FAREED HAQUE | CHILD TO PROFESSOR | PART II

Kayceman: I was thinking about your guitars, do you use different guitars with Garaj Mahal and the Fareed Haque Group?

Fareed: Well, I use a different approach to guitar playing I would say. With Garaj Mahal I play a huge behemoth of an amplifier, that’s loud and bright, and rocks, and screams and wails. And with the Fareed Haque Group I play with a mellower, funkier sound, a little bit more of a Grant Green kind of thing. But Grant Green goes to Pakistan or something. I also use my acoustic guitars more and more. I have an eleven-string fretless nylon string guitar that I play that Godin makes called the "Glissantar" and then I play my guitar sitar of course, which I also play in Garaj Mahal. With Garaj Mahal, mostly I play the "Godan" "LGX" which is a very beautiful, spanking, electric guitar. But with the Fareed Haque Group usually I play an old "Gibson" jazz guitar from the mid seventies. Then I play 12 string acoustic as well. So it gives me a few more colors there.

Kayceman: I was reading about the Blue Note cover series, when you did Déjà vu, I was curious how did that come about, did you want to cover Déjà vu in particular?

Fareed: They asked me to submit a list of I think ten different records I’d like to cover, and that was one of the ones on the top of the list. We talked about doing Presence, Led Zeppelin, a Nick Drake album, Joni Mitchell; we talked about doing The Wall, Pink Floyd. But something about the four part vocal harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are so intricate and kind of lent themselves to being played on an acoustic guitar. I can play, in the classical style three and four voice parts on one guitar pretty easily, and so it was something that suited my particular abilities, where other guitarists might have struggled with that, because it’s kind of a classical guitar skill, to play three or four voices at once on the guitar. So that was actually fun, and the music seemed to offer possibilities for elaboration.

So am I to gather that was a fairly influential album on you?

CSNY in general, I really wanted to do Winchester Cathedral, but the whole concept was one album so I considered which album has most of the tunes on it that I would like to do. But I can just totally see Winchester Cathedral done with the guitar; I think it would be a very pretty arrangement. But they have so much cool music, and that was kind of the one (Deja Vu) that is well known, and stands on its own two feet. So it was part of the idea to cover a classic album. So that’s where that came from.

Besides perhaps the more obvious choices like you mentioned Grant Green, who are some of the more obscure people that have laid fairly heavily on your influences?

Well definitely Pat Martino, jazz guitarist. Of course John McGlaughlin, and his interest in Indian music, in fact I just recorded an album with Zakir Hussain, a tabla player in the group Shakti.

Ya, I’m familiar with him.

He’s incredible. It’s amazing how these monster mother fukin’ musicians, inevitably the better they are, the more laid back, and the more beautiful they are. I mean here’s a guy who’s been my idol for my entire life and I walked into the studio and he was like, "It’s an honor to play with you" and we just hit it off like old school pals. It was pretty amazing for me. So definitely McGlaughlin and Pat Martino, also Paco DeLucia, and classical guitarist John Williams, all four of those have been very strong influences on me as a guitarist, in terms of music, it’s always going to be the great jazz musicians, Herbie, and Wayne, Miles and Trane. I still listen to and play a lot of classical music. I’m very influenced by a lot of the Spanish impressionist.

How about, like Sector 9 came up in our conversation earlier, any younger bands that turn you on?

I wouldn’t want to pick out too many specific people because I wouldn’t want to leave somebody out. I have just been meeting band after band after band after band, and to me this is a whole new world in the past year. I love what Brad Barr and The Slip are doing; I think it’s really original and unique. I love what the Jazz Mandolin Project is doing; I sat in with them at High Sierra. And that was really cool. A lot of times when you jam with somebody it’s kind of like you don’t really play together, you just play at the same time, but this was actually like, I would play and he would play. Jamie [Masefield] and I were going back and forth and coming up with some music neither of us had ever played before.

I was actually there. I saw you play several times at High Sierra. I had been introduced to Garaj Mahal prior, but had never seen you or Garaj perform, and basically you can put me in your fan club after that.

Sweet, man (laughing). It’s funny though, because I had just come in from France, and I had to go back. So I was literally up for like four or five days straight.

Ya at the late night gig, you guys all looked a little bit tired.

I had been hitting it hard. And I can’t fail to mention my boy Karl Denson and his band, and Robert Walter and his group, because we had been having such a great time playing together.

And you're opening for Karl this weekend right?

Ya, I’ll probably jam with him too. We’ve gotten to be sort of an extended family, which is a really nice thing in music. Ya know one of the things musicians say is that good musicians never get to hear each other. Because in this day and age it’s like a plane ride away usually to hear somebody. So to have these festivals where people get to hang out and jam is really a healthy thing for the music scene.

[Editors Note: The FHQ opened for Karl Denson's Tiny Universe at The Vic Theatre in Chicago over Thanksgiving weekend. Fareed did come out and jam with them...]

And it’s great for the fans too.

It used to exist in the forties and fifties, in the jazz world. But as music got more corporate it died. I think the jam band scene doesn’t even itself appreciate how important it is to the survival of good music.

I’m glad to hear the musicians feel that way too.

Absolutely.

Are we going to see Fareed Haque Group, or Garaj Mahal at High Sierra this summer?

I know Garaj Mahal is going to play. Like I said with the Fareed Haque Group, one of the difficulties we’re having is in trying to let people know that these two bands are different, and they’re not competing, they’re just different. And when I get back from Europe, I’m going in and finish off this record that you’ve heard bits of.

Which I’ve been listening to non-stop.

It’s a groove isn’t it?

Oh I love it, it’s great.

