Interview

Who established the band Čankišou, when and why? And what about the band´s name Čankišou?

Although we knew more or less about each other before the band was established, we all met for the first time at a concert of bands from Brno in Christmas 1998. We all agreed to try playing ethno, world music. A few months later our first concert took place, unfotrunately it was a real disaster. We realised that we needed time to settle down and discover our own style.
Concerning the name: two band members were selling toys at the time, among the toys there was a small excavator called ChunkyShow, we really liked the name and transformed it into Czech.

Have you been influenced by any of the music in this genre?

It´s difficult to talk about what music has influenced us because most of the band haven´t listened to this genre of music. The real ethno /folk/ music of this or that nation may only be significant to its home nation. This kind of music is very interesting for people from Middle Europe, but after some time it can become mundane.
At the time of establishing this band, various fusions of world music were very popular on the dance floor or rock and pop scene. Most of us were fascinated with this style of music. We found it interesting to try to reach the unreachable, in a sense of sound, music and emotions. These are the reasons for style of music we play. We work with ethno motifs and try to transpose them into our skills. It´s also our expression of feelings based specifically on topics which inspires us. Another significant point in our work is how we use tradition within our music compositions. That´s why we play music influenced by many ethnics from around the world. We also wanted to characterise our own style somehow and it was the first idea of the Čanki people.

You talk about music of the Čanki people. Who were they and where did you get all the information about this nation?

You can find all details about the Čanki people on our website. In short: the Čanki people was a nation with just one leg. They lived in the time after Atlanta, it´s hard to say when exactly. Thanks to their music talent and undesirable migration all over the world they bacame multicultural musicians. This knowledge is based on one sentence and one picture from a middleages travelling book, published in 1970´s and was called "How did the old Czech discover the world". The connection between the Middlaged text and the name čanki? Čanki is said to mean a leg in Gypsy language.
The truth is (which we found out later) that these human anomalies are mentioned even in current literature. For instance Umberto Eco talks about them in his book called "Baudolino". He describes their end and locates their nation into legendary Jan´s kingdom as we do. Our fans send us e-mails where they have found some information about this nation. Based on all these facts, there might be some truth about the Čanki people, but their music talent is just our idea we created. It´s hard to say what the truth actually is when we can´t say for sure if even Jesus really lived or what happened 10 000 years ago.

Your songs are in a special language. Where did you learn it?

This special language is a natural Karel´s (singer´s) language he uses to improvise whilst playing. This is the mystery and is used to our advantage for sure. It´s obvious we couldn´t say how simple it was and that´s why we started to call this language the Syrian (Sun) language which was said to be the orginal language of all nations. Karel is something like singing Morgenstern.

How do you compose your songs?

At the beginning we chose aray of influences: we listened to a mixture of folk music and then began to play. Many songs were composed during jam sessions in our rehearsal room or at concerts. When we started to play gigs we had only about five songs but we were able to play them for about 2 hours. Sometimes new motifs were created accidentally and many of them were forgotten. Now we concentrate more on the songs themselves and their arrangement but it isn´t that simple.

What about your CD´s?

All of our CD´s were created in a completely different way. The first one we recorded both the instruments and singing together. No matter what mistakes were made and how the sound quality was we tried to catch the live energy of the music. We made this record in 3 days. The first CD was recorded on bases of orders. It was supposed to be published as an enclosure for a travellers magazine. Later on one of the publishers in Brno visited our concert so we released the first CD under his label (FT Records - Music of the Canki People, 2000).
We were playing quite a lot of gigs which gave us the incentive of making the second CD. We had some capital behind us to spent over than two weeks in a studio and recorded one instrument after another. We paied more attention to the quality of the sound on this record (autumn 2002, Densé Ju, FT Records). In the studio we worked with Roman Jež and Libor Mikoška who produces bands such as MIG 21 and Lucie.
The third cd Gamagaj (2004) was done by mixture of the previous ways in Zlin. With the last cd Lé La (2008) we decided to change publisher so now we´re working with Indies Scope Records.

You have a few music videos. How were they made?

We did some shooting for various TV programmes such as inverviews, recording live concerts etc. The first video Jeba Ma Miluna was shot during one morning just for a music TV programme. Later on, it was broadcasted as a regular music video.
When our first CD was out we needed to have a proper music video. We chose a song called "Sham Sut". It´s not one of our original songs but fully represents our work. It´s free minded and funny, just as we wanted it to be. We also decided to add this music vidoe as a bonus to our second CD Densé Ju. It´s the public who assess the result of a music video.
When we released our third Gamagaj CD we chose Anay Yo and in cooperation with Dusan Urbanec made a video. All of our videos are broadcasted by american Link Tv.
During our second participation in Pakistan festival in 2007 we shot video called Zuha from CD Lé la. It was really hard work there but we hope you enjoy it. And we were really honoured that Sain Zahoor agreed to perform there.
Our last animated video Borrega was made by students. It´s very cute and we are courious how many hours the students spent with the little puppets in studio. Amazing work they did.

What about you performing in the film Nuda v Brně?

Brno is more or less a village but on a bigger scale, everybody knows everybody. Vladimír Morávek (director) was working in the theatre Husa na provázku (in Brno) for a long time so the connection seemed to be natural. Jan Budař (composer, script co-writer and main character) brought us a lot of scores which were more appropriate for symphony orchestras than for us. The beginning was desperate. Zdeněk (drums, percussion) - the most musicly educated of us all - made some changes and together we created a sound which resembled an angry brassband from Balkan. A song should have been sung by Karel Gott. Many famous people worked on the record - Eva Urbanová (opera singer) or Richard Krajčo (singer of pop band). Dalajlama´s mantra was also mixed into the music. Vladimír Morávek described the music in colours and pictures; which people must experience. We hope we fulfilled all the aims of Jan Budař´s and the director´s vision of the film music.

What about concerts? Do you perform a lot?

We prefer clubs because you can create a connection with the audience. On the other hand big festivals and other events are good experiences. Thanks to our publisher, who specialises in folk and country, through him we play at various folk festivals. We have a lot of concerts in general but there are some months during the year when there is none.
In autumn when the CD was released we thought it would be really busy but afterwards we didn´t perform for nearly a quarter of a year; back to earth we came. Thanks to our connections and also to our manager we perform quite a lot. Because of the style of our music we can play anywhere around the world, so we tend to have plenty of gigs all around the world.