Thank you everyone for coming. This is Germination State #4. Tonight we want to talk about jamming: what it is, what does it do? What does jamming mean to us?

Since we are speaking about jamming, I know chronology sometimes can
be a bit boring, to kind of go chronologically in terms of how things happen, that happening always has like one point of departure. Because jamming is not a containable thing, but rather something that arrived to everybody at different stages, at different times, in different forms. So, for example, there might be people who engaged with jamming when it was at the kitchen in the form of cooking together, or when we were making the clay little figures, or when it was the music sessions. So maybe it is also good for us to think about these points of departure, about how we all arrived at the jam sessions? I think that is also what I am personally curious about.

Yes, I mean we never really have articulated it; we just do it, no? For me personally it is a very common practice. I mean, back home when I was starting to play this music, you go and rent a studio for like one Euro per hour and then you have to play together. A lot of dreams come out of jamming, a lot of ‘ah, we can do this, we can play this’, and maybe we cover a lot of songs, like Nirvana or like Green Day. Usually, jamming happens when you are bored to get to the point. To get to the point where you have to play this music correctly, according to the original version of Nirvana. I would say: accidental, but it is quite organized.

In my experience—because my dad is a musician and I used to help him to connect the equipment and this kind of stuff—they do not call it jam, they call it palomazo, and it takes place at the end or at the beginning of playing whole songs. And it has this sense of improvisation, but it is quite different, because they are musicians and they respect more or less the structure. Well, the first time I heard the concept of jamming or jam, it was from poetry, because in Mexico City they do jam or poetry or poetry-jam. And then, when you first explain the concept of jamming, then I understood it differently. Because it was not palomazo, or a poetry-jam, but it was more about like an act of joy. I see it as a way of releasing energy, you know? I guess when you already have a practice, you are already somehow contained by some structures. And then not all of the time you open yourself to do things that you do not know. For example, for me my approach to music is more as a listener, but never as an interpreter, or touching the instruments. And I am always pretty scared because my dad was saying, ‘no, no chaparro, no. You are not playing good, this is not your song, it is our song, it does not sound good.” [laughs] But then, I have a different approach here, because I can do whatever... [makes sound, laughs] I think it is a really simple way of coming together. And it has been almost a year that this jamming has been happening constantly. And something that I learned from you is the importance of listening. That it is not just about playing whatever, but it is also trying to listen what the other people are doing, and trying to do something together in the moment.

Yes. I think we learn together. It is not that I know how to do it in the first place. Listening to me is a very active position. It takes a lot of energy to listen, and I learned so much about expanding the capacity of the energy—I think I learned a lot from the jamming sessions together. Like, if it is a battery, my battery has become bigger.

The time was so different when the jam started. Like, the sense of time was less rigid. Now time is flowing faster, because we are approaching a deadline. Before this meeting, I suggested to do a jam and it was more purposeful. Before, the purpose was just to be together and learn certain things. I felt also a different kind of tiredness from this evening.

This is what I never understand... It is purposeless, but it is also purposeful.

Yes. But not just to release tension, to enjoy music. Yes, there is purpose, but this step of becoming a part of the publication is a totally different purpose for us. Or, I felt the same when it was broadcasted on Alhara. When we jammed for Radio Alhara, that was the most exhausting night for me, because suddenly the privacy disappeared.

Yes, because I remember that jam session was the jam on jam on jam on jam, right? That is the one that was six hours long and more people than usual. Yes, that one was quite intense. A lot of them have different intensities, because I have been in jam sessions that felt more like they were more focused on the sounds being melted together or the music, for lack of a better word, and there have been jam sessions which are much more open to everyone playing different instruments. And there are jam sessions which have another audience, which might not be present in the space, like the Radio Alhara one. And yes, so it is weird. I think they all have different energies and shit, but I remember that particular one was personally one of my faves; I just thought it was dope. It was really, really good, and there was a lot of people who I had never seen play or had never come to a jam session before and then they came and it was like wow, yes.

Yes, I also enjoyed it a lot, but also I missed our privacy that night, because it means a lot to us.

Why is the privacy important to you?

Because it is nice, it is more intimate. I don’t know.

Something I really enjoy about the jam sessions is the encounter. We are in the same situation and many times we are sharing the same space, but we are in completely different syntony. So there is this sense of proximity when we are all together in this space and listening to each other. It does not matter exactly for what or the purpose of it, but it is just a fact of connecting into the same syntony in the same space, in the same context. And that I think it is a very, very powerful moment. It is a very powerful act when everybody just comes to the same feeling and the same situation, when it is coming to the climax of the song. And I wonder about the other people in the room. Yesterday, for instance, Mette, Pennie and I were dancing, and I was wondering if we influence the people who are playing? And then I wonder; we listen to the people who are playing, but we can also listen to the people who are being silent, no?
I just really like this way of connecting. So it is listening, but also this listening is allowing the other to transform yourself. That is like the concept of deep listening. Because it is not only hearing the other, but it is allowing the other to influence your own actions and then bring it somehow in some result together.

