"Catching up with matters Djabe" - an email interview with Atilla Égerházi conducted by Alan Hewitt in autumn 2024.

TWR: What were your earliest musical influences?

AE: I was born in 1966. Behind the iron curtain there were no records stores, radios. My brothers listened to long waves Free Europe Radio, and taped the songs in very low quality. I listened to their tapes. At age 4 - 5 I loved The Beatles and some other English bands from the sixties, like Animals, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, etc. At age 6 Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd took over from The Beatles. Than prog bands like ELP, Yes, Jethro Tull instead of Led Zeppelin. In 1976 Genesis knocked into my life. Steve was still in the band. Genesis became my favourite band. My brother managed to buy some records in Finland so I started to listen music in better quality. In 1978 my interest turned to Frank Zappa and the jazz rock. I listened to the bands like Weather Report, John McLaughlin, Shakti, Jean-Luc Ponty. In the beginning of the 80's I discovered the ECM jazz label and I fallen love with Oregon, CoDoNa, Jan Garbarek, Eberhard Weber, Jack DeJohnette, John Abercrombie Terje Rypdal etc. The model for my first band Novus Jam was the Oregon. The line-up was two nylon guitar, violin and flute. We had no rhythm section. It was in 1983.

TWR: How did you become a musician?

AE: My grandfather was a multi instrumentalist and conductor. I got the affinity to the music from him I suppose. My brother Peter had an acoustic guitar. I started to play on it when I was 11. He thought me the cords of the House Of The Rising Sun. But I immediately played the arpeggio better than him. I involved in several bands in the primary and later in high school. But the first mentionable act was the Novus Jam. We won an amateur music festival in Hungary in 1984.

TWR: What led you to become one of the founder members of Djabe?

AE: After the High School I got my diploma as an architect engineer in 1991. During these years I composed music for myself, and we had just a few shows with the Novus Jam. In 1991 I started an advertising agency and started to work in different studios. I realised, it is not impossible to record an album. So I got together the Novus Jam, and recorded 3 albums. In 1993 I founded my record label, GR1993 Records (former Gramy Records). In 1994 I met András Sipos percussionist, vocalist, and he played on the last two Novus Jam CDs. Novus Jam played an instrumental music based on improvisation. The main soloist was the flute player Judit Gesztelyi-Nagy. András and I wanted play some more structured music, so we decided to record another CD project and he called it Djabe. We invited great jazz musicians to play on top of it what we composed and recorded with András (Sipi). The first album succeed very good, so we decided to form a band to play these tracks. In 2021 I revisited and refreshed the first album, and released it in a three disc form with lot of extras and surround versions.

TWR: Tell us a little about the members of the band and what they bring to the albums?

AE: The first two constant member besides me and András were Tamas Barabas - bassist and Ferenc Muck - saxophone. Tamas was one of the sound engineer too in my studio just opened in 1997. Later he became arranger of my compositions, and recently he writes most of the Djabe music. He became internationally renowned top sound engineer too. In 2001 we updated the band. The guitar, bass, percussion, saxophone line-up changed to guitar, bass, percussion, keyboards, drum, trumpet and violin. Ferenc Kovács had a unique ethnic type sound which was a big addition to our music. As the previous 4 years saxophone was the main solo instrument I invited Ban Castle to join for recording the Update album and the tour. I met Ben in Italy when I visited Steve's show in Pescara, Italy. As the gig was cancelled because of the heavy storm, we had time to chat together. I also recorded an interview film in Pescara with all the band members, later Steve included it as a bonus material on the Somewhere in South America 2CD/DVD. In 2016 the current line of the band got together. Peter Kaszas became the new drummer. He is fantastic. He played for 10 years with Al Di Meola. Peter has an incredible voice, so we started to record and play songs. The Magic Stag and Before just a few of them. Last year he did a great job on singing Carpet Crawlers. Aron-Koos Hutas is a world class trumpet player open for all styles, like Zoltan Bubenyak our recent keyboard player.

TWR: You have managed to merge jazz with prog is this a difficult process?

