INTERVIEW: The Turbans (May 2018)

If Brexit is the lingering malignancy of our time, The Turbans may just be its most bracing artistic riposte. This collective of roving musicians from right across the world knock out a ripping hybrid of Baltic folk, klezmer and Middle Eastern rhythms – all garnished with the sort of outlandish solos and time-signature shifts which even a studied prog act would struggle to pull off. This would be impressive enough were it the work of just two or three people. There’s eleven of them.

Having honed their chops on the global busking trail over the last decade, the group opted to start from scratch for their recent debut LP, whose irrepressible energy and joie de vivre casually offers up two fingers to disgruntled Leave voters everywhere. Listen with an open heart, as they suggest in the album booklet, and you’ll get swept along by its giddy momentum even when the language doesn’t compute.

I crammed into their road-worn VW bus before a gig in Coventry earlier this year to chat with duel shredders Max Shchedrovitzki and Miroslav Morski (a star in his homeland as frontman of Django Ze), along with the band’s co-founders, Oshan Mahony and Darius Thompson.

Okay! So, er… tell me what you do in the band…?!

MAX: I’m Max; I’m playing the electric oud, which is like a lute, electrified. It’s a middle-eastern instrument: Turkish, Iranian, Iraqi, Egyptian… I used to play acoustic in the band, but as we grew together over the years, more and more people came in, and it’s just difficult to balance – it’s got a flat piece of wood with some strings on it, you have to not do a “wiggle dance” onstage… [laughs]. And some of the songs, I’m the composer of them.

There’s eight of you here today, from all over the world – tell me a little bit about your own heritage.

MAX: I was born in Belarus, very close to the Chernobyl disaster area, about 100km. It has affected my playing, if you want to know…! Later on, my family emigrated to Israel, so I grew up there – and now I’m kind of living between India and the UK.

So how did you end up in the band?

MAX: The first time I went to India, they were already kind of ‘known’ in one place [laughs]… that they are a crazy gypsy band full of musicians, and loads of people told me when I was travelling: “You have to go there to Goa, south of India, you have to meet these Turbans, you have to play with them, it’s so fun – it’s like a big collective, everybody’s going crazy about them…” And I was at one point where I was like: I have a guitar on my back, and I’m just going to follow the music wherever. So of course, I went with it – I met them and it was amazing, they were playing some gigs already… they had an oud player, so my first gig with The Turbans was on triangle! But it was sort of this feeling of, “Everybody come on the stage, we’ll make a big party – if you know how to play, we’ll teach you some songs and just perform with us”… that was a kind of really nice vibe there, at the beginning. Then later on, as I started to also get into this music, this gypsy, klezmer, Balkan and Turkish stuff, the previous oud player left…

(Enter Morski and Oshan; introductions ensue)

We were just going over individual heritage. Whereabouts do you guys hail from?

OSHAN: Actually, I grew up in Worcestershire [laughs], so not very far away! But I’m half-Arabian, so there’s that Eastern thing in my family and I guess that’s there. But actually, I’m local.

I’ve gotta say – fucking knockout record.

MORSKI: Did you have a listen?

Oh yeah! It’s one of those things that just landed on my doorstep one day to review - I had no idea who the band was or what to expect, then I put it on and was just like: “This is different. This is interesting!” So I love the record, and can’t wait to see it live – but part of me got tickets for the gig tonight out of sheer curiosity. I’ve been in this venue before; I just want to see…

OSHAN: How you can fit so many people in one place! Yeah, we were having a little bit of trouble with that already, I think… Max, you were on a chair for a little bit today…?

MAX: I was trying to compartmentalise our appearance to save some space by just going to stand on the chair…

OSHAN: And I’m [standing] on the piano at the moment…

MAX: …So the violin player can have some bow space.

Wait - you’re not actually going to go on that tiny little stage, are you?

OSHAN: Yeah, somehow! We’re in the band, so…

MORSKI: We have to do it!

OSHAN: Somehow it will work…

MAX: We kind of have our dynamic of… for example, if Cabbar, the Darbuka player, if he’s not in front… he needs to be in front, he needs to be in touch with the crowd. It’s not like this stage is massive, but it works – like, [we’ve played] many shows, and we’ve found some kind of formal identity we prefer to keep. If it ain’t broken, don’t try to fix it.

So, what’s your background? How did you end up in the band?

MORSKI: Myself? I came from Bulgaria; I was born in Bulgaria. I spent some time here already, about eight years, then went back to my country. And one day, I received a call – I was invited, basically! It’s been a great honour. I’m the one who was officially invited.

MAX: It was matchmaking, actually.

MORSKI: I received a letter. “Dear Mr Morski – we would like to have your services for our band”. So they got me a flight ticket!

