Introducing David Biko
All Quiet on the Western Front + Strange Animations
David Biko is a New York based tuba player who is going to be joining Aesop’s Sound Fables for All Quiet on the Western Front at the end of the month, Strange Animations in June, and hopefully many more shows to come! Tickets are now on sale for these and a handful of other events. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to see all upcoming events.
David sent me a cold email about a year ago asking if there was any way to get involved with Aesop’s Sound Fables and I’m so glad he did! Its been a real joy getting to know him.
Below is a Q and A with David about his artistic practice and his unique multi-disciplinary, multi-genre approach to music-making.
Q: Can you describe yourself and your artistic background a little?
A: I would say I’m a writer and musician interested in the intersection of narrative and abstraction. To me narrative is the bed rock of the human experience we all love stories and all our ancestors did too. Abstraction is a way of making it personal and unique. I started playing Tuba as a kid, and that led me to start playing other instruments and singing. Not enough composers have a wild imagination for the Tuba, so I started making music for myself!
Q: What kind of music do you make?
A: This is always a really hard question for me to answer because I make a lot of different kinds of music. The two elements that are in all of my music are the use of collaging little fragments into bigger things and extensive harmony. In a broader sense I take ideas from classical music, jazz, blues, psychedelic rock, and folk music often.
Q: What's the most ambitious project you've ever worked on?
A: I did an event called ArtAid where we gathered musicians to perform and visual artists donated pieces to raise money for a group that supports queer youth fighting criminalization in Nigeria. That was a lot of work, that event nearly killed me, but I’m glad I did it. And it led me to the wonderful folks at friends meeting house where we will be playing this show.
Q: How does your classical tuba playing inform your more pop-oriented material?
A: Western classical music is so different to all the other music traditions because it’s emphasis on harmonic progression. That influence makes it such that when writing pop music I always want there to be strange or surprising harmonies. I also like things to be dense, I treat my songs like mini symphonies, and I always want the bass part of the song to have a major role because I’ve been traumatized by playing boring tuba parts.
Q: I know you have this exciting show coming up at this Manhattan hair salon in June, can you tell our readers a little about that show?
A: Harvey Redding is a visual artist and he is my main collaborator. The way he orchestrates his paintings and drawings and utilizes layers and collaging is in tandem with the way I work. He has a residency at this wonderful place called Iron Feather. It’s a hair salon but also a salon in the 20th century art and literary way. The show is called Witness and it is all about the duality of how queer lives are hidden and seen. On June 16th I’ll be performing songs that I composed based on Harvey’s paintings and drawing and I’ll be lucky to have you joining me in the performance!
Q: It seems like you do a lot of work integrating visual art and music. Can you tell me a little about what your process is like when you're in that interdisciplinary world?
A: I’m greatly inspired by visual art. All sounds have colour schemes in my mind when I hear them and vice versa so it’s often easier for me to compose based on visuals than to pull something from nothing. Playing to a film is great because it’s and endless array of colour fields to get ideas from.
Upcoming Shows:
5/30 All Quiet on the Western Front in NYC
Guitarist Mike Nowotarski and tubist David Biko will perform our original soundtrack to All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). This urgent anti-war film will be performed in the beautiful and historic 15th St Quaker Meeting House in Manhattan. Founded in 1861.
6/6 Strange Animations in Brooklyn
Aesop's Sound Fables performs new original scores to films by local and classical animators. This show's selection of work features brushes with strangers that turn absurdist, and calls attention to the odd intimacy we encounter in public places.
6/13 Nosferatu in Kingston, NY
Your last opportunity to see this show for the forseeable future. Tell your friends that have moved upstate. Cross over the CT border for a show. We’re going to miss this film.
7/10 Soup Show: Ft. Old Milk Mooney // Here for You // Sweetbreads
Once again, our friends in Old Milk Mooney are going on tour and gracing our living room. My twee band Here for You will be doing a set. Sweetbreads dazzled us last time with heartfelt lyricism and I can’t wait to see Melody again!
Open Calls:
We are looking for musician, writers and other performers interested in reading in our Soup Show series. If you’re interested, please send the form linked here on our website or contact aesopssoundfables@gmail.com
We are looking for filmmakers interested in submitting their short films to our Strange Animations series. You can read more and submit here.
We are looking for volunteers interested in helping with distro of our newsletter around the city. Please send us an email if you’re interested at aesopssoundfables@gmail.com