Heddy Boubaker - Sunday Interview

Photo by Zehavit Boubaker

 

1. What is your greatest joy in improvised music?
   
   Improvising freely, surprising people.
   
   
2. What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with?
   
   Their ability to surprise me, as long as they respect other musicians and the music we are constructing together.
   
   
3. Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most?
   
   My 2 little grandsons, we love improvising together and they are wonderful.
   
   
4. If you could resurrect a musician to perform with, who would it be?
   
   The first man who felt that hitting two stones together could be more than making fire. But if I really had the power to resuscitate people I would have a lot of other candidates first.
   
   
5. What would you still like to achieve musically in your life?
   
   Understand deeply how music works beside all its mathematical aspects.
   
   
6. Are you interested in popular music and - if yes - what music/artist do you particularly like?
   
   Define popular music… Otherwise I listen to almost all styles of music, certainly more than improvised music.
   
   
7. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
   
   Becoming young again.
   
   
8. Which of your albums are you most proud of?
   
   The next one.
   
   
9. Once an album of yours is released, do you still listen to it? And how often?
   
   No. But sometimes I forgot what was on an old album and I listen to it again to remember how/what I was playing at this time. It could be a very long time ago after the release.
   
   
10. Which album (from any musician) have you listened to the most in your life?
    
    Jimi Hendrix - Are you Experienced / Axis Bold as Love.
    
    
11. What are you listening to at the moment?
    
    A lot of old (from 50s to 80s) Congolese music. And a lot of other stuff, as always
    
    
12. What artist outside music inspires you?
    
    Albert Einstein, physics artist.
    
    

Recordings with Heddy Boubaker reviewed on the Free Jazz Blog:

• Èch – Èch (Un Rêve Nu, 2020) ****
• Cosmic Violence
• Weekend Roundup: Dynamic Duos
• Heddy Boubaker & Hernâni Faustino – Domino Doubles (re:konstruKt, 2011) **** & Pedro Sousa & Hernâni Faustino – Falaise (Dromos Records, 2012) ****
• This new stuff that's hard to fathom, yet that's got me addicted ...
• PHAT - La Grande Peste (Insubordinations, 2008) ***½