After all, the best Dead Can Dance songs -- like Gerrard's epic "Cantara" -- originate from a primal, child-like place. A place that existed before language put the rule book on the shelf.
In this interview with Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance, prior to her solo Mirror Pool tour, I thought I was conversing with deity. From the first time I heard DCD, I thought there was something there that went way beyond, spiritually, what anyone else was doing.
Their organic, gothic, impenetrable blend of Nick Drake and Joy Division crossed with "world music" -- and strings! -- is pompous, pretentious, but powerful. I wouldn't say I listen to Dead Can Dance, or Lisa Gerrard, all that much these days, but I do love Ark, the new record from Brendan Perry, Gerrard's partner in Dead Can Dance.
Gerrard didn't do many interviews, and hearing Lisa Gerrard's voice talking to me, instead of some unleashing some glossolaliac singing, was rather intimidating.
That was amazing -- an outdoor amphitheater, the sun set and the moon rose -- and then Dead Can Dance were under the New Mexico stars promoting their final album, Spiritchaser.
A road trip to remember.
The next night, we followed the band back to a over-crowded Boulder Theater.
Afterward, I met Brendan backstage, and he signed some stuff for me. But Lisa had already left the building.
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Hello Lisa -- how are you?
I'm great. We had a very nice show in Ghent last night.
How does it feel to be on stage without Brendan?
Well, I’m working with the musicians from Dead Can Dance -- Robert Perry, Ronan O’Snodeigh and John Bonnar, so it doesn’t feel that different. Obviously, not having Brendan there does feel kind of weird, I must admit. But it’s still a lot of fun, it’s really nice.
Some of the pieces on The Mirror Pool are older pieces that you have performed with Dead Can Dance before but haven’t recorded, like "Swans," for instance. What’s the history behind these tracks?
I used to do “Swans” as an encore, an improvisational piece that was different every night, and it’s very different on the record to the performance that I did with Dead Can Dance. One of the pieces I started six years ago. Some were started a long time ago and took a long time to finish because they are quite complex.
What segregated these songs? Why weren't they included on a Dead Can Dance record?
Well, there are some things that you write that you don’t want to collaborate on. There are some things that are more personal to you. I really wanted to complete those works on my own.
The sentiment that I wanted to point to with the work was something that I didn’t want to collaborate with another person with. The fact is, when Brendan and I get together to make a record, we work apart for about a year and a half or two years, and then we get together for twelve months to do an album. In the time that we’re apart, we write a lot of music sometimes the actual piece of music doesn’t arrive on a Dead Can Dance album, but something about the architecture, or something you learned, points you toward a vocabulary that will take part in a Dead Can Dance record. We always hope that the pieces we’ve done apart will be involved in a Dead Can Dance record, but usually when we get together the idea is that they’ve grown and amalgamated over time and have turned into something completely different.
So, we usually don’t even show each other the work that we’ve written over that time, and just get on with writing new things.
Some pieces you can just keep for yourself?
Well, you kind of keep them and you think, Oh, look, it doesn’t matter, because the continuity of this record is becoming very percussive, and it’s out of context, especially with the new record we’re doing. Over the last couple of records, things have been becoming more percussively based and less orchestral, and I think that’s why the orchestral parts of the work I’ve always done have been building up. I felt it was an accident. After hearing the work I had cataloged, it was decided we’d find out if I could get enough of a budget to do it with a real orchestra, and if I could then I would consider doing them -- otherwise I’d just let sleeping dogs lie.
After you and Brendan broke up, you moved to Australia you got married, and lots of fans expected Dead Can Dance would not record together anymore.
You know it’s strange, people always think ... It’s amazing, ‘cause I’ve been in Ireland for the last seven months doing a Dead Can Dance record, and during that time I’ve done several interviews connected with The Mirror Pool, and usually they leave it to about the sixth question. It’s usually, “Is this the end of Dead Can Dance just because you’ve released something out of that context?”
It certainly isn’t, and the last seven months have proved that fact. After I finish this tour, I’m taking a little break and then I’m going back to finish the album with Brendan and then we tour for four to five months next year as Dead Can Dance.
Years ago, your records were had-to-find imports and I remember having to pay lots of money for them...
Oh, you shouldn’t have bought them, you should have just used the tape machine!
...And at the time you were fairly obscure and unknown. Now you’ve toured a couple times and have successful records on a major label... How do like the fanatical fans in the US?
It’s always a pleasure to go and play in America, I can’t explain why. Whenever we go there, it’s sort of this incredibly large spacious place where you can just sort of lose yourself in and disappear into... A very different feeling to Europe altogether. And the people there we found to be extremely warm, deeply intelligent and very, very sensitive, the people who came to the concerts. And we were quite surprised by that, because the angle we get on American culture we get on television in Europe is sort of very middle of the road very quirky and all one-liners... and when we arrived in America we realized we had a very tainted vision of what the place was really like through television, etc. So it’s always good to go back there.