AE: For me and Tamas no, because we were growing up on the music in addition to jazz. It was new to our jazz guys, but the recent team worked out so well. We don't play a copy or cover of Genesis or Steve Hackett music, we play our little jazzy versions, but most of the audience like it. This approach gives a new musical framework to Steve too. On the latest albums you can find some Djabe originals you can categorise as progressive rock. I'm very happy with it.

TWR: Your concerts feature some unusual instrumentation, tell us about the Anklungs and the Hang drums...

AE: Not just the concerts, on the records too. Sipi was a percussion player, so the angklung is still his legacy to Djabe. I'm tying to add some colours to the music on percussion as it is signature of the Djabe sound, but other players are welcome too. Djabe means freedom...

TWR: How did you encounter Steve Hackett?

AE: I was big fan of Genesis from 1975 (I was 9 years old then), and later Steve's solo works.
Behind the iron curtain the bands like Genesis, Yes, ELP, King Crimson etc were our Gods during the communist era. End of the eighties Steve disappear from my radar, as he started to release his albums on his own. In the mid nineties I discovered Camino Records on the internet. I started to order his latest CDs first. That was the time I wanted to expand my label with internationally known artists. I realized, there was no distribution for Camino Records in Hungary. So I offered them a a deal. Later I visited Steve in his Twickenham studio and shot promotional video for promoting the Sketches Of Satie album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1Ft3mijCt8
I also bought license for vinyl release of the Satie album. That was the starting point of our friendship. I gave him our award winner Witchi Tai To album, and he had a very good opinion on that. In 2002 I was the promoter of his Sketches of Satie shows with John and Roger in Hungary. I made the stage visual design, and filmed it too as a director. Later the show released on DVD and 2CD entitled Hungarian Horizons live album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QhVvw1m-X4
I conducted an interview session for him with the leader Hungarian media in my office. On the walls he saw my father paintings. He mentioned his father, who was a painter artist too. So it was a special theme between two of us. End of 2002 Djabe started to record an album about my late father's paintings. One painting - one song concept. I asked Steve to play on it. And he said yes! This was the Sheafs Are Dancing album released in 2003. The song he played is Reflections Of Thiérache. In 2004 we played in London and we invited him to join. This was the first show together. In 2007 we lost one of our founding member, András Sipos (Sipi). Steve offered to come over to take part at the memorial and charity concert we organized for Sipi and his family. The show was magical, it lasted more then four hours! Next morning he phoned me and he said, he enjoyed it very much, and would be great to do it again. The rest is a history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QhVvw1m-X4

TWR: You have worked with Steve on several projects (your own and his) tell us a bit about how the writing/recording process takes place.

AE: For the first time we did it with file sharing. He sent us the Camino Royale via Internet for Genesis Revisited II album. We recorded our part and sent it back.
It was the same method with many of Djabe recordings. But in 2016 I suggested to travel to Sardinia, and spend a few days together in a temporary built studio and compose and record a music together. We had no pre-written music with us. We just started to play what we felt. It was a lot of improvisation. Steve and me played guitars, Gulli Briem from Mezzoforte played drums, Áron trumpet and and Tamás bass from Djabe. Later in Budapest Tamás produced a whole album from the recordings. Djabe & Steve Hackett: Life Is A Journey - The Sardinia Tapes. It is all recorded on 24 track analogue by Ben Fenner.
Life IS A Journey documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptfUbK3-RSY&t=89s
The whole album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZaZExldJ4o&list=PLGO5unViQQI8v1kLYRHfHGTIE9t5HH0UP
The follow up was the Back To Sardinia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aitipGFSwnw&list=PLvT5akpJfCExntoEaCBUSNRVv4L1wP7ql

For the Before album we sent written parts to Steve, so he became integral element of the sound in 2022. It was really big improvement I think.

TWR: You have a new album coming out in September, can you tell us a bit about it ..

AE: This January we recorded again in the style of Sardinia Tapes in Bodo, Norway. This city can be found 100 kilometres above the Arctic Circle. They result is very unique. Djabe & Steve Hackett: Freya - Arctic Jam will be released in February 2025, on CD/Blu-ray and 2LPs. So the September date moved a bit forward.