Is that actually true?!

OSHAN: I’ve no idea! [Laughs]

MAX: Basically, we went to a matchmaker…

OSHAN: A music matchmaker in London.

A bit like the musicians’ version of Tinder?

OSHAN: Yeah - exactly, yeah! Sometimes we say that when people ask us how we met.

MAX: We were thinking about making an application like this, where you come to a town, you wanna jam, and you’re like: “Trombone player!” [swipes left] No… “Ooooh, electric oud…!”

OSHAN: I actually met someone who was doing something like that!

MORSKI: Personally, when I was playing with The Turbans, I got the record number of gigs in one day. Six gigs!

OSHAN: On his first ever day!

So, practically, then, how does this actually work? I notice you have individual writing credits on each of the songs – is it someone bringing in the basic structure and then everyone works on the arrangement to drag it in different directions?

OSHAN: Yeah, exactly like that – and I think that’s the magic of the band. It’s like everyone has their thing – their style, and their vibe – but when we play together, it just melds very easily; whether it’s luck, or just many years of playing together, we have a feeling for each other.

MAX: It was different ways, as well – when the band started, Darius and Oshan were travelling mostly, and busking; going through Istanbul and Athens and Crete, and they met musicians, like: “This is a good busking tune. Let’s learn this and repeat it many many times”… until it got ‘Turbanised’! There’s still some tunes like that that we play until this day. And then there’s some tunes that Morski arrived with, as you said, some songs that were in his repertoire and he showed them to us… over time, they also got Turbanised, but we like to call them ‘the Morski songs’. And then there was the whole process of the album, which was completely different to us, because it was us coming together with the intention of making new things we haven’t played yet…

OSHAN: …For a record, as well.

MAX: No cover stuff of, like, folk stuff… like, The Real Book of Klezmer, or Turkish music – none of that! Then we would come up with songs together, or some people would bring songs and teach them in a very intense way: we’d only have ten days to decide on the songs, learn the songs, practise them, get them ready for recording. And that was the first time we did that. We’re gonna play some of those songs tonight – I guess you’ll hear some of the stuff that’s very raw and rough, which is from the old days, and then some stuff which is like: “Okay, we’re making an album – we’re not going to repeat just one tune thirty times and finish”, like in a busking session. So… A-part, B-part, C-part, D-part, F-part, and so on!

I can’t imagine there’s much room for a lot of ego in that process. 

OSHAN: I think that it’s the opposite! [Laughs] It’s all ego! It’s nine egos, all going forward… No, I don’t think it’s like that, but I do feel that every member of the band is like a lead musician in themselves. So there’s two ways to look at it: either everyone has some equality in one way, but the equality is also that everyone shines, and everyone goes forward and gives their vibe.

[Enter Darius, passing on the hunt for a new violin string]

We were just talking about ego. You two got the band together – who’s got the biggest ego in the band?

DARIUS: We’ve shared our egos out to everybody else, so…

OSHAN: We’ve split it!

DARIUS: …And then it divided and increased, so we’ve got our original portions back.

OSHAN: I was saying that everyone is sort of a lead person, everyone brings something – but because of that, we’re all on the same level. It is a different style.

DARIUS: Yeah, it makes it special. It’s hard to manage, but it makes it really, really unusual.

I kind of have no idea what to expect later.

OSHAN: Neither do we!

MORSKI: Did you bring extra knickers…?

Always, sir… So, you’ve been playing together and touring for seven years now, but this is the first album you’ve recorded as a band – was it important to you to really hone that chemistry and get your best line-up together before committing music to tape?

DARIUS: Well, a band exists really to record something, doesn’t it?

OSHAN: …But we hadn’t.

DARIUS: Yeah, we hadn’t done before – we were a live band, so it was a real journey to try to find a way to record something that we’d be happy with as a representation of what we’d done; what we’d lived for nine years, because it’s our whole life put into a recording, in a way. Our whole life as a band – I mean, we’ve got other lives, I was a kid once…!

MORSKI: I beg to differ!

OSHAN: But as a band, I felt we reached a point of [where] we had played good music with good people, we’d played all over places and stuff like that - but to keep on growing we needed to create something together that would be long-lasting. And also, it wasn’t that we wanted to make just any old album; we wanted to make a really fucking good album. We put in a lot of energy to enable us to go to another level, to be able to really show the world what we’re doing. So let’s see what happens! [Laughs] I don’t know if it’s gonna work…!

You recorded 30 songs for this album, which have been whittled down to the ones included here. How did you decide which ones made the cut? It is a really strong set of tracks.

MAX: Well, there was a system! There was a democratic vote, and three options: yes, no, and a maybe. And this way, we kept us debating for three extra days…

OSHAN: Yeah, we lost those three days!

