No, there wasn’t, Martin. Uta just went ahead and did it. In fact, there was very little I contributed, apart from giving her the info I wanted for the cover and alerting her to the odd typo.

The inside cover information tells us that it was recorded during August and September but how long was the process from initial compositions of the songs to eventual mastering?

The recording process came at the tail end of a very intense, roller coaster type of period in my life. Our second child was born on 24 July 2002. That evening our friend Gcina Mhlophe phoned from Durban to ask whether we’d had the baby yet. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘your timing is perfect. He arrived this morning.’ – ‘So what did you call him?’ – ‘Vusi.’ – ‘Do you know what that means?’ she asked. – ‘Yes, something like “he who completes the family”’. – ‘It’s much deeper than that’, Gcina said. ‘When a person dies, someone of the same sex is born to the family, and that’s what “Vusi” signifies.’ Well, I had a cold shudder running down my back, because my father had passed away just 15 days earlier. I was going to start recording on the day of his death and then obviously shelved the project. I had been carrying most of the tunes around with me for a while, but some were inspired by these new events. As always, I relied a lot on the musical intuition and creativity of the artists involved.

Thirteen other musicians were involved in the album to varying degrees, and most of these are names that have appeared on previous Kai Alami and Highway Jam releases. Obviously these are people you trust quite a bit from a musical point of view.

These are people I respect immensely, for their ability to listen and respond, and for having unique musical voices.

Was this album recorded digitally?

Yes, it was. Willem Möller’s got all the computer gear, but he also has a wealth of old amps and analog gadgets – which makes for an interesting kind of cross-fertilisation.

Let’s now go through the album track by track, starting with –

21st Century (Polite Mix)

This is based on a jam we recorded back in 1999. There was this young guy, Rhakim, who worked as a waiter in one of the Melville restaurants where we played at the time, got up to sing with us one night, over some groove we laid down. Melanie Walker, who was in the audience that night, said ‘Wow, you just have to record this!’ And we did, virtually all live, with Scorpion Madondo on flute and Lynne Poulsen on backing vocals. This is a remixed, shortened version of that jam – Willem’s idea, who wanted to exploit the commercial potential in the tune and overdubbed the poppy keyboard part. I don’t know where Rhakim is now: he was a great kid!

Grasslands

An old Highway Jam staple that just keeps growing and growing. It started when I had the idea for the bass harmonic ostinato. The melody developed much later. On the recording, Mike Meiring (guitar) and Ekkie Eckhart (tenor sax) toy with it, without ever stating it directly: only at the very end do we actually play it. The idea was to evoke the Southern African savannah in all its windswept and fiery beauty.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Based on a traditional Eastern melody on the mantra in question, which means ‘the jewel inside the lotus’. Eliot Short ‘doctored’ his instrument with clothing pegs to make it sound it like a Chinese violin. Maurice Judge is on wood flute and Terence Reis on dobro. The mantra is actually meant to be repeated 120 times, but I chose to do an abridged version and go straight into

Coexistence (The Emancipation of Animals, Part 1)

This, again, has a strong Eastern flavour and is part of a trilogy dedicated to the liberation of nonhuman animals in our awareness: unlikely to happen, but … This is meant to capture the first of these stages, coexistence of all (human and nonhuman) animals: not without killing and suffering, to be sure, but without the gruesomeness of commercially motivated mass production and mass slaughter (that is pictured in ‘Part 2: Exploitation’, not included here). I found the transition from the mantra to this piece worked quite nicely, with David Novis blending the different types of shakers. This is a simple tune that is first played by Elliot and then repeated by me on my Trace Eliot fretted 5-string.

Irgendwie

I had the idea for this tune years before we recorded it. I used the letters of my wife’s name, Edda, for both the melody and the chord progression: Em-D-Dm-Am. (To my knowledge, I’m the third in a line of admirers to have had the idea of using the notes E-D-D-A as the basis for a composition.) Interestingly enough, in the process A-minor became the key or harmonic centre of the tune. Apart from the melodic and harmonic movement, the only idea I had was to make it a long, trancey track that would feature one of my favourite instruments, the resophonic guitar or dobro. Brett Collings actually played the drum track live (it sounds like a loop, it’s so precise) – we just took him out and brought him again in the final mix -, as I laid down a very simple bass figure on the upright (the fretless was overdubbed). David’s perc, Lynne’s keyboard and Terence’s guitar parts, too, were live first-takes. No cutting and pasting here. ‘Irgendwie’ means ‘somehow’, a word Edda often uses. And I think the tune has that character of wistful longing.

