Billy Goes to Durban, by Derek Gripper

Billy Goes to Durban

by Derek Gripper

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Leah Roseman This inspired collection of Derek's creations is one of my favourite of his albums! It has warmth, depth and whimsy, all with a beautiful guitar palette. Favorite track: Seeing Nobody.

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Full Digital Discography

24

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Get all 24 Derek Gripper releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of BALLAKÉ SISSOKO AND DEREK GRIPPER, Lost Time - Bach's First Cello Suite, Sleep Songs for My Daughter, 32 Minutes in a Boston Living Room (Live to Cassette), Billy Goes to Durban, One Night on Earth: Live in 2021, Arvo Pärt, Guy Buttery and Derek Gripper Live in Cape Town, and 16 more. , and , .

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1.	Ayo 05:06	info	buy track
2.	Seeing Nobody 05:00	info	buy track
3.	Sissie My Kind 06:26	info	buy track
4.	Cederberg 04:07	info	buy track
5.	Bullfight 03:08	info	buy track
6.	Blue Light 04:48 video	info	buy track
7.	Photobook : Lindokuhle 04:31	info	buy track
8.	Risk 05:00	info	buy track

about

It was just after internal travel restrictions were lifted in South Africa. My children and I made the fifteen hour drive from Cape Town to a small farm next to a forest where my good friend Guy Buttery was living. The plan was to record a follow up to our live album in Guy’s new home studio. I brought along a Nagra reel-to-reel recorder with a box of old five inch tape reels that had recently been given to me. When I arrived the first thing Guy and I did was pull out the tapes and wind one onto the recorder. We pressed play. The tape welcomed us to Durban stadium in 1974, to a sermon by the American preacher Billy Graham, given to over seventy thousand people in Apartheid South Africa. Apparently he refused to come unless he could speak to a mixed audience, I wonder what the outcome was (if you were there email me!). He talked a lot about universal love. We thought that was pretty wild. I’d just brought this tape all the way to Durban, and here it was welcoming me to a Durban of fifty years ago (not to mention the weirdness of the occasion itself). We had a good laugh and put the tape aside for when our sessions started. Billy was going to be recycled.

Three days later, after some beautiful writing sessions surrounded by trees and greenery for days, Guy was called away to see to his father who was very ill. I soon heard from him that he wasn’t going to be able to return and I realised that Billy and I were going to have to continue our journey alone. I set up two mics, got the tape rolling, and started playing. Three tracks, two based on a 2009 recording I made with the late great Alex Van Heerden (Ayo and Sissie my Kind), and a third that I had used as the basis for an arts publication called “Risk” commissioned by the A4 gallery.

Back in Cape Town I was visiting Milestone Studios in the centre of the city every few weeks to lay down tracks in a more pristine environment. The track Seeing Nobody was one of the first to go down, a track I had written while alone in an apartment in New York City, some years ago now, after missing a flight back home. This song arrived after some days of late night playing, and mornings walking around the city.

There are also two spontaneous improvisations on the record. The first was made for a photobook exhibition by South African photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa. Sobekwa’s beautiful series of photos about his lost sister was playing on repeat on my laptop, at my kitchen table, and the record button was flashing red. The piece, Lindokuhle: Photobook, is what happened, largely unchanged from that one take, all the material arriving in response to his images.

The second improvisation on the record was made in the Cederberg while I was staying in the mountaintop hermitage of my friends Marc and Katherine. They have a gravity fed fountain next to a pond filled with tadpoles (you can hear them both in the background of the recording), and I sat with the endless mountains surrounding me on all sides, not another house in sight, just mountains for miles. The idea was simple and was inspired by a phonecall I had just finished with an Alexander Technique teacher called Barry: play a phrase and wait. In silence. For the next phrase. Then play again. Eventually I had a thirty minute recording, with a lot of silence. When I took out the silences, the recording now called Cederberg was what was left.

Blue Light is the studio version of the composition I made for the New York Guitar Festival’s tribute to the late great classical guitarist Julian Bream. This was a piece written on paper, a little bit each day over a period of two weeks. I started with a tuning developed by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, and slowly, mark by mark, built up the piece, working on it only a few moments each day.

Then there was another studio session at Milestone, this time recording a short sketch made, as part of a larger series, inspired by ink works by Pablo Picasso, of bullfights. Simple, expressive, dramatic and energetic, these works encapsulate the directness that I wish for in guitar music, this instrument of so many colours and shades, but which is really just a very simple device designed to amplify the sound of stretched strings.

This is my first completely original recording since I released Kai Kai in 2009. Three tape recordings erasing Billy Graham, two studio recordings, a home recording, and a mountain top field recording. Billy Goes to Durban, my sixteen studio album, released by Platoon on the 24th of September 2021.

credits

released September 24, 2021

Cover design is by Toby Attwell of TwoShoes
Mastering is by Murray Anderson of Milestone Studios
Dolby Surround mix by Simon Ratcliff of Sound and Motion Studios
Tape recordings by Derek Gripper
Mixing and editing by Derek Gripper
Produced by Derek Gripper
All compositions by Derek Gripper
All compositions published by Platoon.

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about

Derek Gripper Cape Town, South Africa

Derek Gripper creates original music from his diverse influences: Toumani Diabaté, Salif Keita, Arvo Part, and Egberto Gismonti. Derek has also spent many years performing and recording his own translations of Bach’s violin and cello music, infusing his interpretations with his lessons from the oral traditions of Africa. ... more

derekgripper.com

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