I was thinking about how the art context makes every form within it to have an artistic meaning. And I think the beauty of jamming and the jam, all the jamming, is that it is very out of form. It is something that tries to avoid being categorized into something, or formalized or rationalized into what art practice wants to do with our practice. I just wonder, when you try to rationalize it into art practice, what happens to it?

The jam itself happens as it is, but now we came to this. I have been trying to reject this notion of it being translated or represented in terms of the publication. I think the best way to experience or to understand jamming is by jamming itself. But then I realized we won’t lose it, because everything happens in us. It is happening all anyway. I am not so concerned about how it will be articulated in terms of representations, because we have so much and the flow of the energy around us that allows this to happen.

Well, for me, the jam sessions were like a relief of stress and fear. They started when the lockdown started, and I was super afraid. So it has been so good for me and also gave me a lot of confidence. Because when I tried to play music in Mexico, there were these teachers and people saying ‘no, music is like this and this and this’, and I am always so distracted, I cannot follow the rules, and here it is like ‘oh, we can do it’ and there are no rules. Well, the rules are made up while we are playing.

Togar, do you remember, there was a quote by Toni Morrison that you had printed out and you had in your studio? It was at the beginning of the lockdown, fucking everyone is confused and you read this Toni Morrison quote and it kind of goes along the lines of like ‘now is the time for artists to get to work’. Like when shit hits the fan, when things are bad, that is when artists go to work. And then you were like so believing in this thing and I was like ‘we cannot glamourize struggle as a departure point for art’. But now that I think of it, almost a year on, I am just thinking that the limitation of the lockdown created situations that we are able to grow from. Especially all of us coming to this institution, many of us new, not having family or any of that shit here, so we kind of had to make use of these points of contention, these sides of struggle, to then create things like jam session and cinema club and the Earthport et cetera, et cetera. And I mean, I am only agreeing a year later, because last year I totally was against the idea of struggle as a point of departure for art making. I felt like I was not subscribing to it, but now, a year on, I understand why that Toni Morrison quote would have resonated with you at the time, maybe with others. Yes, it is a beautiful quote.

You’ve spoken about play Togar, and Diana mentioned rules. Maybe you all would like to reflect on this? Because I immediately thought about kids playing in the street. Even the simplest play has rules. And did we ever talk about rules in this jamming? Because I also sometimes get greedy, like, ‘I wish everyone was listening now’, and listening to each other and it is a nice feeling to get lost in listening.

I do not think you are being greedy, because to be honest I have also had similar incidences. Because sometimes maybe there is someone over there who is playing a really nice repetitive thing on the keyboard and you’re kind of thinking like ‘yo, guys, can we just stop and listen to that shit for a second?’ Or maybe I am playing something and I am like ‘listen to me’, or Togar is on the drum and there is a moment where the cowbell comes in and I am like, ‘wait, did anyone hear that?’ There is moments when I just want to pause, capture, and loop. And then we all just shut up and loop. But the thing is, because we are in this moment of everything playing at once, that sometimes I find my ears having to dissect this thing and like ‘oh my god, listen to that guitar part that someone is playing’. And because we are not verbally talking with one another, so I do not know, for example, if you did hear the same thing that I heard. But I leave the jam session being like ‘fuck, the part that so-and-so played was so dope’, but then you can never go back to it and you can never go back to it collectively also. So there is kind of isolated moments also, I think, that happen in jam sessions, that maybe cannot actually be shared—and I do not know if they are supposed to be.

Exactly. This is one discussion that I had with Sungeun. And Sungeun, do you want to say something? Hello?

[silence, no answer]

There is something about rules, right? Like in a game there should be rules. And I think it is more about children playing in their own head with their own rules, just like we are allowed to make our own conditions. It’s a synchronicity that we kind of build up by being together and just doing. It’s a non-judgmental space. And it is really hard to let the community be, without enforcing where you want it to go. I think that is really special about the jams. You know, there are no mind games. It is just shared joy. My therapist likes to say, ‘the opposite of depression is expression’.

I was never hesitant to do the jam sessions, but in the beginning I had some... not reservations but shyness, because I had purchased this electronic organ, and I do not even know how to play piano. And then there were more keyboards and I thought if I cannot play and there is other keyboards and if things are not harmonious, then it is going to sound bad. But actually that did not even end up really happening. We found ways around that. So I think at some stage I also even threw out the concept of rules with the jam sessions and I think that is particularly why I enjoyed it. Also, I think, when we say rules I am not sure if we are being specific. But I am going to assume we are speaking about like music theory rules, maybe chromatic scales, vibes, like Western musical theory, A,B,C,D,E,F,G, all of that kind of shit. That is my assumption. In which case then I am also cognisant of how that kind of stuff scares me and makes me not want to engage with sound.

