Early birds treated to a musical feast by Radiohead
International musicians join Jonny Greenwood for a compelling opening
Fans arriving early for Radiohead’s emotionally charged shows at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena this week might be pleasantly surprised to discover the British band’s guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, opening the evening alongside a slew of Northern Indian master musicians and an Israeli ex-pat.
Junun, the group Greenwood and poet-composer Shye Ben Tzur put together for the 2015 album of the same name, is a cross-cultural utopian behemoth, marrying devotional Qawwali, Muslim Roma, Manganiar and Sufi musical traditions with wedding brass, western guitars and Hebrew, Hindi and Urdu poetry. It’s a joyous alchemy that, upon arrival, might present as contrary to Radiohead’s gloomy art rock. But a closer listen provides much to arouse the adventurous ear.
“We don’t want the music to come off like a National Geographic recording,” Ben Tzur says over the phone, speaking somewhere on Highway 401between Montreal and Toronto.
Onstage at TIFF Bell Lightbox Wednesday, Greenwood recalls marvelling at how lead trumpeter Aamir Bhiyani channelled Miles Davis’ style without ever hearing of the legend. “It was like playing in James Brown’s band,” he laughs.
Growing up in Israel in the late 1990s, Ben Tzur could do little to avoid the crunchy chords of Radiohead’s breakout anthem “Creep,” but since his musical pilgrimage to Northern India at age 19, he’d not kept up with the group’s sonic evolution. So when a friend called out of the blue as Ben Tzur was preparing to play a show in Kolkata, saying Greenwood had heard a cover of one of his songs in Israel’s Negev desert and wanted to talk, the singer was more than a little confused.
“We spoke and he was very curious about the way I approach music,” Ben Tzur recalls. “Then when we came to the U.K. we invited him to play at the concert. I can tell you, the man’s a genius.”
After the show, all involved agreed there was something magical in the making.
“Jonny makes the composition shine,” Ben Tzur boasts.
Not long after, all involved decamped to the Mehrangarh Fort in Rajasthan, India, where Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich set up a makeshift studio, complete with a natural, birdfilled echo chamber under the main floor.
Greenwood asked his friend and frequent collaborator, filmmaker P.T. Anderson, to come along and capture the experience, while Ben Tzur gathered a Northern Indian super group mostly made up of devotional Muslim players, which he dubbed The Rajasthan Express. Together, Greenwood and Ben Tzur, who put together Junun’s compositions, set up guidelines for the recording: brass would be the sound of the album; the only western instruments should be their guitar, bass and Greenwood’s computer.
In lieu of western drums and strings, they found Indian equivalents in Manganiar music and the imported wedding bands of British rule.
All the artists, which also included Greenwood’s wife, the Jewish-Arab Israeli visual artist Sharona Katan, agreed to work together while not interfering with one another’s process, lunch gatherings aside.
As documented in Anderson’s 2015 documentary, when they emerged three weeks later, they produced a stunning piece of musical and artistic homogeneity.
“From a cultural and religious point of view, it’s interesting, and we’re all aware of the unfortunate political circumstances,” Ben Tzur says of Junun’s diverse personnel. “But the natural situation is, it doesn’t matter (what anyone’s faith is). If you feel somebody playing, if he’s a Christian, Hindu or Jewish, it’s just matters of the heart, basic humanity.”
Junun hadn’t played together in nearly two years when Ben Tzur got another surprise call. Radiohead was heading out on a European, South American and Israel tour, and Greenwood was hoping to reunite the band to open.
Ben Tzur jumped at the opportunity, and the chance to test out his theory of basic humanity. It came at him head on when Radiohead’s tour pulled into Israel last summer amid protests by the BDS movement, the campaign promoting a boycott against Israel for its treatment of Palestinians.
“The strange thing about that is, you call people to come together, doesn’t really matter where they come from, to share a moment of humanity. And you can have the choice of doing that and basically fill your life, and the life of your surroundings, with these feelings. Or you can decide to take political agendas and you want to form barriers, maybe because you believe there’s injustice in the world and you think the solution to that is to create more division,” Ben Tzur says. “For me, that doesn’t really (make sense). I think it’s quite the opposite.”
“Almost all the group are all religious Muslims. All very much believers. When we play, some of the songs are praises for the prophet Muhammad and some are for Krishna. Without really seeing the difference between the prophets as such, but seeing the unity of the believer. This is where we come from.”
Now heading into the third leg of the tour, Ben Tzur says the experience has hardened his belief, as well as his faith that Radiohead is “one of the best bands in the world.”
“It’s not that you need to build the bridges, you need to create the vision,” he says. “I’m more interested to put into my life things that are bringing people closer together over dividing them.”