Jazz musician Mark de Clive-Lowe on starting afresh in Japan: ‘Life feels exciting now, for sure’
· RNZSince the '90s, Mark de Clive-Lowe has made his name as an international electro-jazz wizard.
But behind the scenes, the Japanese-Kiwi musician and composer says a search for belonging has been his main driver.
This year, after 15 years of living in Los Angeles, de Clive-Lowe relocated to Tokyo - the birthplace of his late mum, Mizugaki.
On The Mixtape, he chats to Charlotte Ryan about coming of age in Auckland's "magical" 1990s jazz scene, discovering his great-grandfather composed music in te re Māori and why 50 is the new 30.
For de Clive-Lowe, who grew up with a deep connection to Japanese culture through his mother, living in Tokyo as an adult has been a long time coming.
"I started going there when I was 10 years old, then I'd go every summer to see relatives. My first international shows were in Japan in '96 and then I was touring there once or twice a year every year. I also finished high school there. Japan has been a big character in my play, for sure."
He is hopeful that within the next couple of years, his Japanese language will progress from what he describes as "good" to the level that Japanese people refer to as "native".
"I don't think you can really understand a culture anywhere without knowing the language. They're just so inextricably linked and intertwined."
While moving to a new country is not exactly easy, for de Clive-Lowe the sense of freshness and momentum it's delivered has been more than worth the effort.
"There's something about going through all my belongings, getting rid of as much as possible, and then starting afresh ... it just shakes everything up. There's a necessity to connect with a new community. It's super exciting and the unknowns are probably what excite me the most."
In '80s Auckland, it was really tough being both Japanese and Pākehā, de Clive-Lowe says.
"I wasn't Asian enough to be Asian or European enough to be European."
He struggled to find a sense of belonging in any cultural or racial context, until teaming up with fellow DJ Manuel Bundy and other musical collaborators in the early '90s.
That connection was forged at a Selwyn College talent quest when de Clive-Lowe's one-man performance with a drum machine, keyboard and synthesiser caught the attention of hip-hop band Semi MCs.
"The Semi MCs crew came straight up to me like 'Oh, my God, you've got to come and jam with us. So I went around to their place in South Auckland. They were there, Ned Roy was there - great DJ and turntablist.
"We just started making music together. I and felt very welcomed and embraced and that I could contribute."
Later, de Clive-Lowe enlisted Manuel Bundy, King Kapisi and Teremoana Rapley and other friends to feature on Six Degrees - his breakthrough record, released in 2000.
"We were making music that we all loved and I felt like a complete beginner in that world. I didn't understand how the music was made to a degree."
In the mid-to-late 90s - a "magical time" in Auckland - de Clive-Lowe became a central player in the city's emerging experimental jazz scene.
Over this time, he says his "home" was the jazz club Manifesto Wine Bar on Queen Street while "the place that raised him" was the High Street nightclub Cause Célèbre.
Cause Célèbre was almost like "the chill-out room" for its neighbouring club The Box which played straight-up DJ club music, de Clive-Lowe says.
"We'd get to do these kinds of experimental, improvised, jazz-groove gigs with DJs and MCs and two drummers and all sorts of craziness. It was a 2am, 3am crowd and it wasn't about being super intellectual with it.
"You had this cool crossover of communities and age groups, which resulted in the jazz we were playing in that space becoming less jazz and more hip hop and groove-oriented."
To de Clive-Lowe, the improvisational element of jazz has always offered a rare creative freedom and also seemed to reflect something true about existence itself.
"Life is an improvisation, right? The conversation we're have right now is an improvisation. So in that sense, it's what we do every day. For me to be able to channel that through an instrument and a creative expression is great."
As his own life moves into a fresh chapter, too, de Clive-Lowe has been exploring his Japanese heritage and more recently his Pākehā heritage, too.
On a recent visit to Wellington's Alexander Turnbull Library, he viewed a collection of musical compositions by his great-grandfather George de Clive-Lowe, a doctor who immigrated to New Zealand from Scotland at the age of 29.
George de Clive-Lowe was also a musician and composer, his great-grandson says, who penned nostalgic "Gilbert & Sullivan style" music and also several songs in te re Māori under the pseudonym 'Tamati-Hamapere'.
In early 1900s Aotearoa, de Clive-Lowe even had a hit with the Tamati-Hamapere song 'Karo', de Clive-Lowe says, which is recognised as part of popular Māori music history.
Although he sometimes feels he must "tread lightly" on the topic of a Pākehā ancestor composing music in te reo Māori over 100 years ago, he believes his great-grandfather was only trying to "contribute" to New Zealand's biculturality.
