Assembly

Prior to embarking upon his earlier collaborations, Michael had produced albums of traditional music for the artists involved. This time out, though, Michael’s and Hukwe’s working relationship commenced as they began recording Assembly at Real World Studios with Hukwe’s nephew, Charles Zawose. The Tanzanian musicians performed on chilimba and ilimba (respectively, small and large thumb pianos constructed by Hukwe) and izeze (a fiddle configured for varying numbers of strings). The tracking sessions went smoothly enough, though Michael recalls an unplanned turn of events: “I played Hukwe one track, saying ‘Here’s another one, what do you think?’ He and Charles talked a while. They agreed that they were both ready to play, then they both took their trousers off. What the hell was going on? It turned out that the way that they were playing the thumb pianos, the sound holes had to go over the skin on their legs to get a specific vibrato.”

Richard Evans has produced and engineered many projects at Real World, including Hukwe’s 1996 album Chibite. He had worked on the recording of Black Rock, Michael Brook’s previous collaboration with Djivan Gasparyan, and was a member of the group that toured in support of the album. As co-producer and co-arranger of Assembly, Evans commuted to southern California after principal tracking in England was done, helping Michael complete the tracks at the latter’s home studio. Richard provided important technical and musical input, be it transcribing thumb piano parts (later to be used by the horn section) or aligning the pitch of the Tanzanians’ instruments in tune with Brook’s guitars and keyboards.

Michael recalls: “[Matching instrument tunings] was a big challenge on this project because none of Hukwe’s instruments are tuned to concert pitch, a major logistical hurdle. We had to pitch-shift all of my backing tracks to a particular pair of instruments that he thought would be right for each piece. We’d doctor all the tracks and then Hukwe would record against those. Then, Richard Evans and I had to pitch-shift (usually down to the nearest semi-tone) all of Hukwe’s tracks so that we could do our own overdubs without re-tuning all of the backing tracks. This process took nearly a week in itself, for his instruments and his vocals.”

Michael denies that there was an ordained design for Assembly, stating only that, inspired by the quixotic intensity of P18’s Urban Cuban, he wanted to help Hukwe make an album with its fair share of energy and surprise changes. To hear any among Assembly’s finished tracks is to know how well Messrs Zawose & Brook succeeded in that regard. Commenting on the sudden shifts in mood and rhythm within a song, Michael notes that: “The time signature changes arose from the fact that [Hukwe and Charles] are always playing a kind of three-against-four time, which is fundamental to much African music. It was a challenge, making changes. In the early days of the record, I was concerned that it would turn out as them chanting over a continuing riff. I wanted to create at least an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ section, where they do two distinct vocal passages. It was an after-the-fact thing, with much time spent in post-production, defining those sections. Also, because of the floating nature of what Hukwe and Charles did, there was no obligation to instantly jump back —you could work with one passage for as long as it was interesting.”

Other musicians made essential contributions to the project during post-production. “We had a number of drum loops that Peter Gabriel gave us that were left over from his latest album,” Michael recalls. “Assembly has a big sound, and the drum loops helped a lot. Peter suggested that it might be more inspiring for Hukwe to have better grooves and, man, was he ever right!” Lee Thornberg, who had played brass on the latest Vanessa Paradis album, overdubbed complete horn sections throughout Assembly, and as Michael notes: “It was one of those situations where one person overdubbing was tighter than several people playing as a traditional section.” Two tracks benefit from additional vocals by Zap Mama’s Marie Daulne, whose voice draws a line between singing and skywriting. (When asking her to participate, Michael had no way of knowing that Marie was inspired to sing professionally by one of Hukwe’s recordings, which her mother used to play for her.)

Assembly’s authors are elusive as concern their ambitions for this unusual music. By his own admission, Hukwe Zawose is a traditional musician, albeit one unafraid of experimenting with Western musical forms. Was he concerned that Assembly compromised his Wagogo heritage? In his words, “Composers remain with their original material, unaffected.” Michael Brook, for his part, explored new means to engineer radical changes within a track. Of his latest collaborator, Michael enthuses: “Hukwe’s an unparalleled singer. One of Peter’s main goals in proposing this album was to say to everybody, ‘Hey, check out Hukwe’. It became one of my goals, too.”

This article was written before the sad death of Dr Hukwe Zawose at the end of 2003.