Q&A
The Penguin Café leader reflects on his progressive education, keeping his father’s musical legacy alive and how journeying into the Antarctic shaped his music.
Antarctic expeditions, famous relatives, dyslexia and prog are some of the topics discussed with Penguin Cafe’s Arthur Jeffes.
Arthur Jeffes has been leading chamber folk outfit Penguin Café for more than a decade now. Conceived in the spirit of the Penguin Café Orchestra, the similarly minded experimentalists founded in the early 70s by his late father Simon, the band have since issued four captivating albums in their own right. The latest, Handfuls Of Night, has its roots in a BBC documentary in which Jeffes was part of a team that attempted to recreate explorer Robert Scott’s epic journey across the Antarctic.
Was there a sense of inevitability about continuing your dad’s musical legacy?
My dad’s music constituted the majority of my musical education. I grew up pretty dyslexic, so when I was very little we had all these instruments around the house and I was allowed to play the piano. Music was my go-to thing. When it came to starting this new generation of Penguin Café, I was comfortable that I’d inherited enough of his sensibility to be able to continue his music and hopefully explore new areas.
What other music shaped you?
My dad and I would listen to certain music during the car drive to school, for six months at a time, like Crawfish Fiesta [1980] by Professor Longhair, the New Orleans pianist. It was a case of learning from the percussion and rhythm section, discussing it and talking it through. So there was this sort of non-formal understanding of music. I knew my dad was kind of a minimalist and that led me to Philip Glass and John Cage. My dad was obsessed with him. He had a telegram from John Cage framed on the wall of his study.
“I WAS COMFORTABLE THAT I’D INHERITED ENOUGH OF MY FATHER’S SENSIBILITY TO BE ABLE TO CONTINUE HIS MUSIC AND HOPEFULLY EXPLORE NEW AREAS.”
Was prog part of your musical education? Definitely. I had lots of King Crimson and that led into Quicksilver Messenger Service. They were my absolute go-to band for years from the age of 13 or 14. I’m a big believer in leaving the door as wide open as possible when it comes to exploring new stuff. My manager’s dad is Rick Wakeman’s musical director. So just occasionally I’ll come across things and go, “I know this!” I used to listen to Yes as a teenager.
How does your approach to music differ from your dad’s?
I think I end up probably being a little more cinematic, but we share the same writing process, in that you start with a musical idea, you get into the studio and then it becomes something else. It’s like that musique concrète/Pierre Schaeffer thing, where you start carving into the fabric of the sound.
There’s a great back story to Handfuls Of Night. Can you trace it through to the 2006 BBC documentary, Blizzard: Race To The Pole?
Yeah, we were out there for about three months, recreating Scott’s expedition. Walking through endless expanses of nothing is a really musical way to spend time, because you end up playing everything in your head. In the absence of sound, you can almost convince your brain that you’re hearing stuff. After a month of that I started trying to write new things and realised I was most interested in was creating musical landscapes. It was during that trip when I decided to do music full-time, so when I got home I started doing my Masters in Composition at Goldsmiths.
At what age did you become aware that you had a familial link with Scott?
I guess I had always known. When I was little I would go to Slimbridge [in Gloucestershire], the bird sanctuary, that was started by my great uncle and my grandfather’s half-brother, Peter. They had the same mother, but Peter’s father was Scott of the Antarctic.
Prior to the Greenland experience, were your sights set on something else?
At university I did archaeology and anthropology, but I’d kept my hand in, musically, the whole time. My dad had always said that, while it was by no means guaranteed, music was a really good career. And if you were lucky it might become part of your life. Then while I was at university my dad died [December 1997], so I came back because there was the studio, the Penguin record label and the publishing stuff. There was a certain amount to be done, so I was surrounded by that. I started doing some music for TV ads and other things, and playing live a bit, but not really committing. So it was that time in Greenland that moved things along.
How did your Polar experience shape the sound of Handfuls Of Night?
The core of the record is four pieces that I wrote for a concert for Greenpeace in London last year. They were campaigning to protect the environment around Antarctica, so I got in touch to find out more. There’s obviously this literal link between penguins and the Penguin Café Orchestra, so I started writing pieces based on the four species of penguin that live in Antarctica: Gentoo, Adélie, Emperor and Chinstrap. There’s a point where you stop dealing with the real thing and wander back into an imaginary version of the Antarctic. That suddenly became a place to locate the album, because you’ve got this idea of a cinematic, dreamlike world where the penguins are going on adventures and facing challenges. It was about finding the differences between certain penguins that would best lend themselves to being expressed musically. You might get quite frenetic activity on land, for instance, followed by diving into the sea, where they’re incredibly graceful underwater. That gives you a really nice transition right there.
What about long-term goals for Penguin Café?
I love doing it and at the moment it works. It’s obviously a very fine line to tread, continuing my dad’s work and that of his band, all the people who’ve worked on the thing over the years, so there’s a responsibility there. It would be terrible if we were flogging a dead horse, but it feels very creative and respectful.
Handfuls Of Night is out now via Erased Tapes. See www.penguincafe.com for more information.