INTERVIEW: KOKAN DIMUŠEVSKI

/, Blesok no. 119/INTERVIEW: KOKAN DIMUŠEVSKI

INTERVIEW: KOKAN DIMUŠEVSKI

I Like It When I Am in Insecure, Deep Waters!


Where does Kokan Dimuševski see himself as an author now? What does he find the dearest, most exciting to work? He certainly would not go back to something that he has left behind — reaching for traditional music, experiments as the album “Okto Ehos”… etc.

DIMUŠEVSKI: When it comes to something “modern” I move far away from it. I have escaped the ethno long ago. There are many bands which, I don’t know why, mess with tradition. The originals are great. If you take some citation at all and you want to do something with it, then do it according to you. Make it live in the 21st century, but be careful not to spoil it. Try to make it an original. Don’t mess where you don’t belong. What id we take electrical instruments now, guitars, synthesizers… and we start singing the folk songs. Why? The original is always the best if we don’t move it from its place in the real way. What does “Jovano, Jovanke…” mean to me and how would I make it. It’s not about being trendy. The essence is to invent the trend. I like it when I am in insecure, deep waters. If you swim in secure waters you relax and you are no good. I want a challenge where I am not certain. At the moment I work on big and difficult projects. I must not speak about them because there are lots of uncertainties, but Dostoyevsky is in the focus of one of them. I am trying to put sound to Dostoyevsky, my favorite writer. Every summer I leaf through his books again. I re-read them for hundreds of times. This is my summer plan. And now I am trying to turn his work into music. What will this music look like? Dostoyevsky can be added Miles Davies, myself, Vaska Ilieva with some melody… but will that be it? So now I am searching for a new expression. And that is the most difficult. Everything is done. Information is transferred with the speed of light. You make a piece, you click on the Internet… and you see that somebody in India has already done it a month ago. You have never heard from him, you don’t know him. The energies are not controlled. At the same time, there are same or similar thoughts at different places. This happened to me in 1979. Then I made electronic music with my humble synthesizers and we recorded it in MRTV, in Studio 6.

Four years later, Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Oxygen” was out… The materials with a date and all necessary information have been recorded at the Phonotheque. Take the record and come to compare it. This is so similar that it really hurts. But I can’t do anything, because he is a big name, and I am just a small composer from Taftalidže in Skopje. He could have listened to me, but I could not, because I had recorded it almost half a decade before his piece. Incredible, but I think that the energies are the same in a different time at different space. Now, you can tell me: “You liar!” but it has an archive seal and it was recorded following all rules.

Do you know how many more windows I need to open? Many more. There is a lot of truth in the saying: Now I know that I know nothing? So, I am absolutely confused. And I have learned enough. I know enough. Even too much for music. But I see that I have not even touched the start of learning music. There is no end to learning. And I always want to open new horizons, new windows. Since I was 18, when I started to live alone and I left the comfort zone. That is what people usually need — to be comfortable. On their own field. So, if I make arrangements for Makfest, I want to do this all of my life, and cry, moan if it is gone. So, I have learned something and now I will move here. But I want to have a challenge. I wrote two songs for Makfest, they won and that’s it… we move forward. The same with Big Band arrangements. I also learned this, I did it and it is enough. Now I wrote a ballet piece. I also made a musical. Now, what haven’t I done before? An opera. So, it happened too. Done. Let’s move forward. I wish that I never have to stay in the comfort zone. Then you are concentrated, then you are nervous… then adrenaline is working. Then you are yourself. When you need to manage in a new field. That is my goal. Otherwise you live your life in a closed glass ball and you feel secure and you think that was the way it was supposed to be; then, you have missed your life.

AuthorLjupčo Jolevski
PhotographyTatjana Rantaša
2018-09-20T12:41:47+00:00 May 12th, 2018|Categories: Sound, Blesok no. 119|Tags: , |0 Comments