By EYAL HAREUVENI, Published: June 18, 2013
Jussi Reijonen is an exceptional musician. On his debut recording as a leader, Un (Self Produced, 2012), the Finnish guitarist/oudist has succeeded in crystallizing a spectrum of influences, sounds and textures into a highly personal, sensual mosaic that blurs the distinction between jazz, Middle Eastern traditional music, West African music, and even Finnish folk elements.
Since his childhood, Reijonen has been a citizen of the world. He was born in a small town above the Arctic Circle in northern Finland, but moved with his family to Amman in Jordan, then back to Finland, followed by Dar es Salam in Tanzania, Muscat in Oman, Beirut in Lebanon before returning to his hometown for high school. He now resides in Boston, where he has been taught by Lebanese oudist Ziyad Sahhab and Palestinian oud master Simon Shaeen, as well as guitarists Mick Goodrick and David Tronzo.
All About Jazz: How did you first hear the oud? What attracted you to it?
Jussi Reijonen: The oud was an instrument that I think I was aware of peripherally since I was a child—especially due to where I grew up—but it never crossed my mind to try and play it until I was 22 or so. My guitar playing at the time had started to naturally take on more and more of an eastward orientation, if you will—no pun intended—and the acoustic quartet I was part of was working on new original material that incorporated more and more influences from flamenco and the Middle East.
Melodies and rhythmic ideas that I realized I could trace to the Middle East started to pop up more and more in my guitar playing and compositions, and I resolved to try and pull that string and trace where it all came from, and try to understand why. I realized it had to do with the influences of my childhood, the cultural environment where I had grown in Jordan, Lebanon and Oman. I was backpacking through northern Morocco in 2003 and I had an instinct that I should buy an oud, found one in Fés, and that was that. I took some initial lessons from an Egyptian oudist in Helsinki soon after that, but most of my early learning was just listening and learning through trial and error. Aside from several weeks of study with Ziyad Sahhab in Beirut in the summer of 2008, I was more or less self-taught until I started to really dig deeper with Simon Shaheen, when I started at the New England Conservatory (NEC) in 2011—which, actually, was after Un was recorded.
AAJ: Do you see yourself indebted to the great Arabic traditions of playing the oud, or is the oud used as an extension of your vocabulary on guitar and/or fretless guitar?
JR: I have so much respect for the tradition and lineage of Arabic music that I can only hope to come across as someone trying to pay respectful tribute to it—as much as an ajnabi[foreigner] like myself can. I am forever a student of that lineage, trying to understand it through my own cultural lens, ears and filters. Especially after beginning to learn from Simon Shaheen, I've realized more and more how much more I have to learn—in some ways I'm still a beginner. I don't believe I am at any level where I am playing the oud in a very tarab [a state of ecstasy and surrender entered while listening, with body and soul, to music] way at all, but I'm working on getting deeper and deeper into it. Maybe, at the time Un was recorded, I would say the oud was more an extension of my guitar playing, but I think I'm slowly developing a more personal relationship with the instrument, and playing it more like an oud. I feel I play very differently today than I did when we recorded the album—studying with Simon changed everything for me.
Read more: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=44721#.Ucb6sRbhEhQ
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