Music has always been global
A train of thought through Stuttgart with Branko Arnsek 

Monday noon / Stuttgart: Tina Saum / flanerie has a date with the musician Branko Arnsek for a walk. While they stroll with their everyday sounds in the ear of Rotebühlplatz to Schlossplatz, he speaks of foreign sounds from all over the world.

Why do we meet in front of the Rotebühl center?
At the music school I've been giving lessons in pop rock jazz for 25 years.
What is important to you to convey?
First and foremost, apart from the whole technology, I am concerned with showing possibilities and giving incentives. I like to confront my students with foreign music. From this, an openness can develop, which can then be transferred to life in general. Maybe that's why a student meant to me that my music lessons are at the same time philosophy lessons for her.
Who or what has sparked your passion for music?
As a teenager I heard a lot of radio. In particular, two editors of the then Südwestrundfunk shaped my musical tastes: the jazz-affine Joachim-Ernst Behrendt and Ingeborg Schatz, who had a program for non-European music. Thanks to these two, I got to know a lot of good and never heard music, that was fantastic! Music is good for me if it feeds your hearing. When you hear a human playing with 100% energy. When you hear that music has something to tell. If it just breaks, then you can not remember anything, it ties you up so hard that you might not even be able to say after that whether the technique was good or bad and what the tools were.
Which musical discoveries have impressed you?
Gamelan music for example from Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Bali. For this purpose, certain metal instruments are used that sound like bells. People sit together, banging on these different sized and small metal instruments with a stick and create with only five tones an acoustic atmosphere, which is indescribable and was when I heard this music the first time quite foreign to my ear. I know folklore from my native Slovenia, then Yugoslavia. In Slovenia folklore is characterized by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and in Dalmatia, in the south of Croatia also by Italy. Folklore usually sounds unfamiliar to us as we move daily in a completely different soundscape.
What interests you about folklore?
Folklore is one of the traditions of a culture: people make music in a layman's way, as they use music to tell their everyday experiences and express their feelings. Through this music I learn a lot about different cultures and the history of a country. At the same time, folklore is also a migration history, as it is composed of different influences. Music has always been global.
How did you come to make music yourself as a passionate music listener?
I always wanted to make music. Actually, I wanted to play the piano. At the music school in Sindelfingen, where I grew up, they said to me at the time that this is not possible. If I wanted to, I could immediately learn bass, because there are still free places. And that's how I came to the bass. When you play bass, you are very busy with rhythms and I like it. I also studied bass in Switzerland and still play swing and jazz with different bands in different cast and all over Europe.
Meanwhile, we have reached the bar of the Kunstmuseum with a coffee, where you have already performed. Here you did not play jazz or swing, but salsa. How did you come to salsa?
I heard in the broadcast of the said Berendt in 1973 the record The Sun of Latin Music by the New York salsa pianist Eddie Palmieri and was immediately enthusiastic. I still like to hear this record today. In Zapata, I experienced him live and I could tell him that his music has brought me to salsa. I think every music has its own codes and secrets to explore: While producing my first salsa piece, I found that the rhythms work differently than I used to. In the apartment of a friend, I met musicians, with whom I founded my first salsa group in 1982. I used to live with this friend, who is married to an Argentine. Her then 3-year-old daughter taught me my first words in Spanish so that I could also talk to my new fellow musicians. Currently I am producing my second salsa CD titled Eres la tierra mas linda with my current orchestra Tokame, which has been in existence since 2002.

Interkultur Stuttgart / Tina Saum 

BRANKO ARNSEK 

MUSICAN - COMPOSER - PRODUCER - TEACHER