Ya it’s got a good cast, and once we get the DJ on their and a few more sound effects.

Kalyan

Drummer is Joe Bianco, Bass player is John Paul, no relation to the Pope, tablas is Kalyan Pathak.

And Eric plays keys right?

Ya Eric on Keys, and Jay Cappo he’s the DJ.

And the material for both Garaj and Fareed Haque Group, are you writing most of it?

I write all the Fareed Haque material, and I’ve contributed probably about a 1/3 or a 1/4 of the music to Garaj. You know we do a few tunes in Garaj that the Fareed Haque Group does play but for the most part we keep it separate. We’ve actually just started having enough gigs and enough hang time to write some music together. So we’ve written a few things together, and it’s been kind of cool, and different. Like with Garaj it’s been leaning more and more toward a kind of world African funk vibe.

I can see that. And it seems to me that a lot of your compositions are set up for branching off and improvisation.

Absolutely.

Is there any of your music that is more structured, more sort of fitting into a mold or do you try to just leave everything open?

I wrote, for the Opaque album, a lot of music that was through composed which means that it is five to ten pages of just music that you play from the beginning to the end. Maybe there’s a little improvising in there but basically there is a structure that is established, and a pretty complex structure for the most part. And we still do actually play a few of those tunes with the Fareed Haque Group, just to kind of, ya know jam for a while and then we lay something down that’s a little more fixed, and then we’ll go back to improvising. Because I like formal, obviously structured music, classical music, but I also don’t want it to be a whole night of just that. To me that’s the kind of thing you do as an interlude in between all the spontaneity, and all this energy, and all of a sudden the crowd is sweating, and then we’ll bust into something that’s maybe a little more classical sounding, a little more structured, and it will almost be like an interlude where everybody kind of catches there breath and gets hit again.

I wanted to ask you a few questions about your teaching. How do you fit that in with all your touring?

Very poorly. Basically to make a really miserable long story pretty short, the past year and a half of my life has been, in terms of my life, basically hell. I haven’t had any time to do anything but travel and teach. And that’s pretty intense. I am a full timed tenured professor, which means when I come here to teach two days, it’s not like I’m teaching 2 or 3 hours, I’m usually teaching from 10 in the morning until midnight. The reason we have this hour here is because one of my students canceled. So I’ll basically teach 12 to 14 hours two days a week, catch a plane on Wednesday morning, play Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, fly home Sunday, spend half a day with my wife, and Monday morning come back and teach. I’ve been doing that for, well too long. It’s a little intense, and in the near future we’re going to try to find a little better equilibrium.

And what type of classes are you teaching?

I teach classical guitar, jazz guitar, private lessons, and I have a couple of assistance. I also run the small group jazz program with an assistant. I teach jazz theory and jazz improvisation.

And when your teaching theory is that in front of a big class?

Well, I’m dealing with mostly the better students here, so most of the classes are pretty small, between seven and fifteen students. The only exception is I do teach a small group, which is not like a lecture, every body’s got an instrument out and were all dancing around playing music together, and that’s about 40 kids. It’s a riot; we have a couple hours to just jam out.

How long have you been teaching?

Since ’88, so about 13 years.

I also read something that is of interest to me, that you transcribe Baroque music?

Well classical music is traditionally divided into four different eras historically. There is Renaissance music which is from the fourteen and fifteen hundreds, sixteen and seventeen hundreds is Baroque music. Classical period like Mozart and early Beethoven, and then Romantic music. And of course Modern music, so maybe you could say five different historical time periods. Baroque music, and a lot of old music that we consider classical music was much more improvisational than people realize. So as a jazz musician it’s fascinating for me to play some of that music that involves improvisation. Actually I’m going to Germany next week for two weeks and I will be playing a lot of classical music, with some other classical musicians who also are able to improvise and we can play classical music in a way that is much more spontaneous, much more exciting, much more groovy than most people are used to hearing it. Which in my opinion is the way classical music should be heard.

It sounds very interesting.

For me all music is people music. And all music has to groove, and I think one of the reasons that classical music, and jazz tend to alienate some audiences is because of people who have just sort of forgotten the true essence of most music. For me it’s sort of a mission to try to bring the groove back in to all the music that I play.

And I’m sure it crosses all the lines.

Well it’s easy, if you’ve played in a room, drenched with sweat, and have everyone in the room, in a collective, hypnotic trance, you can’t sit down and play a classical piece of music and not remember that feeling. And not try to create that on some level in anything you do.

Do you have any visions of where you see the Fareed Haque Group going as opposed to Garaj Mahal?

In certain respects I see the Fareed Haque Group always being a little more intimate, a little more folky, a little more intense on a certain level. Where as Garaj Mahal is a little more hip, a little more extroverted, a little more of a party. Where Fareed Haque Group is a little more of a meditation, even though it’s a really intense meditation, a tantric meditation if you will.

I certainly will. I can’t wait to experience it.

Just don’t get any stains on the dance floor.

I’ll try.

We had a couple a really good gigs where, there was some crazy intense good energy happening. We want the girls that’s the important thing. You know when you look out at the audience and see all boys, you’re like, (laughing) "I want to quit." We like to see old people, young people and pretty girls dancing and having a good time.

That transfers to the fans as well. You know when I walk in and see a bunch of dudes, I’m like, "What am I doing here?"

Exactly, (laughing) there’s something wrong with music that doesn’t appeal to both sexes.

I agree.

A good way to describe it is that Fareed Haque Group is more feminine, and Garaj Mahal is more masculine, that’s a real easy way to describe the difference.

Well I look forward to bringing my feminine friends to both.

(More laughter) Make sure you introduce me to them.

The Kayceman
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