there, it’s all in there. You’ve got to look quite deep for it but its all there. My favourite song at the moment is Spiritual Eternal by Alice Coltrane. Which if I was taking my favourite song it would be it. We may play this one this year. But probably Stravinsky. It makes you sound more important if you’ve got a classical piece What three other things would you bring with you? I’d have to take a piano and probably a little guitar. I’ve always been rubbish at that (guitar) so if I’m not allowed to take a piano then I’ll take a little guitar. I’d work out how to play it. What I’ve always really wanted to do is just get up on stage and perform on my own. But I don’t really feel comfortable unless I’m surrounded by 70 other people…covering up my mistakes. So my bands have always been enormous. The other thing would be the Kinetika Bloco. (My phone rings) Piano, Guitar and the Kinetika Bloco. We know that you are everything musical BUT what else do you do? I like to play Tennis. I like to relax in the evening possibly with a glass of grapefruit juice. I read a lot, that’s what I do mostly, read. I love that (reading), it’s a really important part of the music coz you have to make connections between things and reading’s what helps you do that. Ruben Fox (Foxy Junior) cuts in ‘he (mat) likes talking about music all the time, ridiculously. Mat says ‘when you’re being interviewed for this then maybe your opinions will count for something but right now could you just Shut up! We all laugh. Bloco questions Sheila: What does it take to be good as a musician? I don’t really know because there are lots of different kinds of musicians to be. What a lot of people don’t realise is that just because you’re not Prince or Eternal or Beyoncé or whatever, that doesn’t actually make the music that you make any less valuable. There is commercial music and that’s all about making money, now there are lots of ways of making money and some people would say that music is a good way of making money. But it’s a kind of minority sport. The most important function in music, I think is social. It’s about expressing yourself and your community through your music and that’s what I do. It’s actually available to everybody; you don’t have to be brilliant at it. Some of the best music you’ll ever hear is some guy with a little box guitar that he made himself singing outside a shack in Mississippi and it’s amazing but no-one would ever buy it and take it to number one but it’s incredible and coz its very expressive and that’s the kind of music that I’m interested in. I don’t know whether I’m interested in that kind of music coz I was rubbish at pop music, I tried but I just wasn’t very good at it. I’ve never really listened to it (Pop music); I’ve always listened to what I’ve called ‘THE’ music. Which is, broadly speaking, is kind of the Jazz and world thing…proper music. But that’s what I do. Jermaine A. How did you become a teacher? By accident, I wanted to learn how to do workshops at Music Works in Brixton. When I went, they interviewed me and the guy who interviewed me said ‘you seem to know more than most people here actually’. So I got put into teaching workshops, which I’d never done before but I knew quite a lot of bits of music. But I learnt how to teach there. What was great about Music Works was you taught disabled people, the elderly, young offenders, primary school kids, nursery children and I discovered that the group I worked most successfully with were teenagers. I think that’s because I’ve never really grown up, well not properly. I’m still 15yrs old at heart; irresponsible, don’t switch the lights off or wash up or anything like that. I was playing in bands at the time but I did more and more teaching because I really liked it. What’s always amazing to me is that some people don’t know how to play a C chord and you show them how to do it and they go ‘WOW…you know stuff’ and so the more you know the more you can pass on. That’s one bit, the other is that when I first came to London, I played with a Brazilian band. I was there 3rd choice saxophone player, I’ve never really practiced enough to be a proper saxophone player. When I wasn’t playing ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ or whatever tune it was, they showed me how to do all the percussion bits. That’s where I learnt how to do the Brazilian drumming thing. A couple of schools said, you know how to do the Brazilian thing, even though I wasn’t very good at it I just went ‘YEAH’ and they said will you come and teach it in my school and I said ‘YEAH, ALL RIGHT’. So I went and it, I made stuff up which sort of sounded a bit Brazilian; but Brazilians would have thought it sounded like some weird English dance music and that was at AMRTC in Camberwell, now called St. Michaels and All Angels. Robert A. - What makes you tick? Ruben says ‘the clock in his belly’ I try to be really nice to people, as much as I possibly can be. I smile at people; I talk to them in the street. Some people would say I’m weird but I do it. And I say Good Morning to people… Shayanna says ‘its coz you’re not from London’ Mat carries on…its coz I do random good mornings to people and ‘how are you?’ And all that kind of thing. I do that and I think that you may not be able to do very much but you know the situation in Gaza and the Middle East and all this horrible stuff but I think it’s a karma thing. I think the more good you do around where you are it will spread eventually. It probably won’t’ but you know that’s what I live in the hope and belief of. I think if we do really good things with our kids down here then other people will go ‘wow that’s brilliant, let’s do some of that good stuff’. Then all of a sudden, everybody loves each other and the world is a beautiful place. Or in three words…’I’m a Hippy!’ Theon – What keeps you with Kinetika? I have faith in young people and the ability in them to do really well. I’d really like to…I’ve got a long history of leaving things badly, just walking off but I’ve decided that this is what I really want to do and I think it’s the best work I’ve ever done. I think there’s a fair bit more to do and the next bit is quite hard. It’s about empowering young people to do things for themselves and I’m really interested to see whether we can make it work or the short answer…Shayanna (of course I’m smiling) Kerian – who would you choose as the next MD or what qualities would the next MD need to have? • How everything works...how the bits of the jigsaw fit together. I’m not very good at anyone good thing. I’m not a drummer like Sam, I’m not a brass player like Claude or Andy but I do think more about how the bits fit together than any of those guys do. To be an expert at something you have to concentrate completely on that ONE THING. I learnt from my dad by watching him how to run big groups. • You have to have opinions but you have it be able to listen to what other people want to do and work out a way of keeping everybody happy. • If you watch the work done in Kinetika, it’s a good education in how to get into this work. It doesn’t have TO BE with music; it could be with dance or running any sort of creative workshops with anybody. • It’s important to get other people to work with the Bloco but whoever it is has to have ideas. • Anybody is capable of doing it if they skill themselves up • And it helps if you’ve got a really loud voice coz you end up shouting a lot (or a megaphone)
Posted on: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 22:33:45 +0000
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