DARIUS: The three options were argue, argue longer, argue longest!

OSHAN: Nah, it wasn’t that bad…

MAX: We had ten days - we rented out a place in Northumberland next to Hexham, where Oshan grew up…

OSHAN: …where I was born, actually.

MAX: It’s an old, how you say, mansion…?

OSHAN: It’s a farmhouse.

MAX: They had space for us there, we had a cook with us… we basically moved in, and our goal was to come out with a selection of songs which we were later on going to record as the album. So, each… not every person, but some people brought their own compositions which they’d either been playing for a while but The Turbans never played them, and some of them were made especially for the album. And then there was this process of, I would propose four songs, Morski would propose six ones, then another guy would propose twelve songs… some selection period, some voting was made… then intense training…

Fight it out…?

MAX: No, not really – like, we’d divide into groups, then three people would work on that song, and two people would work on that song if it’s more of a violin-oriented tune… But, for example, if I wrote it, I’d sit with Darius and show him the violin, then later on I’d write out the chords… like it was Musical Camp! Musical Camp for ten days, without any instructions… [laughs]

The song that really got me was ‘Sinko Moy’- when that choir rises up in the chorus, it’s absolutely transcendent, and it conveys a feeling that goes way beyond language.

MORSKI: There’s a movie documentary based on the song. Actually, that’s how… the movie follows the development of the creation of the song.

Where can I see that?

MORSKI: They’re playing it for festivals.

MAX: It’s not really for commercial uses – it’s doing presentations for different festivals. We just played for the launch of the movie, about a month ago. So there’s a Bulgarian filming crew – the director the movie is a good friend of Morski, she grew up with him…

MORSKI: …It’s amazing. People were thrilled, in the room – people were laughing and crying… very humbling.

MAX: While we were doing our thing in Northumberland, there was a Bulgarian filming crew following us, and following Morski on other stuff… Basically, the film is showing Morski as a focus, but inside The Turbans, and also inside his life as a musician. And it’s also connected very much to the theme of the song – like, about separation from your loved ones, migrating to different places, providing for a family as a musician… all of this stuff is very much in the song, and in the movie as well. And the title of the film is Sinko Moy.

MORSKI: “My Darling Son”.

As much as I’m able to assess the lyrical content based on the liner notes and the press release, it seems determinedly humanistic in tone and subject. Was that a specific decision that you wanted to really tap into that area and avoid ‘politics’ in a wider sense?

MORSKI: It’s very, uh… it’s not direct. The lyrics are not direct. It’s very symbolistic in a way, because you’re talking to nature: the elements, then you’re talking to a force to take you away, then you’re talking to the wind to bring you back.

So you made the decision specifically to keep the politics of the situation [the song was apparently inspired by Max and Morski’s separation from their families following visa issues] out of it?

MORSKI: Yeah, it is very personal. I’m trying to not make it too naked, of course.

MAX: I think the subtext of the song, as I understand it from Morski’s lyrics, is bringing forward those issues. But the text plainly as you read it is about his connection – I would say, in a way, lost connection – and then regain connection with his son. So this is what the song is about. Of course, if you think it through to a more deeper level, you can ask yourself all the geopolitical reasons which are actually creating the situation – but the song is about longing for your loved ones.

So this is what I find really interesting: it’s not a political record per se - and yet, it seems to me that the band’s very existence in the current climate presents a political challenge. We’re having this conversation in the week of a full-blown row about immigration and Home Office deportation targets. Music is obviously a hugely unifying force, but is it a struggle to rise above the wider context sometimes?

MAX: We didn’t mean for this to happen – it wasn’t, like, auditions and everybody has to be from a different place! [Laughs]

MORSKI: It’s natural, what happened.

MAX: Yeah – we’re all kind of based in London, and also the band started in India; both of these places are international, metropolitan areas that attract people who can bring something to the table, you know? People that feel in the world like: “What am I doing in my own country? I’m a bit stuck here, I have so much to offer – it doesn’t matter if it’s music, or anything – I should be doing this in London, I should be travelling in India, I should have these amazing adventures”. We’re all free spirits in our essence, and also we feel like our passports and the borders are not confining us. Whatever we’re doing, we can do it good in our homelands and we can do it good in other places.

MORSKI: But in here, they’re nice cosmopolitan grounds for something like this to happen – it’s a City of Culture, as well.

Yeah, I was going to say – I don’t know how much you know about Coventry, but it was heavily bombed during the war, then we took in a lot of refugees after the war and became heavily involved in taking in more refugees recently. Obviously you have your song ‘Hackney’, in which you talk about it being a fertile and diverse environment – what’s been your experience of touring around Britain after the EU Referendum result? I imagine you’re the sort of band who naturally attracts a broad audience – have you been emotionally affected in any way by the political climate?

