Ethan Margolis: Blues at the Heart of Almost Everything

As a guitarist, composer, and leader, Ethan Margolis shares his message of cultural intersectionality prevalent in music.  His discoveries include finding elements of Spanish flamenco and deep blues in the modal explorations of Miles Davis and in Charles Mingus's sense of rhythm and funk.  He hears parallels between flamenco music and jazz ballads, as well as anchored in spirituals.  Listening for the essence of the music, Margolis finds common links that take all compositions back to the roots of ancient cultures.  Intersecting them with emerging generations that leave their imprint for new generations to build from and move further, as Ethan Margolis is doing. 

 

Margolis's journey into music, intersecting elements crossing multiple cultures, begins with his time in the province of Andalusia in Spain.  "I have been closely linked to Andalusia for 26 years now," he beams, "living there full time for 12 years and frequently collaborating still.  People in those towns have known me since I was 22 years old - always with my guitar on my back - riding busses, trains, walking through pastures all alone and crossing the bridge of Triana into Sevilla by foot every night at 4am."  

He shares, "I have made family all over Andalusia and I adore them - I miss them every day living here in the States.  Spain is full of artistic essence.  Overall, the people have a profound interest in the value of an artist.  Don't get me wrong, music still doesn't pay well over there, but at least the respect is present."

"Honestly," he regards, "I can't put into words what has become such a gigantic part of my life and my heart," professing, "It all makes sense you know - Spain is a very special musical melting pot.  It is the gateway port into Europe from Africa and it combines Arabic, Jewish and Gregorian melodies over African and Romany rhythms. Then it further draws on other significant influences from the Caribbean's spice route and of course the abhorrent slave trade."  

"Southern Spain after all, is a lot like the New Orleans of Europe," he gleans.

"When I found street Flamenco however," he purports, "it offered something very different from the above - a complete renouncement of all form and boundaries.  There was total freedom and openness in the interpretation as long as you stuck with the rhythms.  The flamenco stage shows for tourists and theater groups do have form, but not the down-home stuff.  That stuff is just open and everyone has at it for hours at a time.  There is excitement around every corner in those hangs.  I fell in love with that - that's the Roma innovation and genius within the art form."

"In the end," he deduces, "it was Flamenco that brought me closer to Jazz.  Miles Davis's modal explorations with the horns, the tunes that had less changes and more open space really reminded me of what I had been hearing in Spain during Semana Santa (Holy Week).  Then Mingus's rhythm and funk factor reminded me of the pueblo Bulerías and Tangos styles in Flamenco.  Add to that the jazz ballads and spirituals which have their parallels in Flamenco's Soleá and Martinete styles and there really is a lot to draw on between the two genres."

"In my ears," he extrapolates, "if you combine the Deep Blues with Semana Santa's horn processions, well you've kinda got Miles - at least Miles for a few decades.  It's like he already knew all of this stuff.  He had heard and felt it, assimilated it and then spent a lot of time writing around it."

"Maybe Miles perceived that?  I sure wish I could ask him...," he ponders, concluding,"so like so many other musicians, it was Miles Davis who brought me to Jazz."

Finding jazz brought him to Spanish guitarist Chano Dominguez who joins Margolis on his latest offering, The Blues Around Us, as he explains, "Chano is a musician who has spent his entire life finding the connections between Spain, Africa and Jazz-Blues.  He plays both Jazz and Flamenco with authenticity and that is a very hard thing to do as a musician in a single lifetime."

"Because I was so involved in the roots of Andalusian Cante Jondo while in Spain," he reflects, "I didn't gravitate towards the jazz scene there.  There are some really great Spanish and Cuban players who live in Madrid, but I didn't overlap with them mostly.  I knew of Chano of course, but I was lost in Andalusia - amongst the Roma wizards of street art - and I wasn't paying much attention to anything else but that.  I actually didn't meet him until I got back to the USA years later."  

"It wasn't a far-fetched idea," Margolis reasons, "that he would be an incredible musician to work with but I had no idea if he'd be open to playing my music.  He never really performed in a 'supporting' role - like in a group or something  - so I was just hoping that maybe he'd hear something that would spark his interest."

"I wrote him and he wrote back quickly," he recalls.  "It turned out that he had indeed heard some things and agreed to play.  I was elated - obviously - and it encouraged me to keep writing.  We played our first concert together in 2016 in Los Angeles.  We played mostly my compositions but we opened them up quite a bit and took some big musical risks on stage."

"Afterwards," he remembers, "we connected and he expressed interest in continuing the relationship.  He was one of the first, if not the only Spaniard that I had played with - who was really passionate about the jazz-blues compositions."  

