ECHO for Dusko Gojkovic

DW: Mr. Gojkovic, you've been honored with the ECHO Jazz award for Lifetime Achievement. How significant is this for you?

Dusko Gojkovic: I have to say that it was a big surprise for me. Of course, an international prize like this is a big honor, and I'm very proud. It made me really happy that someone thought to honor me - while I'm still around!

There's a whole hosts of prizes that artists can receive for their life's work. But upon winning, they often remark that they're not done with their creative lives. Do you consider yourself to be in creative retirement?

Not at all! I'm going on like always. In recent years, I've done a few CDs, and there'll be a new one coming soon. I give concerts, including in clubs, when there's a special occasion. In Belgrade, I just recorded with the Radio Big Band. I grew up there, so I've also played there, of course. The boys in the Big Band got a Latin jazz project going for me, and the CD is going to be released soon. Last fall brought a CD with the string players of the Brandenburg Symphony. I always wanted to do something with strings, and I'm really pleased that it finally came about.

Your career began in the 1950s in Cologne in Kurt Edelhagen's band. What was it like back then for you as a young trumpet player from Yugoslavia?

It was great! Back then, it wasn't so easy for someone from Yugoslavia to come to the West - just as it wasn't for East Germans. It was thanks to the German jazz musician and publicist Carlo Bohländer that I came to Frankfurt. Then Kurt Edelhagen commissioned me to work for the new WDR (West German Radio) Big Band, the best band in Europe at the time, with international players. I was very happy to be able to play in it - sometimes as a soloist. We also played with American drummer Kenny Clark in Cologne, which later resulted in the Clark/Boland Big Band. That was all during my time with the WDR band from 1957 to 1961.

In the 60s, you went to the US to Berklee College, where you received a scholarship. Then you went on to New York, played in the popular bands led by Maynard Ferguson, Woody Herman, Thad Jones and Gerry Mulligan. Which of the big bandleaders talked to you about your roots in the Balkans?

Back then, they didn't view me as a foreigner at all. They knew that I came from Germany and Europe. They were only interested in how people played. I had the good fortune of playing for five years with the best US bands. I learned a great deal, and it was really fun!

You're considered an originator of what's called Balkan jazz. What brought you to combine elements of Balkan folk music with jazz?

Well, it wasn't a copy of Balkan music. The musical richness of the Balkans was just a foundation for my Balkan compositions. I didn't know what I should call them and only came to the name 'Balkan jazz' much later. In the US back then, these broken rhythms in 5/4 or 7/4 were little known. Dave Brubeck did it with "Take Five" - although it was only many years later.

Today, this stylistic approach is firmly established as an element of jazz. How has Balkan jazz developed over the years?

Many musicians from around the world have adopted this style. It's enriched the jazz scene as a whole. I was on tour with my band 11 times in Japan, and the people always called out to me, 'Hey, play this kind of music!' I'm really happy to still have that kind of response even more than 50 years later.

When you work with young musicians today, sometimes up to three generations play together. What's that like for you?

Wonderful. There are very many young musicians who play well these days. They come from good jazz schools, where they've learned a lot technically and musically. It's really fun for me to play with boys who have mastered their instruments. Back then - after the Second World War - things were different. There weren't many musicians at all in Germany who played jazz. But there were the US GIs, among whom many were jazz musicians. We learned a lot from them.

Dusko Gojkovic is a trumpet player, arranger and composer born in Jajce in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina. The 82-year-old, who has lived in Munich for many years, is frequently invited by bands as a guest musician, particularly when the goal is authentically drawing on the Balkan idiom. That was the case in 1999 at a DW "Balkan Jazz" concert with the Nicolas Simion Group in Cologne. The evening's program was later put out by the label Intuition, and the CD includes the piece "Fighting Song," the concert recording of which you can hear here.

Interview: Conny Paul / gsw