MAX: Definitely emotionally affected by it, but I think most of the people we play to – especially just after that – there was a feeling like: “We should get together even more”. We never made any speeches onstage about this or that; sometimes when we play at a festival, someone would introduce us and throw something [in], but you can really see from the people we play to that, uh… a feeling like: “This is not us! We want to be together! We want to invite everybody, we want to be…”

MORSKI: In Britain, people are used to having contact with different people and cultures. I think, personally, I’ve never met anything repulsive.

MAX: Nobody ever told me: “Go back to… wherever”.

MORSKI: Because it’s always smiles around music. We always have people who come and ask: “Where are you guys from? How did you meet?”

MAX: …But we tell them that story and they’re like: “Amazing, amazing, so incredible”.

MORSKI: For us, it’s great that people are asking these questions. That itself means that the interest and the curiosity… it can be lost like that.

You talk of a world without borders, and your music absolutely embodies that. Is that your greatest hope, that you’ll be able to change people’s attitudes?

MAX: Definitely, man. Definitely.

MORSKI: For me, sometimes I feel like we are some kind of a… the band is like a band of superheroes. Everyone’s got his own powers, and strong sides… [laughs] it’s very fun. It’s like the Clash of the Titans, this band! It’s so strong, and everyone’s got what they want to say… What keeps us together: I’m wondering, sometimes… it’s just the music, isn’t it?

Do you see yourselves in that tradition of the wandering troubadours? Presumably you were all buskers in your own rights before joining the band.

MAX: Yeah – I mean, that’s what my parents say every time I’m coming home: my parents say, “The troubadour has returned!” So that’s what I would say.

MORSKI: It’s funny – when we busk, it’s a good feeling.

Do you still do that – go out and play on the street?

MORSKI: It’s real fun, yeah. Somewhere there was a video of us playing Edinburgh.

MAX: Many, many videos, yeah! I mean, when I first met The Turbans, there was a big community - not only of the people that played in The Turbans, but it was in India - everyone had their little book of lyrics from Persian, Turkish, Arabic poets, and then some notes of some Greek songs, and everybody was sharing tunes. And a lot of the tunes that The Turbans learned were from this community in Goa. For me, that’s also what I fell in love with – that’s why I started playing the oud: this actual feeling of, like you say, the troubadour; the travelling musician that goes on and learns songs from different traditions, then brings them to a place like England, the UK, that would never be exposed to them. I mean, I guess today with something like the internet you can be, but you need something to ignite your wish, you know? For someone to come to a show who might never have heard Bulgarian or Greek songs before – and maybe even, connected to what you’re saying, his own opinion about Bulgarians and Greeks is just what he knows from the local restaurant or building site, something like that. And then all of a sudden to be exposed to this culture – and then maybe to start going to Youtube and seeing, “What is this amazing music, what is this thing that I just saw on the stage: many people from many countries that just brought so many amazing colours and flavours I never tasted before…” And if that brings this vision of the world without borders, then our job is done, I guess.

Finally, then: although obviously you all come from different ethnic musical traditions, there’s something quite ‘punk’ about it all - would you agree with that?

MAX: Oooh, exactly!

MORSKI: Yeah, it’s, uh… [thinks] …punk… [laughs] …definitely!

MAX: A lot of the people in the band all grew up on rock, or punk, or metal.

MORSKI: Yeah, we really, ah… When I listen to Balkan bands, we have this reckless noise that we make sometimes [laughs]… it’s like, man, it’s a cacophony sometimes! But it is what it is: that’s what creates this electricity and this… edge!

Is punk that one common thread musically that you all rally around or agree on?

MAX: Well, we all like that, uh… I don’t know, like, this nitty-gritty feeling: “Aaaaaaggghhhh!”… We want to smash stuff, you know?! Sometimes the instruments, sometimes each other, but yeah. We’re smashers.

MORSKI: I’m not, but I’m gonna have to with these guys around, you know…!

Has it ever boiled over onstage?

MAX: Nah…

Come on, now. Has there never been, you know, someone kicking someone else - nothing like that…?

MAX: No comment. [Laughs]

MORSKI: I did, once! [To Max] I kicked you once, I’m sorry…! I’m the least punk in the band…

MAX: But that was in good spirit; all in good spirit. Of course, like any group of people in any civilisation, we have frictions – but I think after nine years together we’ve developed a mentality of solving problems; of not keeping them, and aspiring to get over obstacles, you know. There was never a point in the band that was [like]: “Okay, I’m gonna break everything and go”. Always, there was some sort of unifying force. And this is also a lesson to all the people in all the nations, yeah.


The Turbans is available now on Six Degrees.