Part 1

Name: Wareika
Members: Florian Haik Schirmacher (DJ, producer, vocalist), Henrik Raabe (DJ, producer, multi-instrumentalist), Jakob Seidensticker (DJ, producer, instrumentalist)
Interviewee: Henrik Raabe
Nationality: German
Current release: Wareika's Tizinabi LP is out via ORNAMENTS.  

If you enjoyed this Wareika interview and would like to find out more about the band and their music, visit them on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud. To dive even deeper, read our Wareika interviews about collaboration, and their creative process.



When did you first start getting interested in musical improvisation?  

When I bought my first Jimi Hendrix Record, Jimi plays Monterey, at the age of 14, and I listened over and over to it, I – as a young guitar player - had only one question on my mind: How does he do that?



Soon I found out that the passages I loved the most where improvised, and so I started improvising on the guitar myself and this became the starting point of developing my musicality.

Later, I always tried to keep the spirit of improvisation also in electronic music. When the band Wareika was formed, it was kind of a dream coming true, because it was and it still is all about improvisation.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?

Beside Jimi Hendrix, I started listening to Indian classical music in my youth, and, due to the lack of Youtube, I listened very often to one record over a couple of years. It was a collection of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan recordings on a CD, and the more I listened to this recording, the more new and suprising things I found in it. I still listen to it, and find new and surprising things.



A little later, I was 17 maybe, I found a new guitar teacher, and finally started to explore jazz music with his help. That led me to John Coltrane. Again a little later I heard oud music in a Turkish movie for the first time, and I felt a strong wish to explore the world of maqam music, too.

With Wareika we picked up these different approaches to improvising music and put it into an electronic and club music context.

Focusing on improvisation can be an incisive transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

In 15 years of working with Wareika, there was often one question on my mind: How can I find a way to express my personal musicial ideas based on jazz, indian or maqam music within the context and vibe of electronic club music ?

We found the answer in new concepts of improvising together, as a band, by using the endless possibilies of electronic music to melt things together that never sounded this way before.

With Wareika, we started improvising traditional instrumental music, vocal songs and electronic sound scapes as one thing. That was like improvising the approach to improvisation!

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage?

My personal key ideas for improvising music are based on Indian Raga music, Arabic maqams and jazz.

I had the chance to study Ragas on the sarod with a great teacher in the tradition that Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan belong to. Another great teacher for me is a very good friend from Damascus, who teaches me arabic Maqams on the Oud. I also went to University to study jazz guitar for a few years, and I dived deep into the modal jazz concepts of McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane, who where searching for new approaches to modal jazz improvisation in the 60s.



Everything I learned in the past 30 years feels like touching the surface of these tradition for me. But interestingly, when applying these things in the context of, let's say Wareika playing in Berghain, these
concepts become very, very useful to express myself in improvisation, and they start feeling very real and alive to me.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to improvisation - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

When I first started improvising on the guitar, I wanted to play and sound like Jimi Hendrix. As I didn't achieve it right away, I was naïve enough to think I could fasten the process by taking LSD! As that didn’t really help, I had a phase where I practiced mostly technical aspects of the guitar, like training scales and speed for hours a day. It helped a little, but still didn’t make me very happy.

Another thing I explored was to modify my guitars to sound more interesting, like a sitar for example. This led me to building my own instruments, but still something was missing, and I also didn’t find it when I went to the conservatory to explore things like jazz harmony and big band arrangement. Learning about Ragas and Maqams definitely changed my way of listening to music and listening to myself.

But standing on a stage, or lets say DJ booth, in a techno club, and starting to improvise music in this context, was the real challenge for me. Here I learned to really listen to myself first, and play what I feel, as well as listening to the band as a whole, and tuning myself into this whole big thing happening around me, including the audience , the whole vibe.

When Wareika played at Club der Visionäre in Berlin for the first time, I had this realisation during our performance: Just be yourself, that is the greatest thing you can contribute.



Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. How would you describe the relationship with it? What are its most important qualities and how do they influence the musical results and your own performance?
 
As I explained, the biggest change in making music for me came with playing oriental music on fretless instruments like the sarod or oud, and learning about quartertones, microtones and the endless possibilities that are hidden in oriental musical ornamentation.

On the other hand, I can't deny that the concepts of harmony in western music are an equally fascinating and limitless ocean of musical possibilities and beauty, and of course there are likewise so many things you could play on a piano or a guitar that are simply impossible to play on an oud or sitar. Therefore I am still searching for the ideal instrument to express my musical concepts and capture the best of both worlds.

Synthesizers can sometimes be very helpful, because the may include droning, melodic, microtonal, harmonic and sound manipulation qualities in one instrument, and they can be customized a lot without changing their actual physical structure. You can even retune them to fit into a gamelan orchestra!

In the end I think the electric guitar will remain my main instrument, at least on stage. In a band with Haik singing and playing synths while Jakob is keeping the tightest possible groove on the MPC, a very versatile string instrument is the perfect match for me.