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Jazz guru vows to blow the blues away
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March 20, 2009
The acid jazz band Incognito will be at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival this year. Founder and leader Jean-Paul "Bluey" Maunick spoke to Karen Rutter about the gig...
When you've released 13 albums, toured the greatest cities on the globe, and been remixed by some of the hottest DJs on the decks, how do you stay fresh?
If you're Jean-Paul "Bluey" Maunick, founder and leader of the acid jazz band Incognito, you do it by believing in the positive power and purpose of music.
"I really feel that music has the ability to speak to people's hearts, to raise one's consciousness and to help us engage with one another," the guitarist and singer explains.
"And it's a two-way process - as musicians, we get nourished and fed by the interaction we have with our audiences. It's not about going through the motions - it's about making contact. That's what keeps me going."
With more than 25 years in the business, the veteran performer knows what he is talking about. Born in Mauritius in 1957, Bluey moved to the United Kingdom when he was 10 and gravitated towards the funky side of things.
"My first concert was seeing Jimi Hendrix live at the Isle of Wight festival. I got into Weather Report, Santana, all these cool dudes. I loved their sound," he says.
Bluey started to play bass, and then guitar. He liked what the jazz guys were doing, but he also liked what his DJ friends were playing.
In the early 1980s he and several others - the Brand New Heavies, Jamiroquai - started to pull the two styles together, and acid jazz was born. Bluey formed Incognito and they released their first album, Jazz Funk.
While the band personnel has constantly shifted over the years - "it's more like a collective," explains Bluey - the sound has retained its essential groove on 12 successive albums and countless world tours.
"I love the term acid jazz, it perfectly describes what we do," says Bluey. "Sure, we can do smooth jazz, we can do serious jazz - but what we like best is to get people up and dancing. A show of ours isn't complete until we get everybody on the floor."
When he was a young boy in Mauritius, Bluey remembers being inspired by the musicians who played on the beaches.
"We had no radio in the house, so we'd go down to the seaside to hear these guys. They always made people happy. I decided that I wanted to do this - I realised it was my purpose."
A quarter of a century on, and Bluey still feels the same enthusiasm. "For me, and the people I play with, touring and performing is a way of life, not just something we do when there's a new album and we have to promote it. We're like travelling gypsies, and wherever we go is a musical journey. We give what we have, and the people lift our spirits."
He reckons that even in the current "credit crunch" people are still turning to music and culture for inspiration.
"We've just performed in Indonesia, Dubai and Germany, and the response is all the same. You'd think that people would stop buying tickets for a show, but it's the opposite.
"I think that's human nature - when we're down or worried, we look to art, to sound, to good books to awaken a sense of awareness and beauty."
Ultimately, Bluey thinks that the practice of just coming out on the circuit to punt CDs is a cop out. "That's not engaging, that's paint-by-numbers," he laughs. For Incognito's Cape Town visit he promises a show that will "lift hearts".
"We'll be a 10-piece, including Francis Hylton on bass, Pete Ray Biggins on drums, Matt Cooper on keyboards, Joy Rose and Tony Momrelle on vocals, a brass section and myself," he says.
"We'll give our fans what they'd like to hear, and we hope to make new audiences happy. Definitely, we guarantee you'll all be dancing," he smiles. Now that sounds like a positive promise.
Incognito will perform at the Cape Town International Jazz festival on April 3. Single-day passes are R330 and weekend passes are R485. There will be an extra fee of R25 to attend concerts on the Rosies stage. To book, call Computicket at 083 915 8000.
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