 

Margolis observes, "You know, it's not just about playing Jazz and Flamenco, it never was.  It's about something much bigger than that.  It's about working really hard at something for many years and then using the skillset to collaborate cross-culturally and say something unique - something that is authentic, not a world music gimmick.  Chano and I share a common belief system in why we make music.  That belief system unites us as players."

"I think we both hope that the music will speak to listeners about possibilities," he surmises.  "We hope people might perceive beauty in the organic, classic-sounding and imperfect delivery that the album has.  We hope its message of cultural unity speaks for itself.  We also believe that the Blues, as a genre, is at the heart of almost everything - henceforth the album title The Blues Around Us."

"I wrote the tunes on the album and produced the sessions with the intention of capturing human essence in the music," he provides, determining, "it's getting harder and harder to hear humanity in recordings these days."

"This album has imperfections on it," he admits.  "There are risks that were taken and they didn't always pan out but I think you can hear all four of us working together the whole time.  There is excitement, love for the craft and also some nervousness in the playing.  It's all inside the music, captured by a few of my favorite sound engineers on the planet in James Farber, Dave O'Donnell, and Randy Merrill.  The sonic aspect of this album - from its initial design to the final masters - was a very important part of the overall process - it is also part of the album's humanity."

 

Supporting the pair is Carlos Henriquez on bass and Obed Calvaire on drums.  Margolis describes, "Both Carlos and Obed were fundamental in allowing the recording to reach its potential.  They are both such accomplished professionals and such dedicated disciples to the musical world as a whole.  I knew they would play the hell out of this music, but I was also hoping that the conceptual design would interest them on the session.  Chano had already played previously with Carlos at Jazz At Lincoln Center, but it was the first time the rest of us were meeting."

 

"After a rehearsal with Carlos," he vows, "the day before I knew we had made the right choice.  He dove in with me so deeply on the rhythmic underpinnings of the compositions and that's what was necessary for the project.  He had such a true desire to get the rhythmic structuring right and man did he!  His grooves and accent patterns are really innovative and hip on this record.  I encourage everyone to listen closely to what he played and how effortlessly he navigated the waters between Andalusia and New Orleans."

Margolis muses, "Musicians play differently when they are interested in the compositional layers.  They play with more depth and taste then they would if they were just running through a session.  I think professional musicians need to slow down a bit these days - let's not forget why we are doing this.  Carlos and Obed excel at that...they are fully committed."

What has fine-tuned Ethan Margolis's sensibilities to choose musicians that are compatible with him is his instinct for writing original material.  His upbringing instilled a strong sense of communicating his thoughts and impressions through music.  He relates to musicians who share the same principles, which he expresses was rooted in him by his father.

He recounts, "I began writing as soon as I picked up the guitar, but I already had a ton of respect for the craft instilled by my father.  He believed that writing music was the most powerful thing someone could do.  In a way it was like trying to harness the complexities of being alive within a chord progression and a minimal allotment of time.  He taught me that songs had structure like AABA/B or ABABCAB and taught me to corral my ideas into a message - like a sonnet or some other poetic message - a musical form.  I still use those tools now when I write.  Whether it's a vocal or instrumental composition, they are invaluable."

Margolis reveals, "My father is a songwriter who plays piano and guitar so instruments were lying around the house when I grew up.  He had a little home studio in the house with a 4 track reel-to-reel Tascam.  I didn't gravitate to the piano because that's what my father played and I wanted to be different...hah, part of me wishes I would have made the piano my instrument after all - but then I may not have found Flamenco."  

"Anyhow," he recollects, "I started out on drums at age 8 in the elementary school jazz band.  You know starting to read sheet music with drum hits, etc.  However, a couple years later my family moved communities and in the new school district playing jazz drums was not a popular thing to do.  Sadly, I stopped drumming formally and left music for a few years in favor of sports."

"I later transitioned back to the guitar," he points out, "after seeing my little brother Dave excel at it.  The first two songs I learned were 'Hey! Bo Diddley' and 'This Place Sucks,' a punk rock song by the Pink Lincolns.  I developed a deep interest in the Delta Bluesman because my father admired them and also because we would visit family from the Deep South when I was a kid."

"At a young age," he asserts, "I was pretty charged up around social injustice and the blues artists and the punk rockers helped me express that.  As a result, the guitar stuck with me.  It allowed me to write easily and attempt to play like my musical heroes.  At 18 years old, my desire to get better on the instrument fueled further investigations into Afro-Caribbean music like Soca and Bachata and then directly into Flamenco after that." 