September 8

I loved the film ‘Il Postino’, its story and its soundtrack. The soundtrack album has people like Julia Roberts, Andy Garcia, Sting, Madonna and others read their favourite Pablo Neruda poems over this beautiful music, and I decided to do the same for this recording. My friend Tom Kölble had discovered a Neruda poem, ‘September 8’, completely by chance. He had been looking for a poem by Neruda to read at our wedding and just happened to open the book at this particular place. Now, the crazy thing is that we actually got married on September 8! Content-wise, too, it matches our situation perfectly. The last line of the poem, ‘… and someone, still faceless, is waiting for us there’, is almost spookily accurate: Edda was pregnant with Tau when we got married … Amazing, isn’t it? – Lynne played the keyboard parts and Terence laid down the dobro part live. Then Lynne overdubbed the vocal solo. She was pregnant with her first child at the time of recording, and it was sometime in the morning when she did a first complete take. She felt she hadn’t warmed up properly and wanted to go for another one. I said, ‘No way: that was astonishing!’ And it was. I recorded the poem after everything else was down.

Wide awake in Ullapool

This has the same melody as ‘Tau’s Lullaby’, but taken a full tone up and at twice the tempo. After that tune had taken shape, I decided one day to do the piece in the form of a Scottish jig or reel. Ullapool is a village on Loch Broom in the Scottish highlands where we spent an unforgettable holiday in September 2001, when Tau was just 8½ months old: hence the title. This piece is really very rough-edged: I played it to Maurice (on mandocello and tin whistles) and Terence and just let them react. I wanted to capture the exuberant spirit of Scottish and Irish music.

Release (The Emancipation of Animals, Part 3)

Part 3 of the trilogy features a traditional Chinese melody that I reharmonised. That is, it’s played alternatively against the original (major) and the new (minor) harmonic framework. Ekkie blows a compassionate, heartbreaking tenor here and Mike really lets rip on guitar.

Autumn in New York

The third of the recordings I did with Jonathan Crossley on guitar and Rob Watson on drums. We had laid down the other two tracks and, as there was still time, then decided to do a third. We’d done this Vernon Duke standard a few times live, and after a quick decision as to how to play it, we cut it live in a single take. As it turned out, it was just over a year after 9-11, so the title obtained a new connotation here. This piece also contains the only bass solo I play on the entire album.

Tau’s Lullaby

I’m not good at remembering lyrics, so while singing to Tau at night, I’d make up melodies that I would hum to him. This tune was the composite of some of these tunes and reflects my love for Celtic music. Ekkie is on alto recorder here: he solos so beautifully on the instrument.

The Magic Farmer/ Sam’s Song/ Heartland

The framing tune is a composition by the late Michael Hedges which Jonathan, Rob and I had played live many times. The second part is Jon’s, and for my ‘bass solo’ (which it isn’t) I reprised my composition ‘Heartland’ – which arguably suits the Midwestern feel of the Hedges original.

21st Century (Rude Mix)

Willem just took the really angular, freaky bits of the original jam and cobbled them together. It does go on a bit, but I really wanted to include this version here, to offset the slower pieces.

Variation on Clair de Lune

A tribute to my father. I’ve talked about recording this in some detail (see ‘One of my tracks’, elsewhere on the website). I personally feel it completes the album.

Little Sandman

Dedicated to Vusi, this is a traditional children’s tune, with some really odd bars. Ekkie, Mike and Brett took to it immediately. I couldn’t remember the whole tune, so I had to phone Edda to sing it to me. We cut it really quickly, so that I wouldn’t forget the melody again. It still makes me smile: a celebration of (continuing) life – which is why it is the last track here.

You’ve lived with this disc since 2002 – would you like to go back and change anything?

I’d probably excise parts of the two remixed tracks and raise the level of David’s perc parts on ‘Grasslands’. There are quite a few blemishes on the album – but there’s nothing else I’d want to change or correct. It captures exactly what I wanted it to express: spontaneity, honest responses, pain and joy. After I finished it, I thought that it didn’t matter now if I never recorded anything again. And I still feel that way.

Since releasing this album, you brought out the compilation disc ‘The Train Not The River’ – have you got another album in the pipeline?

‘The Train Not The River’ also contained three new recordings. I want to record two projects this year. One will be an album of covers, some of my favourite songs of the 50s and 60s, that will feature some of my favourite musicians and singers. The other is going to be a new album of original material. I’ll be recording in Germany in July with my friend Micky: we’ll see how much stuff we’ll be able to lay down.

Thanks for the chat, Kai.