Sharam
The Deep Dish man talks about his contribution to the Graceland remixes project
> Sharam Tayebi’s remix of Paul Simon’s I Know What I Know is a hardhitting, hypnotic track that keeps the African chants of the original but plays with the musical expectations around them.
“I came to America from Iran when I was 14, and I immersed myself in whatever I could get my hands on,” says Tayebi. “First there was The Graduate, which exposed me to Simon & Garfunkel, and when Paul Simon did his solo stuff, I followed it as a music fan. For me, the whole entry was ‘that Chevy Chase song’ [ You Can Call Me Al].” It was a very distinctive album. You don’t get people making such a radical shift in their music now… “I totally understand what he was going for. He’d done everything and had achieved a bunch of amazing stuff, so he’s like, ‘What can I do differently as an artist?’. He wanted to challenge himself, and in the end he went to Africa and used that.
“Nowadays, people are judged not because of how they do it – not because of the content of the album – but just by how successful it is. You could make an unbelievable album, and get inspired by something new, something different, but if it doesn’t become a worldwide hit, people dismiss it. Of course, Graceland was accepted, and that was a beautiful thing.” Every start point is different, but how did you begin working on this remix? “I was extremely honoured and happy to even be asked to do this project, and that made me want to do justice to it. I wanted to make something that DJs could play – to bring the album to the dancefloor and introduce it to a whole new generation of people through dance music.
“So I needed to listen. What did the song tell me? The vocals are telling stories – not out-of-this-world stories, but stories about what happened this week. The star of the track that I chose was these vocal chants behind it. I thought they’d lend themselves really easily to what can be done with dance music.”
It’s nice to hear the chant as the focal point in the remix…
“I wondered what audience would really appreciate this, and I thought Burning Man – that was my focus. Euphoric without being trancey.
“I took the original elements that felt like they lent themselves to the way I make music, and I turned those into a remix. One where you know that this is Paul Simon, and this is my interpretation of his record.”
How should remixes be incorporated as part of a career in music?
“I learned this early on when we were doing remixes for Deep Dish, that there are two kinds of remix: one is direct, when there’s something in the original that you can extract and make beautiful things out of, and one is, basically, turning a turd into something good!
“Early on in your career, you’re doing everything. You take all kinds of turds and turn them into things that people like. Later on, I started to wonder why we were doing it… that we should only be working on things we were inspired by. If something in the track doesn’t speak to me, then I’m not going to remix it, because otherwise I don’t think it’s genuine to the artist asking you to do it.”
I wanted to make something DJs could play – bring it to the dancefloor