1. We do what we want to.
2. Weird is not necessarily bad. Weird can be fun, colorful, and evocative. It can also suck. But not necessarily.
3. Music doesn’t have to be pretty to have beauty, and doesn’t have to be dissonant to shock.
4. Any form of music is fair game to pull from, if we feel like it.
5. We never do the same thing exactly the same way twice and we’re just fine with that.
6. Mistakes are part of the process. If it’s 10% error and 90% cool, we play the percentages. Perfection is for dweebs. What’s commonly accepted as "perfection" almost always strips music of emotion. To us that seems less than perfect.
7. Improvisational music is hazardous. If you play it you can expect your shortcomings to show. You can expect to go too long (read: boring), not follow through on a good idea, not have enough good ideas (read: boring), play something lame, in effect, suck. But if you’re serious about it you can also expect miracles to happen. And with any luck the tape will be rolling to preserve them.
8. Busy or complex is not necessarily bad or good. Simple, "in the pocket" is not necessarily bad or good. Less isn’t always more, and more isn’t always more; it’s all a matter of arrangement.
9. We believe that with just two instruments you can hear a lot of subtleties you would otherwise miss.
10. The role of drums in music (especially in Jugalbandi music) is NOT to simply keep the beat and support the other musicians. Ginger Baker once said in his own defense that the drums were a musical instrument. Most people don’t really think of them that way. We do.
11. Freedom of artistic expression supersedes all rules, spoken or unspoken, written or implied. With freedom comes the responsibility to use it well; we try.
12. The average attention span is too short.
13. If you emotionally react to our music, even negatively, then we've succeeded. If our music has also made you think, that's even better.
return to the Jugalbandi main page