[Dixielandjazz] A New Spin On Jazz - Kid Koala

[Stephen G Barbone]

Amazing what one finds on the internet. Check out this version of  
Basin Street Blues done by a DJ with turntables and record clips.  
Damn!!  The possibilities are endless and the DJs are on the cutting  
edge. <grin>.

The video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItYp6ctPGI8, the story  
below.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

A new spin on jazz - Colin Hunter - The Record.com
Jazz lovers at Guelph's festival might be surprised to hear old-time  
influences in pioneer turntablist Kid Koala's music


Pop quiz: which of the following statements is true?
Kid Koala is a jazz musician.

Kid Koala is not a jazz musician.

Answer: Maybe both. Maybe neither.

Depending on your definition of jazz -- an especially tricky thing to  
define, like "art" or "zymurgy" -- Kid Koala either is or is not a  
jazz musician.

This much is certain: Kid Koala, a.k.a. Eric San of Montreal, is a  
turntablist.

He creates sounds by manipulating vinyl records on turntables -- a  
method of music-making usually associated with hip hop.

But Kid Koala is a pioneer among a new breed of turntablists who have  
moved beyond the mere rhythmic scratching of samples over bass-laden  
beats.

He is a musician using a relatively new instrument -- the dual  
turntables and a mixer -- to create wildly inventive compositions.  
That's part of why he is booked to play the Guelph Jazz Festival on  
Sept. 14, along with such other avant-garde heavyweights as John Zorn,  
Francois Houle and Tortoise. His music is wonky, unpredictable and  
unmistakably his own.

To old-timey jazz-lovers -- the kind of traditionalists whose tastes  
are rooted in Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong -- Kid Koala might  
sound a tad too out there at first listen.

But if such people listened a bit closer, they might be surprised by  
what they hear.

See, Kid Koala himself is an old-timey jazz traditionalist.

"I grew up listening to old jazz," he says over the phone from  
Montreal, enjoying a rare moment of calm while his newborn daughter is  
asleep.

"Early jazz like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday was always truly  
inspiring to me. Even as I grew up, went to college and got into hip  
hop, I always had one ear to the jazz world."

So he was thrilled when he got booked to play a concert a decade ago  
in New Orleans, the de facto home of jazz. At the time, he gaining  
notoriety as a turntablist after the release of his major label debut  
CD, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Though he only played one concert, he vacationed in the city for a  
week, visiting all the old jazz haunts he never dreamed he'd get a  
chance to see. At every live jazz show he attended, the band played  
the classic Dixieland ditty Basin Street Blues.

"I was so captivated by the whole experience. I remember sitting on  
the plane on the way home with that song stuck in my head, and I knew  
my next record would start with a version of Basin Street Blues."

Sure enough, his second album, 2003's Some of My Best Friends are DJs,  
opens with a melancholic, mind-altering interpretation of the 1926  
classic. By manipulating a variety of records, Kid Koala creates  
unique trumpet solos, basslines and piano parts, while staying  
faithful to the original.

Recently, in a stroke of serendipity, Kid Koala's animated video for  
the song caught the attention of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in  
New Orleans -- one of the world's oldest and most respected Dixieland  
ensembles -- who loved it. The band invited Kid Koala to jam with them  
at Preservation Hall (which had been closed down for months after  
hurricane Katrina), and a few weeks ago he happily accepted the gig.

"It was the ultimate scariest thing I could possibly do," recalls 34- 
year-old Koala.

"I mean, Preservation Hall -- that's my Carnegie Hall, my musical  
mecca. Just to be playing that room with those cats, it was definitely  
a dream come true."

So is Kid Koala a jazz musician? Well, not only does he compose  
daring, adventurous new music, but he has also played with one of the  
most established classic jazz bands in the world.

So only the narrowest definition of jazz would exclude Kid Koala from  
its ranks. And Kid Koala is all about expanding boundaries.

"The range of the turntable as an instrument is limitless," he says.

"The range of this instrument is something I've always pushed myself  
to explore and expand. The deeper you go with it, the more you realize  
the possibilities."