2024-08-07 08:30:43
When the American Devendra Banhart became a big discovery of the singer wave of the time twenty years ago, he co-defined a new lifestyle: its wearers were first called hipsters, later millennials.
The charismatic singer and guitarist managed to span twenty years of songwriting. During an interview with Aktuálně.cz, Devendra Banhart sits in his room in California, with a Buddhist painting and the logo of the punk political band Crass behind him. He talks about politics in music, the title of the latest Flying Wig album and why he likes to return to Prague, where he will perform this Tuesday, August 6, at MeetFactory.
This will be your third concert with us. You have already played at Colors of Ostrava and also in Prague. Did something from the Czech Republic stick out to you?
The musician Michael Gira took me to Prague for the first time, who at the beginning gave me confidence and was the first to release my songs. I never stopped being grateful to him. I’ve been back here a few times since then, always briefly, always wonderful.
Do you know why Prague is my favorite city in Europe? Now I’m not kidding, it really is. Do you know why? Because of the light. No city has such light as Prague. I look forward to. Sure, I know Prague is changing, but I won’t be disappointed. And even if Prague disappoints me, I will not stop loving it.
Your latest album is called Flying Wig. In the dreamy song of the same name, the narrator sings about how he dances naked, finally gets rid of his own head, and ends up with nothing left but love. What does the wig have to do with it and why is it flying?
I got her as a gift and we became close. That wig became my close friend. I hung it on a fishing hook next to the chandelier. I watched her in the morning and wondered where she had been flying during the night. Suddenly I saw a wig that does not need a human head and flies freely like a bird. It struck me as a fitting metaphor for freedom. It’s an important motif of an album that otherwise wants to say something in support of fragile and tender things.
Where do your songs today come from?
In fear. I try to ask myself: What is difficult? What hurts? What is wrong with me and should I? And then I go this way. Of course, not everything is based on fear and pain, something is also based on love, it is connected. But I have experience in therapy and live with an active spiritual practice. Where there is fear, there is importance. Sharing vulnerability is extremely beautiful.
Your songs are full of poetic images, fantasy worlds, the narrators tend to be strange beings. Still: do they somehow reflect today’s America, the state of the country?
You’re asking me about politics in music. Okay, I’ll answer you. But do me a favor. When you interview someone in power, ask them the same thing: Where is the art in your politics? Because no one asks politicians that. At the same time, someone is always nagging at us musicians: Where is the politics in your music? But what about asking politicians: Where is music in your politics? Why isn’t your political work more creative and poetic? I’d like to talk about that.
Of course, there is a simple answer: Every work is political in its own way. But that’s not interesting to me. Although we musicians serve society more than politicians. My answer would ultimately be: It’s all so intensely intimate. When someone lets direct political motives into their work, it’s a personal and delicate thing. He takes risks. It should be talked about carefully.
Twin single from Devendra Banhart’s latest album called Flying Wig. | Video: Mexican Summer Records
You recently performed for the first time in Venezuela, where you spent your childhood and absorbed influences. What was it like and what is the country today for you?
I was swept away by the complete maelstrom of strong and adventurous times, that is, artistically. The young generation, poets, activists, designers, are excellent, sometimes they are followed virtually by a global audience, which means satisfaction in each isolated country. Everyone there grows up in a society that has no support for culture and for artists. In other words, there is no support for free thinking either, the authoritarian regime seems downright dystopian in places, but specifically there is no structure for artistic professions. Anyone who does something does it on their own, with one foot underground. People educate themselves as much as they can. And yet there I was completely drowning in a great environment, among many people doing amazing things. Music as good as in Brooklyn, multimedia as cool as in Berlin, fashion creations as in Japan.
You have provided support to the Venezuelans in a rather unique way.
It should be noted that I have one harmless quirk: I am a completely straight, heterosexual man, but I am extremely fond of wearing women’s clothes. I’ve been comfortable in them since childhood. It has nothing to do with sexuality, I think it reflects the feminine side of my personality. When I put on a dress at the age of five, no one ever shouted at me: in fact I did it instinctively, the only similar phenomenon was Boy George on TV! But I lived in a safe bubble.
No city has such light as Prague, says Devendra Banhart. | Photo: Profimedia.cz
Where do you wear women’s clothes these days, a few years into your forties?
Today, I take them to a friend’s birthday in California, to a performance, there it’s half a costume – but don’t think, only on the street, strangers comment a lot, “what’s that supposed to be, a bearded guy in a dress and a necklace, that’s terrible ” etc. So I understand that safety is a bit of a luxury, it exists only in an exceptional society of loved ones. And now I came to Venezuela: friends there who are trans, or just queer, can’t be sure of safety at all. Not even at your club. They encounter a series of attacks. So playing a concert in Caracas wearing a dress was the least I could do for the amazing young Venezuelans.
What type of people do you want in your band?
That’s a pretty key question. We are like relatives. People from one family. We love each other. We don’t have to say anything when it comes down to it. In a band, you need people you can stand alone with. Actually, it is beyond my discernment whether they are good musicians. I’ve been playing with one of them for over twenty years. With others for a long time too. My best friend is among them. And what is important: we talk, then someone takes the instrument and the conversation continues through the instruments. I need people who can smoothly handle that transformation, go from words to tones and sounds. For life to pass into music as if nothing had happened.
Are you playing the same thing every night on the current tour, or do you want to surprise yourself?
Both. We have a permanent playlist: a different one for each line. But we build more fragile songs on the immediate atmosphere: your momentary energy, the weather of the day, but also the audience seeps into them. What everyone read in the paper that morning. The concert affects it. And we also play on demand: I often mess it up somehow, play maybe three lines from the requested song and then we go somewhere else. Sometimes it annoys someone, but I don’t do it on purpose. I think it’s nice of me to play even just those few verses, don’t you?
So you will play the last album in Prague?
Yes, we will be playing most of the new Flying Wig album and a few old songs as well. Although it is last year’s album, we still want to draw attention to it.
What is it like writing songs for over twenty years? Having eleven albums under your belt and still looking for more?
Do you think I should hit it off? Maybe he should have. Sometimes I look at my guitar and think, What the hell is this weird thing doing in my house? A more serious answer sounds like this: I am an author. I write every day. I’m trying to uncover something that has no end. It is a constant practice. I don’t wait for inspiration: every day is an opportunity to move on. I would say that the artist’s end comes at the moment when he is convinced that he can do it. That it’s all clear to him. You know it: the word amateur originally means lover. One must not lose the love that is at the beginning along the way. To find something in life in which we are able to dissolve, like if a person opens a window and flies out. Whether it’s music, journalism or football. That is rare.
Concert
(Organized by Fource Entertainment)
Devendra Banhart
MeetFactory, Prague, August 6.