Interview:

It’s difficult to talk about spirituality in music without looking like an idiot when you are just a Metal-head. If you’re Albert Ayler or Stravinsky it’s OK, but what can we say? It’s obvious that music connects and talks with that human side we cannot touch. Music works at an emotional level even when it is commercial music. We can’t also forget the main role music played in the beginning of human rituals and still playing today. People like Bach, Biber, Sun Ra, or John Coltrane really felt they had a divine mission. Lots of musicians feel that music is something that uses humans just as instruments. You know, you can think that music is something created by humans, but you can also think that music is the harmony in the universe that takes shape in us through music. We could say that we are a second kind of musician. Music exits by itself. There’s music in nature. Didn’t birds sing before humans came? Didn’t wind blow? Talking about Orthodox, we get a lot of inspiration from our folklore music, which has a lot to do with Christianism. You can’t understand Rock without Blues. But you can’t understand Blues or Jazz without Gospel. And you can’t understand Gospel without religion. Similar situation we have here with Flamenco and processional music. The Flamenco art of singing is divided in “palos” (sticks). One of them is the saeta, an a cappella slow droning song for a Christ or a virgin image. There are also some processional music elements in our music. We’re not Christian believers, but like it or not, our way of playing “spiritually” is very rooted with all those kind of expressions. But don’t get me wrong, I think that there’s also some spirituality in the joy I feel when I spin a ZZ Top CD in my car on a sunny day! Music, spirituality, and emotions can be something much too complicated, but it can be something very simple as well.

“Music connects and talks with that human side we cannot touch.”
– Orthodox