But I think we for sure have some hierarchy in the jamming sessions. We know there is hierarchy, but the hierarchy is fluid. It is impossible to not have hierarchy, but we acknowledge this hierarchy. Therefore, it frees us from doing—we feel each other out in that regard. Like we pull each other out in that sense, I guess. I think there is rules, because there is a limitation, no? Time itself is the limitation, space itself is the limitation, the instrument itself is the limitation, our understanding or our approach to the instrument. So it is there. It has rules, but we do not necessarily talk about it. We acknowledge all this. And therefore I think by acknowledging the limitations it creates the freedom itself.

I think if you put a rule, then again you begin to interfere in how the dynamics work, no? It is really about practicing the dynamics of the space, the dynamics of the characters, the community, whatever you want to call that, and the flow of the togetherness that we have there. That is what I feel.

There is a contradiction, I think, what we are experiencing now, when I am thinking about what you are saying. Like the dynamics of being together is jeopardized by the instruments we are using, maybe, because the instruments are dictating to push us to make music, and because those instruments are created for that in a way. Also, what you were saying, Simnikiwe, like these instruments, the notes, the keys are organized in those kind of notes and the structure is embedded in the instruments, at least in the guitar and in the keyboards, and maybe they are really like trying to lure us into making music in the sense we know. And when you do not have—or when you think you do not have—a musical sense, then the instruments and the way we use them starts to create exclusion, or a risk of exclusion.

I think we are talking about two different levels, no? There’s the level of music playing and the level of conviviality. So probably we do not want to set musical rules in the music, but there are certain rules in the conviviality when we are there together and we are sharing one space together. And when someone does not understand and is being invasive against another one, then it is breaking a rule. It is breaking an invisible rule that is not there, about how to be together in a harmonious way, let’s say.

Saying what a jamming session is like... I feel like it was being born out of something, out of something that we could not have, outside of what had already existed. Maybe it is the intimate idea about it as well, because we’re in Amsterdam together. There are certain rules in Amsterdam that do not apply to other cities or European countries, and we are at the Rijks so we all are in a common, mutual/similar situation. The sensation that we share from the jamming sessions can be relatable to everyone else outside the Netherlands, when they listen to it and feel the intimacy from it.

Hey, is anyone surprised that these jam sessions have not been shut down at any point?

I am just thinking about it now...

It is interesting now, apparently with Dutch law, is that if we are working we are allowed to be in bigger groups. But if we are not working, then it is not allowed, I think. But I do not know if this is true, I should look into it...

But having a party is work also. It is a ‘networking-event’! [laughter]

Yes, it is sonic research. Parties are sonic researches. It is work.

You can’t take it away from us [sings] Oh sorry, Daniel.

No, no, you first.

I just wanted to do a musical interlude.
They can’t take that away from you [sings]

It’s interesting the thing about partying and jamming, what is the boundary, what is the line? And from the beginning we were talking about how we make music and singing and dancing. I think that is another form of line. I do not know, therapy for a human being from a very old day. We just like here to move with the rhythm in the music, with our body, doing something and being in the space together and the energy is like actually just another form of therapy. Like sometimes it works better than talking, like conversation and sharing thoughts. That is another way to communicate and connect. Like, actually, that is quite powerful, using body language. Of course, I have no musical knowledge. I cannot play anything, I cannot even sing, but I definitely feel that energy of the jamming session. So I try to dance and engage as best as I could. What I am trying to say is like, maybe the party is a different type of energy, a different type of engagement, maybe not producing. And jamming is like painting, I do not know. It is like painting to me. It is like making something that we all share collectively. But I am still not sure what the line between having a party and jamming is.

I agree with Anh about how these jamming sessions are some kind of place for therapy, healing and also for conversation. Not with words but with music, instruments, the body. That also makes me think of these issues, that we discussed before about public or private. Like what is the goal of becoming public or making public this kind of event or this kind of coming together? And I think that - especially the same with therapy, with psychoanalysis—maybe when you are hearing some kind of experience that you are not related with, that you cannot engage, no? And also, I think that this is precisely one thing that is really special and singular about the jamming, that since it is not articulated in these conventional ways of separating the public and the private, since even the same concept of public is not and the performer. When we are in the space together, we are together, doing it. But when it came to jam on jam on jam on Radio Alhara, we do not see them, but we know they are listening.

The thing about Radio Alhara is that all the listeners are also producers on the radio. Meaning that they, all the listeners, also can participate, and most of them submit mixes or tracks or whatever on the radio, within the limitations of the medium, of course, that the aim of the radio is to bring closer the distance between the producer and the listener, meaning that you are a listener and a producer of another show. So of course, the jamming is more in place happening. Sometimes some people come listen, but they can easily jump from sitting listening to playing. It is open for that. So yes, it is true and it is spect-actor rather than spectator. So, it is not a show, as much as it is an event.

Well, so many things to say about this jamming, ha? Ok, thank you everyone. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.