Beat a Go Go

After the concert I interviewed Tomaž O.R., Siddharta 's keyboard player and programmer. He has a well-shaped small beard, no hair, no piercings on his face. He is charming - a warm personality, and a sharp intellect with an esoteric accent. An athletic type, he's into extreme bicycling. He doesn't like to classify anything...oops! He is a real Sagittarius.

The rest of Siddharta are Boštjan M.(drums, percussions), Cene R.(saxophone), Jani H. (bass), Primož B. (guitar) and Tomi M. (vocal, guitar).

I saw Siddharta for the first time at Novi Rock [New rock - the festival for new talents] as a guest star and later I saw a whole bunch of your concerts - the double concert with Apocalyptica, with symphonic orchestra RTV, summer open-air traditional rock festival Roc Otočec, etc..Every concert was something special - a special experience. Do you accommodate your show to the public you expect, or the place you're in, or do you just adapt to the situation of the moment?

Of course we don't like our concerts to be a routine. So, we put some changes in the show frequently - for example, in our repertoire or in setting up on the stage in a different way. Bigger concerts allow more manipulation of all the equipment, but the preparation for these big issues is normally longer - it takes more time. Even the view of different stages where we were playing, and around where they were, leaves a different impression. Actually, the only constant in our concerts is energy, which is rolling from the stage to the crowd and back to the stage.

Rock music is very heterogeneous. The rainbow spreads from metal to pop/rock. How do you describe your music?

Rock in any case. But we don't like any classification. We are creating very energetic, powerful, melodic music, influenced by many other music styles. The shape is never the most important. The form is never guiding us, but the inspiration.

How important are the lyrics for your music?

The lyrics and the music are integrated in our songs. If you read the lyrics separately, they can be really strange - without rhythm or rhyme. They become alive only in the music. But the lyric is a more concrete factor than the music - it draws a picture of the song, the surrounding atmosphere. But still it has enormous interpretive possibility.

Do you think it is necessary to understand the lyrics? Can voice take the function of an instrument?

This is happening all the time in our music - from time to time - an ununderstandable vocal with the voice as an instrument. The most important is music interpretation. The lyrics are in the book with the CD, with the purpose to understand the lyrics easily. This is the practice of most bands. On account of understanding were killed many souls in Slovenian music - and poetry and literature.

Siddharta has the ability to write good lyrics. Did you write poetry or prose before you started with music?

Some of us do this still. Nothing is published yet.

I read somewhere a comparison of Siddharta with Pearl Jam. Do you think there is any similarity going on?

The Seattle scene influenced us. There is a possibility that our vocalist Tomi is the most similar to Eddie and not to Chris [Soundgarden] or Kurt [Nirvana]. I think this comparison comes from this. Also our CD, ID, has a similar energy as Ten of Pearl Jam, but the musical difference between both albums is obvious.

How does the energy work in the concerts? The band energy works on the crowd, the crowd responds and works back on the band - How do you prepare the audience to sing and dance with you in a total party?

I don't know - it is metaphysical. Maybe the answer is that we don't pretend and we don't try to be something that we aren't - we don't climb down from the stage, etc. We are just what we are. This is something that the crowd feels and then they leave to us.

You are the most popular group in Slovenia. You've sold a huge amount of CDs - the people from all generations come to your concerts. From where does this success come - from work, talent, destiny?

All this together, all this very much. When we were ready, at the right time the right opportunity appeared. It happened with the reprint of our CD, ID. I think we fill up the music vacuum which came after Slovenian independence. From this time we are working as an institution. We were never resting on our laurels.

On concert you work very well together - it looks like you enjoy playing with each other.

Of course, we are a band, not workmen who are in the same unit because of business. The band first means understanding each other, accepting each other, patience, tolerance... in such company we can feel good and enjoy, not only the playing, but everything that happens to us.

Every Siddharta concert, album, and photo contains a powerful inside tension and drama. It must be very exhausting to follow this energy during the concert, especially for your frontman Tomi. Is there some rational explanation for this, or on the stage you simply "drop in"?

The stage is like a volcano from which erupt contrasts of different feelings and energies. A live concert is like a circle of many levels of energies - from wild animal energy to a state of calm - a smooth surface, with deep emotions and than again back to the beginning of the circle - back to the wild energy. On the stage meet the rational and irrational worlds. On one side you are totally focused on the concert but at the same time you yield to the music and absolutely "drop in". On the stage we become really alive. The stage is a need.

Rock lyrics were, at the beginning, about love and pleasures. Neil Young was one of the first who started writing about stuff from life experience and protest songs - songs of social criticism. Now there are a lot of hugely fascinating rock lyrics. Some songs have become anthems for whole generations of people. Do you think that a part of literary potential has moved from books to the spheres of rock and rap?

Definitely, but here we are again at classification. Miles [Davis] said that there exists only good music and music which is not music at all. I think that this is true for all fields of art. I think that there exists only art and different manners of how to express it, whatever it is - music, literature, painting...

I know of stoner-rockers called Stinking Lizaveta - they have the name after a character from Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. Who is the Hesse fan in your band?

Nobody is particularly a fan, but we have all read Siddharta, and some of us more than this.

Are the members of Siddharta working on other projects?

Bass player Jani is a long time in this job and he is a very well known musician. He is in the band Elevators and Rotor. I was playing with the group Roze zla before Siddharta and now I am in a group with the working title Drap. Saxophone player Cene is a regular guest at jazz appearances.

Has Siddharta changed over the years?

Of course. From four people the band became six. We changed our bass player. I can count some more changes....

Did you change?

Every person does. What's important is not to change for the worse. For now we are on the good way.

In September 2003, Siddharta took the stage in a big stadium concert in Ljubljana with orchestra and dancers, on three stages. There were around 30,000 people from all over Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Austria... It was the first time that a Slovenian band had sold out a stadium concert. A lot of people waited outside the stadium. The whole city was in the mood of the concert.

I was standing somewhere on the left side of the spectacle, mostly under the stage where the orchestra was. Yes, the stage in the middle with Siddharta was like a volcano - people were singing the songs along with the band and orchestra. I didn't know what I was listening to - the musicians, or the out-of-tune singing of the crowd. They were singing about love in dreams. It was like the crowd was under the spell of some other world - a world of dreams and symbols and myths, where everything is possible.... And the music was floating over the crowd as their collective dreams.

Siddharta in stadium concert, Ljubljana, September 2003 (photo by Matjaž Sekne)

official website: http://www.siddharta.net