"I don't know how seriously those contributions might have been taken. There's an interesting mystery there which I'm having fun digging into.
"I really wasn't aware of the depth and quality of [my grandfather's music]. It's just been incredible to discover and reconnect that way."
"One hundred percent" are the chances that new music will eventually come out of discovering his great grandfather's music, de Clive-Lowe says.
Thanks to a grant from Creative New Zealand, he is feeling free to embrace a journey of creativity, self-discovery and "finding the questions".
At 50, which he calls "the new 30", Clive-Lowe feels he is "maybe finally at the start line" of a rich new phase in his life.
"I feel creative, I feel healthy and I feel like there was so much to learn from my 20s and 30s, and 30s and even 40s. Us men may be the slower-learning and evolving half of the species but I feel like I finally got there. Yeah, life feels exciting now, for sure."
Mark de Clive-Lowe plays a selection of jazz songs that capture snapshots of his life so far:
'The Awakening' by Ahmad Jamal
De Clive-Lowe was just eight when his brother gave him the 1973 album The Awakening by American jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal.
"The Awakening to this day, is probably my favourite piano jazz trio record of all time ... It's just beautiful improvisation, heavy black American music.
"In later years, when I got into hip hop, I realised it had been sampled a lot and was definitely a favorite for hip-hop crate diggers, but it just remains one of my absolute favourites.
"It's just amazing to see someone who's been around that long just still sounding incredible and really encapsulating the whole history of his life and experience in his music right now.
"[Ahmad Jamal] is just a very special artist to me, and this track particularly, opening that record, it's a special one."
The Branford Marsalis Quartet soundtrack for Spike Lee's 1990 film Mo' Better Blues
Seeing - and hearing - Mo' Better Blues in a Devonport cinema was a "life-changing moment" for a young de Clive-Lowe.
"I was a Spike Lee fan, I was a jazz fan, but I hadn't really heard modern jazz like the music was being made at that time.
"It's a beautiful movie but most of all what really hit me was the soundtrack. the next day, I went to downtown Auckland, and hunted down the soundtrack.
"Branford Marsalis Quartet became very much a touchstone for me to modern jazz and the piano player Kenny Kirkland just became one of my biggest inspirations and favourites.
"Spike Lee definitely changed my life with with that movie."
'Circles' (7" Edit) by Adam F
In 1995 when this track came out, acid house - "pretty hardcore, musically minimal house music" - was the order of the day in Auckland night clubs, de Clive-Lowe says.
Although he "didn't quite understand" that style of music, this jungle hit by British DJ Adam F "blew [his] socks off".
"I was like, Oh, wow. This is so musical. Is it fast? Is it slow? Then there's all this space which I felt could be filled in with musicality.
"On this edit, Adam F really nailed it. He just brought together the seemingly disparate elements and created something new with them."
'Ginkai' (銀界) By Hozan Yamamoto and Masabumi Kikuchi
Japanese musician and composer Hōzan Yamamoto made the 1970 experimental jazz record Ginkai with Japanese jazz piano player Masabumi Kikuchi.
"It's this moody, brooding, pretty slow moving jazz record with piano, bass and drums. The lead instrument is this traditional bamboo Japanese flute, the Shakuhachi, which came to prominence when it was used by Buddhist priests way back.
"There is something very mystical and evocative that the sound of the shakuhachi shares with taonga pūoro (traditional maori instruments)," de Clive-Lowe says.
"It's amazing hearing the similarity between taonga pūoro and shakuhachi, just the way these instruments made of natural materials are evocative of ancestry and spirit."
'Nobu' by Herbie Hancock
Jazz composer and musician Herbie Hancock, who de Clive-Lowe has had the good fortune to meet as well as watch, is his biggest single musical influence.
Although he could never choose a favourite Hancock track, it's stunning that in this 1974 track he "casually invents techno", he says.
"For a jazz musician who was born in 1940 and came up playing with Miles Davis to create something like a harbinger of what would happen with Detroit techno is wild to me.
"I love the prophecy in the track as well as just the beauty of what he created on stage that day. He's just very special to me all around."
'Thousand Knives' by Ryuichi Sakamoto
Most people know the late Japanese composer and pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto for his famous piece 'Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence', de Clive-Lowe says, but his final concert film Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus is also really worth checking out.
He says it is Sakamoto's 1970s keyboard-playing era that's most relatable.
"I saw a video of him when he was about early 20s in a night club in Tokyo, jamming on a keyboard with [music producer] Towa Tei DJing. It reminded me of being at Cause Célèbre or somewhere, jamming with Manual Bundy.
"I love his simplicity of phrasing and harmony and melody when actually the song is a little more complex than that. Yeah, he's just exquisite."