Procession
(Zawinul)
"The didgeridoo-type sound is all done with the
vocoder," Zawinul told Keyboard's Greg Armbruster.
Asked how traveling has affected his music, Zawinul
said, "If you're an open person, you learn wherever you
go. I'm not that much interested in other people's
music, but I am interested in other people's behavior.
For instance, when we went to Torino [Turin, Italy], I
went to the marketplace. I walked around in the street,
listening to people arguing and selling, and watching
their reactions. And sometimes you hear this sound, or
spectrum; you don't hear individual voices, you hear it
all together and it makes something. You get the
character of a people rather than the character of their
music. I hardly ever listen to music of other cultures; I
did this thirty years ago. But I do pay attention to
people - how they walk and talk. There is a certain
walk they have in Japan that is different from the walk
in Yugoslavia. It is the rhythm of a people. In
'Procession,' you hear that walk in the bass drum;
that's the human walk."
Of drummer Omar Hakim, Zawinul once said, "I like a
drummer who is like a composer behind the kit,
someone who can play not just time but think
melodically and constantly add ideas to the music. I
remember one time analyzing Omar Hakim's playing
on the recording 'Procession.' During the whole tune,
he played a beautiful little composition. You could
leave the other stuff out and the song would exist;
you'd still have some real music there. That's why we
would always discuss those kind of things. You cannot
write everything down but you can tell a young
musician, 'That's what I need,' and I think Omar Hakim
was one of the best, perhaps the best drummer in the
sense that he tried to make out of a line a composition-
-the way he shaped that line, a rhythm line or
somethin', and came back again. And that's what it
really was. And it's very difficult to do, but when it
comes out it sounds very simple."
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