Why No Black Tie?
The acoustics of this room, number one, to me, is one of the best for music especially Jazz. Even though we have a small space here, Evelyn, she’s a musician and a musician lover and I’ve noticed how much passion she’s put into this place for music that she likes, i.e. jazz. For a percussionist, you can perform here without a mic and it’ll still sound great.
What made you move to Malaysia?
I first came to Malaysia in 1989 with Sadao Watanabe, a saxophonist from Japan and we performed at PWTC, Kuala Lumpur. There was also a place called the Riverbanks Restaurant at Central Market, which was the only Jazz club in town at that time where I met Lewis Pragasam. So of course I had a great time in Malaysia. I came back the following year and especially in 1991 where I performed with Shelia Majid for her Lagenda tour. I started to perform in Malaysia quite often from then on and always made a point to stop in KL whenever I was touring with Sadao Watanabe; it was back and forth between New York, Japan and KL. Then in 1994, I recorded Puji-pujian with nasyid group, Raihan which was a big album. I ended up going on a tour with them. From them on I began to perform with a lot of the local musicians such as Siti Nurhaliza, Ziana Zain & Zainal Abidin. I still do in fact; next week I’ll be following Shelia Majid to Perth for her performance there. With Siti Nurhaliza, I worked on her latest English album. So there’s a great relationship I have with a lot of the musicians here. Besides that, my wife is Malaysian and we have four children (aged 9 to 17) who all play music and sing at home every single day – a very lively home indeed.
Your work has appeared in albums by some of the biggest names such i.e. Tracy Chapman, Mariah Carey, and Michael Jackson. How was it working with them?
When you live in New York and you’re known (I was working with Mile Davis, Tania Maria, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin), you’ll easily get phone calls to enter the studio and work on tracks. I do miss the life over there but when you come to a certain age, done this for so many years and now that you have a family, which then becomes more important than anything else. That’s why I’m here – my family’s here. I am very happy I did. God knows what I’ll be doing if I were still in NY.
NBT has been around for 13 years. What are your comments/views?
I would like to see musicians give Evelyn the support because without a place like this, it wouldn’t be good for musicians like me or Jose Thomas. We need places like this to express, to showcase our music – a platform. Without our support to Evelyn it will be very difficult for this place to be around for another 13 years.