{"id":13634,"date":"2017-12-27T05:30:17","date_gmt":"2017-12-27T10:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=13634"},"modified":"2017-12-28T07:50:17","modified_gmt":"2017-12-28T12:50:17","slug":"the-magma-mega-interview-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/12\/27\/the-magma-mega-interview-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"The Magma Mega-interview, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

What do you seek to communicate in the Koba\u00efan lyrics of Magma\u2019s music?<\/b><\/p>\n

The main purpose of the lyrics is to allow the music to be as expressive as possible. I’m always giving the example of John Coltrane who was playing an instrument; any people who are playing an instrument are expressing something that people can understand, even if there are no words. So, the lyrics are the closest possible to the music to make it sound<\/i> right, because I never wanted to write in French (except for a few words in French \u2013 and a few in English). Because the idea is to have a novel of sounds that expresses the most from the music, and that\u2019s why I invented the language: because I couldn\u2019t do it with any existing language. The sound of the vocal is very important in Magma\u2019s music. It has to not [distract] from the expression felt by the people listening to it.<\/p>\n

Did the Koba\u00efan language come about fully-formed, or was it something that you had to work to create?<\/b><\/p>\n

No, no. It\u2019s really an organic language; it really comes with the music. I can testify about that. In the very early days, I saw Christian sitting at the piano, starting to play and sing at the same time and almost a whole tune came directly as one shot from Christian at the piano. The words and the music \u2014 everything was coming at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most of the lyrics are written with the music at the same time, and in fact, when I composed the first Magma tune [related to Koba\u00efa], I started to sing, \u201cKoba\u00efa, Koba\u00efa, Koba\u00efa.\u201d And that\u2019s why the planet was called Koba\u00efa.<\/p>\n

So when the words come with the music, those words are in Koba\u00efan?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes. It’s the music<\/i> that tells what has to be understood. And you can understand differently. You listen to some music when you are a kid, for example, and when you listen to the same music when you\u2019re a grownup, you don\u2019t feel it and understand it in the same way. So, at different stages, there is a different way of understanding and hearing it depending upon what was your life, what you understood during your life. And so you can go much deeper inside, or not.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

To American ears, Koba\u00efan sounds a little bit like German, not your native French<\/b>…<\/p>\n

Well, to American ears it might be so, but in some other countries it sounds different. People say it sounds a bit like Japanese from time to time, or like a language from the southwest of France. Christian\u2019s grandparents were from Poland and Germany. So, he heard when he was a kid these kind of sounds, because at home they were speaking German and Polish between them. He didn\u2019t understand it at the time \u2014 and not even now understanding either \u2014 but he heard these kind of sounds when he was a kid. German is quite a \u201chard\u201d language to some; when the music is kind of hard it fits. But when the music is more mellow, you have different kind of sounds and that\u2019s where people say sometimes, \u201cOh, it could just be Japanese,\u201d or, \u201cIt could be\u2026\u201d We have heard many things.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you find it amusing that fans have compiled Koba\u00efan dictionaries? <\/b><\/p>\n

To amuse is not the word. I mean, they are free to do it, and it shows that they are really into more than only listening to a band. You collect all the CDs, and you have t-shirts and posters, but this is even more. You try to translate and write a dictionary? That\u2019s really dedication!<\/p>\n

You know, the dictionary online is made up by a fan, and after looking for the same words coming back in the same kind of mood, you can feel that this must be talking about the moon, or the sun, or whatever, [because] the same words were coming in the same kind of mood. So, at the end, you could translate a few words and say, \u201cOkay. This word should probably mean that or this.\u201d To have words [translated], people may understand that we are talking about the moon, or the sun, or love or whatever. But that could be the least important thing that we want to express!<\/p>\n

It strikes me that on some level, the words serve to impart an emotional content rather than an intellectual one… <\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, exactly. Exactly.<\/p>\n

And that the words are there to point in the direction of ideas as opposed to fully describe them.<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, and most of the time the words are coming with the music when I am composing. Sometimes there are gaps, so we fill them afterwards, but mainly, for the most part the words are coming with the music. So, after hearing the same words [associated with] some kind of mood, you could say, \u201cOkay. This words means ‘love,’ or ‘hello,’ or ‘water,’ or whatever.\u201d So that\u2019s why fans could make a kind of dictionary with a few hundred words. Maybe not a hundred. I don\u2019t even know how many!<\/p>\n

In general, do your musical works arise from composition or improvisation?<\/b><\/p>\n

The process starts this way. I am almost everyday on my piano playing and singing. Things come like this and that and differently from one day to the other, and [music] is probably working somewhere in my mind. It’s like a singer speaking before [he thinks], because suddenly the next day something comes and it\u2019s much more organized and different than it was the previous day. And it looks like the beginning of something; that\u2019s the way a real composition starts.<\/p>\n

But before that, for a few days, or a few weeks, or even maybe a few months, it\u2019s improvisation around many different things. Suddenly the shapes arise, but as I said, it\u2019s more the singing that does the trick even before the mind.<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… What do you seek to communicate in the Koba\u00efan lyrics of Magma\u2019s music? The main purpose of the lyrics is to allow the music to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,41,56],"tags":[3266,1377,3267],"class_list":["post-13634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avant-garde","category-interview","category-prog","tag-christian-vander","tag-magma","tag-stella-vander","cat-7-id","cat-41-id","cat-56-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13634"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13817,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13634\/revisions\/13817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}