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-When and how was born the musician called Paul Mounsey?
-I was born in 1959 in Ayrshire in the Southwest of Scotland. I don't remember much about it!
-You are Scotch. For 20 years you were living in Brazil. What is the reason of this change?
-My wife is Brazilian. In the mid-80s, after living in London for some time, I was unhappy with the various lecturing and teaching jobs I had, so we decided to go to Brazil and ended up staying 20 years.
-Now you have returned to Scotland. Which were the motives of this return?
-I could easily say that it was homesickness but that wouldn't be strictly true.
I've lived in São Paulo longer than I've lived anywhere else so in a way São Paulo is more of a home than anywhere in Scotland.
I think I got to a stage where the intensity of urban life was getting me down and I was ready for a change.
In São Paulo there are currently around 17,000,000 people living in ghettos. The privileged classes live in their ghettos (called condominiums) with their electrified fences, cameras and security guards and the poor live in their ghettos -the slums and the favelas.
When the gap between rich and poor widens, as it has done over the last few years in spite of Brazil’s so-called "economic recovery", the confrontation between the two zones becomes increasingly violent. The two zones have been called "The Glamour Zone" and "The War Zone". São Paulo is a very violent town. São Paulo is the perfect example of neo-liberal globalisation run amok -undermining local economies and culture and language and everything else that defines a society.
-You are a very anxious musician. You like to investigate new mixtures with sounds of different cultures. Do you believe that the music is a great world where borders do not exist?
-Yes I do. I don't like borders. Some people think I'm a nationalist because of the way I've approached Scottish music. I'm not. I hate nationalism and all it represents. It only breeds difference and a hatred of others.
-Have you found similarities between the music of Scotland and the music of Brazil?
-Yes, but if we look carefully we can find similarities among almost all musical traditions.
-Your first disc titles 'Nahoo' (1994); the second 'Nahoo Too' (1997) and the third 'Nahoo 3: Music From The Republic' (1999). Does a common link exist between these three I albums apart from the title? How was this trilogy born?
-In the early 90s I began transferring some of my old vinyl LPs to DAT. Among this material was the School of Scottish Studies archive recordings from the 50s and 60s. I’d spent years not listening to this material because it brought on some severe homesickness, and when I finally did listen to it while doing the transfers it sounded completely alien to me. The voices reminded me of native American singing, of Arab singing, anything but Scottish singing. So after the initial shock I set about trying to get back in touch with what I felt I’d lost. Of course, that’s an impossible task -I’ll never hear Scottish music again as I did when I was a kid. I inevitably see the tradition in a new light- with connections everywhere. And that look at the local in global terms is I think an important part of all three Nahoo albums, probably one of their defining characteristics. The distance -both space and time- has provoked this.
I think it’s just part of being an ex-pat. Even though I now live in Scotland I still feel I’m on the outside looking in.
Anyway, after about a year of composing and programming and sampling and generally fiddling about, Passing Away was the result. The other tracks followed on from there. It was really just a series of exercises to see how I could work with the Scottish tradition.
It was João Vasconcelos' (my engineer) idea to send the tapes into a record company to see if they were interested in releasing an album. The whole exercise took around 2 years.
The theme running through the whole of 'Nahoo Too' was that of clearance
and dislocation, but from the point of view of the first nations, the aboriginal communities, who were cleared off their land in the most violent manner to make way for European colonists, including the cleared Highlanders of Scotland. The album took about a year to record.
Most of the tracks on 'Nahoo 3' have something to do with the idea of nations, nation-states, national identities and nationalism. At the time I was reading quite a lot about the subject (Ernest Gellner, Edward Said, Tom Nairn, David McCrone, Paul Gilroy, people like that) and of course the Scottish parliament was about to be reborn and even stuck way out in Brazil I really felt that something of tremendous importance was happening in Scotland.
I felt that there had been a change of mood in the country, a new self-confidence. Unfortunately that mood has been undermined in recent years by the lack of accountability and general incompetence of the new Scottish Executive.
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-To my personally I am charmed with 'Nahoo Too'. I do not stop listening to it. There is a theme in concrete ("North") that I love it. How did you create this theme?
-I honestly can't remember. Themes or melodies sometimes just appear when you may be trying to do something else. This tune, "North", kept pushing its way into my consciousness while I was working on a track dealing with Native American materials. To me the tune sounds at once Scottish and Native American.
-In the year 2003 you published the disc 'City Of Walls' where among other countries you use sounds of my land (Galicia). How did this idea arise?
-The album took about 2 years to put together. Somewhere along the production line I decided to lose the name 'Nahoo', which was meaningful really only to those involved, a connotation of some kind of ill-defined mix of Scottish and Brazilian elements. Most of the Brazilian elements were lost on Scottish listeners anyway, since I consciously avoided using those styles (samba, bossa nova, etc.) most commonly presented abroad, preferring instead to explore the rural folk traditions of the north east of Brazil. But there were always other influences, always references to other musical styles and traditions.
Restricting myself to only Scottish and Brazilian materials would be very tedious.
The track "Ferro e Fogo" is a lament for the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, 93% of which has been destroyed since the Portuguese arrived here in 1500. The track is littered with traditional Portuguese tunes but in the final dance sequence I added the Galician Xota de Pontevedra, simply because it sounded right. I had thought that perhaps I should stick to Portuguese material, given the subject matter, but I've always liked those traditional Galician tunes, so for purely selfish reasons I incorporated it into the track.
-Your new album ('Tha Na Laithean a'Dol Seachad') has been an order. Speak to us about it.
-The new album ('The Days Flash Past') was a commission from the An Lanntair arts centre in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis to coincide with the opening of their new building. It is basically a song cycle featuring a number of female singers from Lewis.
-In this last CD different feminine voices of Scotland collaborate. How has it been the election?
-It was a joint decision by myself and the An Lanntair programme director Alex Macdonald. The choice of singers was a result of how I reacted to the different vocal timbres. But in the end it had a lot to do with the availability of the singers too.
-Might your music be defined like etnotechno?
-I don't know. That's for other people to say. That's really just another label.
-How have they received your music the most traditional people?
-A mixed reaction really. Some really enjoy the way in which I've engaged with the tradition. Others would love to lynch me!
-You have worked for television, cinema, for directors as Tony Scott, etc. Speak to us about this facet.
-In Brazil my studio work was mostly in advertising, writing music for commercials directed by the likes of Tony Scott. Many people forget that these 'Hollywood' directors still make commercials. Occasionally I would write for Brazilian TV or cinema. Now that I'm living in Scotland most of the work I do is for British TV -mainly documentaries.
-Also you devote yourself to collaborate with musicians as Michael Nyman. How does the work with him?
-That was a long time ago. I had known Michael since my student days in London. In 1992 I was involved in organizing a series of peformances with Michael in São Paulo.
-Which is the future of Paul Mounsey?
-Very difficult to say. I've been back in Scotland now for over two years and although it has been good getting back in touch with certain aspects of British life, much of it is totally alien to me. Soon I will probably begin to feel restless again. I know that at some point in my life I will return to Brazil.
Isle of Skye, 2006 October 18
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