"It was a 1997 Paco de Lucía concert in Ann Arbor's Hill Auditorium that shattered my musical consciousness forever," he proclaims.  "Literally, the day after that concert I dropped all other musical studies and pursued Flamenco like an obsessed maniac.  That was the power that Paco's group had on people - his arrangements and conceptual delivery were absolutely sublime.  Of course, he was a total virtuoso, perhaps the best guitarist the world has ever seen, but for me it was more than that.  His conceptual and compositional depth was astounding."

He considers artists based in Andalusia who affected him, speaking introspectively and examining,"Hmmm...Andalusian artists?  That list is endless...are we talking artists that I have had direct contact with? or golden-age masters who I have studied over time and didn't know personally?" 

"Let's start with the direct musical mentors," he cites, "who influenced me in-person.  Most of them were related to important Andalusian Roma families in Cante Jondo - people like  Inés Bacán, Miguel Funi, El Lebrijano, Juan Bacán, Pilar and Farruca Montoya,  Antonio Moya, Los Malena and Los Marqueses de Utrera."

"Then there were all of my peers," he offers, "the street-school artists that were mostly my age, a few older.  Together we spent over 10 years straight, almost nightly, in search of duende callejero throughout Sevilla.  People like Javier Heredia, Luis Peña, Pepe Torres, Raúl El Perla, Rafael El Cable, Los Amaya - we were always in search of some late night musical happening behind latch and key - trying to find the flamenco wizards behind a bartop.  People like: Antonio El Marselles, Pepe el Artista, El Vareta, Juan del Gastor or Guillermo Manzano and his crew."  

"Finally," he advances, "I will list several of the famous flamenco artists who I did not know directly but who have had profound influences on my music - some of them are guitarists, some singers:  Paco de Lucía, Pedro Bacán, Moraíto, Melchor de Marchena, El Borrico, El Mono, El Torta, El Chaqueta, El Chozas, Manuel Torres, Tomás Pavón, Manolo Caracól, Antonio Mairena, Fernanda and Bernarda de Utrera, Remedios Amaya, Diego Carrasco, and more...it's a long list."

He ruminates, "I'm constantly growing as a guitarist and composer and I feel that I'm only at about half of my potential as a player. I've studied so much different musical material over the years that at times it has rendered me virtually useless on the instrument - you know, like stuck in my own self-inflicted conundrum of genre conflict."

"Recently however,  and perhaps for the first time in my life," he illuminates, "I'm starting to feel like I'm finding a confident voice.  It's a unique way of formulating ideas on the instrument so that I can speak to all of the people and places that I love -  within a single phrase or two of the music.  It requires purposeful writing to play that way but I'm hoping that it will continue to get more cohesive and thus easier to understand for the audience."

"Ideally within the first 20 seconds of a solo," he declares, "I'd be able to transmit the essence of the people and places I play for - tipping my hat towards Mississippi, Seville, Lebrija, New Orleans, and the Caribbean all at once.  I just hope my energy continues like it is now.  Life is stressful and music isn't really paying the bills.  So many of us are hard at work and are faced with really difficult decisions about how to navigate the second half of our career."

He notes, "Musical recordings don't sell.  Labels are losing money.  Gigs pay like they did 25 years ago or worse.  Touring with your own group is financially impossible without donors and now AI performance has begun.  If we didn't really believe in the spirituality behind what we were playing, I honestly don't think there'd be many reasons to still do it."

"Go figure," he chimes, "but from my time in Spain I turned into an avid wine aficionado. I've also worked with several wineries and consulted for wine programs in California.  I'm especially passionate about the wines from La Rioja and from the Sherry triangle in Sanlúcar and Jerez."  

"My palate was made in Southern Spain on their whites," he attests.  "Don't get me started because that's a whole different conversation, but the Viura and Palomino grapes kill me as do Godello, Mencía and all the standards.  The Lopez De Heredia Tondonia Rosado might be my favorite wine on the planet - additional shout outs to Castillo Ygay, Abel Mendoza, the Remelluri Blancos, De La Rivas, Remírez De Ganuza, my friends at Bodegas Gonzalez Palacios, Barbadillo, Benito in San Vicente de la Sonsierra....so many beautiful wines and people!"

Intersecting cultures through music is a characteristic that Margolis identifies in compositions.  His discoveries include crossing Spanish flamenco with deep blues, integrating jazz with Latin rhythms.  Looking into the essence of music, Margolis finds components that date back to ancient cultures.  He excels at building from them, moving them forward, and charting new music rooted in blues, which Margolis has discovered can be found everywhere, in every culture and in every composition formed naturally.