Jean Michel Jarre will find music of oxygen in the green movement
Alfons Karabuda and Jean Michel Jarre. Photo: Kjell Holmstrand.
Alfie meets: Jean Michel Jarre - new Chairman of CISAC.
Jean Michel Jarre is a pioneer in electronic music. The breakthrough Oxygène has sold nearly 20 million copies worldwide. The album was also a post in the 1970's nascent environmental debate. Now like Jean Michel Jarre use their experience from the environmental movement in the role of president of CISAC.
Congratulations to the mission! We have mutual friends, and they all say that you are the right man for the job.
- Thank you! It is encouraging to hear. When I started making music, I never thought I would one day lead an organization with such an important mission as CISAC. It is an honor to do it.
I make music primarily for theater and film and has worked extensively with electronic music. You are a great inspiration to me personally and to many who engage in electronic music. How do you see the electronic music's position today?
- It has hardly been greater than today, and it forms a major part of the business in the music industry. Just look at the Electronic Dance Music. Yet it stands in many ways outside the work CISAC and other organizations are doing for music. I want to involve musicians that make electronic music in the work of artistic rights. There is a large group of young people in the genre who need to understand the industry's requirements and benefits of copyright.
So we try to do with ITY, getting new members of the younger generations. We encourage musicians like Swedish House Mafia and Avicii to participate and try to involve them in the SKAP work.
- It's good. It is important to involve all musicians, regardless of genre, and across both geographic and generational boundaries. Performing rights, and not least of copyright, should be a global concern. And it concerns not only musicians, but all creators. So the good Meden organization CISAC is that it has the potential to become a UN cultural creators, by collaborating with filmmakers, writers, artists, computer game developers, and so on.
There are a number of emerging markets where artistic rights had not been in focus, such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the so-called BRICS. How do we meet the need to discuss the artistic rights there?
- It is essential to include all the new growth markets, of course BRICs, but also several other countries. In many countries on the African continent has not been able to protect themselves when, for example, advertising and fashion industries fetches cultural expression, without caring about the rights of indigenous people. This is about the moral and ethical issues that affect us all, entire communities, not just individuals. Therefore, we can not continue to try to solve the problems nationally. The development is so rapid that we need to work together to succeed.
Yes, it's about higher values. United Nations recently released a report on the artistic rights worldwide. The report shows just how artistic rights, like all human rights, affects us all and how they apply or should apply in Member States. The report also shows how copyright and freedom of expression are interrelated, for you to be able to protect your voice and expressions from exploitation. How can we reach out with messages of artistic rights?
- It is important to be clear. And you have to be long term. I have always been committed to the environment, see similarities with the green movement. When I wrote and released Oxygene was that we were talking about the environment as a bunch of dreamers, but step by step we were able to help everyone today is aware that we need to take care of our planet. The same applies to all forms of intellectual property today. We have the same situation as the environmental movement had thirty years ago and we need to just raise awareness of intellectual importance to us all.
It's interesting what you say. If we look at politics today is precisely the Greens who have the least understanding of intellectual importance for sustainable development.
- We all have a shared responsibility, just as the environmental movement's responsibility, and it is high time to just formulate clear messages. It is important that the public understand that this affects everyone in a community. Performing rights are the cornerstones of civilization and democracy.
But there are also those who believe that rights that copyright does not at all belong to the conditions for sustainable development, especially since the internet came into our lives.
- You have always, for better or worse, been a step ahead in Sweden and Scandinavia. You are perhaps the most web-savvy country in the world. While wearing Sweden the responsibility for parts of the "everything is free" attitude that came with the internet. Everything should be free and the internet is an Eldorado for culture. That attitude is not sustainable. And then there are the young people who remixes and creates amazing things and upload on YouTube - they are of course not evil. They are artists, but progress has been so fast and they have matured in so fast that they do not understand how their attitude can do damage.
What are the strong messages, then?
- We need to reverse the problem. It's about language, grammar and vocabulary. Those who develop the technology needs us. Remove music, movies, games and news from a smartphone and it is considerably less clever. We do content of various kinds are the ones that make a smartphone smart.
Content is central to most players on the Internet today. Digital services and markets need digital gaming rules. The EU wants to see a digital single market and a new directive on copyright societies are headed. Therefore gathered Europe's musicians in ECSA around a common voice, regardless of culture, genres, and differences in work processes. Now listen to the EU on us.
- It's good. Only by joining forces, from all continents, from North to South, from West to East, we can succeed. Sure, we have different challenges, but it's all ultimately about the same thing. Culture is the key to sustainable development. We are dealing with culture is not part of the problem, but part of the solution.
Most people know you as a electronic musician and your spectacular shows, but you also do music for film and successful lyricist. Are you working on that music creators even when you took over as president of CISAC?
- Yes, I have two new discs at once and believe it is important to be active as creators, to have direct contact with the issues that concern us, to be successful when it manages the work of an organization CISAC. It is to take responsibility for their task.
You were early musical as well as technological pioneer. What would a young Jean Michel Jarre have done today, though he started his career in 2013?
- He should have followed his own will and not listening so much on others. I try to keep a little distance to the internet, he would also have done. Internet is good once it is something to express or communicate. As an artist, he had worked with his art, his music, on their own, and only then turned the internet and the audience.
Some become slaves to technology instead of free thinkers and creators.
- Exactly. I have extensive experience of working in line with technological developments, from the beginning of my career. Over the years I have many times encountered strange ideas about what technology should be for. "You are not even real instruments" they said on the record company when I wanted to release my first album, and "your songs are ten minutes long, they can not be played on the radio." Technology should be made for man, not vice versa. I think we can accomplish much, only we find the right direction, also with new media.
Text and photo: Kjell Holmstrand
FACTS / JEAN MICHEL JARRE
• Elected June 6, 2013 as President of CISAC - International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers.
• Pioneer of electronic music. Uses keyboard, theremin, sequencer, and the laser harp.
• Has sold over 80 million records, including those labeled Oxygene, Equinoxe and Magnetic Fields.
• Served as the first Western musicians five concerts in China in 1981.
• Is known for their spectacular live shows, often as spectacular environments, like the pyramids of Egypt and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
• Conducted in 2010 and 2011, his first world tour with 220 concerts in 30 countries.
Scource:
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Jarregirl YouTube
Concerts attended:
Théâtre Marigny, Paris - 2007
Symphony Hall, Birmingham - 2008
RAH, London - 2008
Wembley Arena, London - 2009
NIA, Birmingham - 2009
POP Bercy, Paris - 2010
NIA, Birmingham - 2010
O2 Arena, London - 2010
Zénith Aréna, Lille - 2010
Port Hercule, Monaco - 2011
TUI Arena, Hannover - 2011
Festival International de Carthage - 2013
Barclaycard Arena, Birmingham - 2016