PREVIEW
What: Derek Gripper
Where: Hermann’s Jazz Club
When: Today, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $22 advance, $25 door. At Victoria Jazz Society office (202-345 Quebec St. or 250-388-4423), Lyle’s Place and the Royal/McPherson box office (250-386-6121 or rmts.bc.ca)
After studying classical violin for 13 years, South Africa’s Derek Gripper took a series of musical U-turns.
He learned bass guitar so he could play in rock bands. Then Gripper made a full switch from violin to classical guitar.
However, the biggest change came after a friend gave him a recording by Toumani Diabaté, an admired kora player from West Africa.
Gripper says it was a mind-blowing experience.
“Toumani for me ticks all the boxes … discovering his music was like finding the holy grail,” the 37-year-old guitarist said in an interview from his native Cape Town.
Both Gripper and Diabaté are from Africa. Yet in terms of cultural background, they are worlds apart.
Gripper is a white musician who underwent Western classical training. Diabaté performs the indigenous music of Mali — a West African country — on the kora, a traditional instrument made from a calabash sliced in half and covered with cow skin. He hails from an oral-musical tradition preceding him by 70 generations.
The allure of Diabaté’s kora-playing proved powerful. For Gripper, it embraces the best of classical and indigenous music, possessing the “complexity and clarity of Bach and the rhythmical interest of Africa.”
Gripper wanted to play Diabaté’s songs. Not being a kora player, he decided to replicate the music on guitar. It’s a tall order — the guitar has six strings compared to the kora’s 21. Yet somehow Gripper succeeded, painstakingly parsing out the songs by ear from recordings.
This resulted in a musical hybrid — influenced by both African and classical music — which Gripper will bring to Victoria tonight at Hermann’s Jazz Club.
The reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. John Williams, one of the world’s best classical guitarists, deemed Gripper’s music “one of the most interesting things I’ve heard on guitar in 20 years.” London’s Evening Standard described Gripper’s renditions of kora music as “brilliantly transcribed.” And it’s not mere mimicry; critics laud his musicality as well as his technical ability.
As well as original compositions, Gripper interprets the compositions of such African artists as Ali Farka Toure, Ballake Sissoko, Salif Keita, Fanta Sacko and Amadu Bansang Jobarteh. And he offers “interpretations of Bach which are informed by West African performance practice.”
In Victoria, he’ll play a guitar crafted by Herman Hauser III, grandson of the man who made the guitar Andres Segovia used in the 1930s.
“Mine has a top from the same piece of wood as Segovia’s,” Gripper said. “It’s a nice link to that tradition, once you get over it and decide not to be too reverent about it.”
As for a career highlight, he cites the time his musical hero John Williams invited him to perform with him at the Globe Theatre in London. Williams had become a fan after hearing Gripper’s kora-influenced recording One Night on Earth. Gripper was surprised and thrilled to receive the emailed offer out of the blue .
“Having the great master of classical guitar enjoy what I have been doing in African music and playing with him was a load of fun and games,” he said.