The thing that’s been really interesting about America is the difference between the media coverage, I find there’s a lot of accuracy with the press. It’s been lost or cynicized in England especially. So it was very encouraging, and after going to America I started speaking to the press again. I’d stopped for nearly six years. And that’s simply because I thought ‘there’s really no point, because they’re just going to make it up anyway and it’s going to be very funny and very nasty and let them get on with it,’ and when I stopped doing press, they made it up!
So I think as the music has grown up we still get a cynical look at the things that we’re doing... a sort of ‘oh god, give me techno any day' sort of attitude Which is absolutely fine -- there’s no problem with that --but it’s very, very far stretch from being 20 years old and turning up as a group in England and being really put through the mincer. The thing about America that restored our confidence in talking about the things we do was because of the accuracy there.
When you toured the US two years ago with Dead Can Dance, and most people saw you for the first time, do you think audiences were surprised that you performed mostly songs they hadn’t heard before, as opposed to songs from your records?
I think people respond when they know a piece, but that’s not really what the concerts are about. The concerts are about being involved in an inspired performance. And in order for a performance to truly be inspired the work has to be fresh. It can be a situation where you can be performing something live that’s on record and you’re putting your life into it, because it’s been composed with samples and you’re performing it with live musicians. Then it’s very, very nice to do this. But if this isn’t possible, it’s not really very interesting for us as artists or musicians to perform this work, because we’re not creating an inspired space in that time that we’re given. Do you understand? This is the most important thing to us. Sometimes it’s not even the work itself that’s the thing that really makes the concert work -- it’s what it appears to be pointing to, or there’s something in the energy there.
In order to maintain that energy, there has to be a good vibe.
Does that mean you won’t be doing any Dead Can Dance songs?
Absolutely not! I wouldn’t dream of it! It would be disrespectful to Brendan. In the concert film, we got to do our own compositions because it was fitting, but... If it’s in a Dead Can Dance context, I just don’t think that it’s relative. I’ve done some work with Brendan’s younger brother, Robert who is a fine musician very, very interesting ... excellent Irish bozouki player, brilliant percussionist and also makes his own wind instruments. I’ve done some interesting collaborations with him, and the boys are able to, during the live shows, do a fragment of solo works they’re doing themselves... Ronan O’Snodeigh is doing the bower, the Irish bower. It’s beautiful -- he makes the drums speak.
And Pieter Bourke does an Egyptian tau and Robert Perry does some solo flute pieces. So it’s an wonderful opportunity for the audience to enjoy them as solo artists something they never really had the opportunity to do with Dead Can Dance. So it’s a really special situation for the young musicians we work with. I feel very much at this time in our lives that we have to pass on to these younger musicians the things that we’ve learned through our artisanship. So they can take over where we leave off.
I wanted to ask you about your sources of inspiration.
My sources of inspiration are integration and love between people, love that I receive from my family and situations that are very basic, very simple. It could be on the street. It could be at a bus stop, at a vegetable stand or a market. I can’t say to you that I can isolate where my inspiration comes, from especially in a religious sense. Because I don’t think there's a person on the planet right now who isn’t somewhat confused in terms of trying to make a connection between religion and spirituality.
I really feel there is something sacred within the work that we do, but I don’t think it’s religious. I think the sacred thing I sense within the work that we do is the fact that it encourages others and gives them a sense of well-being. And that makes it sacred.
What did you mean by the statement you made in Toward The Within when you said, "Let language grow by itself?"
With the singing that I do ... I’ve always tried, I’ve always wanted to be able to explain it to people. I feel like the singing that I do is the language that I was born with, not the language I was taught to speak later. When I said that, I wasn’t being condescending, I was trying to encourage people to come into contact with their own creativity whether through singing or playing the bongo.
It’s not to stick a violin in a child’s hands and expect them to be a virtuoso in five years, and be inspired after five years by listening to this cat being swung around by its tail! I mean, we should allow ourselves and our children to come into contact with something --and just very simply and very basically let it grow, from a very simple point. I think we’ve lost contact with that, and we feel like we have to be brilliant, or think, “I could never do that” so we become disconnected -- and in a way, punished -- by the fact that we’re not allowed to express it or we’ve lost our confidence. And these are things that really shouldn’t be on the stage at all!
If anything is bizarre, it’s that what we do gets such an incredibly beautiful reception --when it’s something that should be something that’s taking part of people’s lives on different levels everyday! Instead of being isolated to the theatre! Because it’s not really that detached from creative play, or things that can take place in the home.
(Copyright 2010 by Jeffrey Charles Stratton. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.)
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