Gaspar Claus Quotes

I haven't really thought about family in my work. I simply play with people I meet. They mostly become friends. There is something like a great community of people around me, but this does only exist in my mind. All these people are my family, they are not a family. They mostly don't know each other.

Always being on the move has strange consequences. I meet so many amazing people, for a night, or sometimes just a few days. And I know they are not going to become people I communicate with every day. Life becomes very ephemeral.

I've always been scared of becoming something. I fear the fact of jailing myself in any circle or group of people or specific work or specific style of music. I guess it is because I don't want to close myself to other possibilities. But it is also because I witnessed people growing and starting to speak only to those who are similar to them. This makes me run away, people who don't experience difference anymore.

The thing I have really enjoyed lately is to realise I know people, and good people everywhere. What I enjoy is meeting people, staying at their places, discover a city that way. And I found out this can be done because there is always a potential friend anywhere. I have the luck to have old friends who stay friends for eternity. They are my stable basis, my territory.

I was not part of the golden age of the record industry, when musicians and producers were making real money. So I have no nostalgia about that time and I enjoy trying to build a new economy, a more humble one. And since I expect to sell only niche music, I feel quite solid, in this little economy. I know we will not become rich with this, but this is not the goal.

I prefer to feel uncomfortable by participating in projects were I am not the specialist. I am always the one who knows nothing. Playing with jazzmen and knowing nothing about jazz. Playing pop music and knowing nothing about how to structure a pop song. And the funny thing, which still surprises me, is that I continue to be invited to play by new people, from different areas, every day.

The Western music tradition is mostly addressed to a public that has a critical mind, and judges the quality of the writing, of the interpretation. And I think it is a great tradition! It pushes the musicians to always go further, and to never stop pushing the limits and explore what can be done with sounds. And great pieces of art were born from that tradition.