Live & Local: Harmonica Player Grégoire Maret at Dazzle 6/17-18 with Harold Lopez Nussa

This portion of the interview above has been edited for length and clarity:

Steve: I wonder how harmonica takes its place in European music, certainly in jazz, but here in the States, it's almost a campfire cowboy folk instrument.

Grégoire: Yeah, so this is kind of like both traditions, right? There's what you're saying, like the campfire, the thing that we hear and see a lot with usually diatonic harmonica, and then you have chromatic harmonica. That was very popular I guess in the forties in the States because when I used to talk to older harmonica players, they were telling me that it was even more popular at the time than the guitar. It was really an instrument that everybody was playing, and it was very common to see people play the chromatic harmonica. (It) completely kind of disappeared except for the genius of somebody like Toots Thielemans and Stevie Wonder. Both these incredible musicians were able to just play the harmonica with any sort of music. For them, it's all music, so they could do anything.

Carlos: Hey, Gregoire. When I look at the people that you have been a guest with, whether in the studio or on stage and so forth, it's just absolutely amazing. You go from people like Prince and Tito Puente who are both are no longer with us, Pete Seeger. How do you prepare yourself or how is it that you have been able to connect with so many musicians from these various musical backgrounds? I mean, you're like a musical chameleon. It's amazing!

Grégoire: Yeah. I try to really let my ego out of the way completely and be all about the music. So let the music guide me in whatever I need to do or not do. Sometimes it takes some time and some practice, and sometimes it's pretty clear and immediate what I can do. But I'm so passionate about music in general that I love these challenges of being able to play with different people in different styles. And so I'll really try to be all about the music really, and listen to what is the vision behind the composition and the music that is presented and be really there to serve that completely and no ego whatsoever. So that's where I feel like I can be the best I can be really in making music

Steve: Also on the list, Youssn'Dour.

Grégoire: As long as I connect to it emotionally, I feel I can really do it. I can be present and really add something. So yeah. It's so funny that you mentioned Youssn'Dour because I just reconnected with him after maybe 20 years. We hadn't really played together and recently just called me and I went to play with him in Brooklyn and Diane Reeves, I had the honor to even co-write a song with her called Heavens, and it was really, really special.

Steve: How does harmonica show up as a modern instrument? If you're in a collaboration with Me'Shell Ndegeocello that's something new - She doesn't play anything old!

Grégoire: It's about connecting emotionally to the music and the vision she has. So I'll be really listening to the track maybe a few times just to get into an understanding of what his vision (is), and then I'll start to bring in different things that I could possibly play on the instrument. And she'll choose and she kind of guides me and say, "okay, this is more what I want, or do this or do that," and then we'll go with that. Usually that's what it is, but she's very, very open.

Abi: Have you ever experimented with, and I don't know if this exists for the harmonica, like effect pedals?

Grégoire: I am right now. I started again, so I'm going to come back with Harold López-Nussa in a few days, I believe. Right?

Abi: Yes! On the 17th and 18th (of June).

Grégoire: Exactly. So, well, for the people who will come to see the shows, I have a pedal and I use it not that much for that particular music, but just a little bit.

Carlos: Here we are asking all these questions about how you're able to collaborate with all these musicians and so forth, and you keep coming back and saying, "it's just about the feeling, man. It's about the music," and that's really where it starts. That's really where the affinity for you begins and ends. When you work with musicians, you listen.

Grégoire: Yeah. But it's about being really completely honest in the moment. Music is about emotions, really. It's about being able to translate your emotions into notes, and so the first thing that needs to happen is really to be completely honest and being completely true and transparent. Once that happens, then you can start really playing music, not just playing notes, but really music, making music, and that's really the goal always for me. So I think the reason why I've been relatively successful with this instrument and being called by all these people is because that's what I've been doing always since I first started. I never was like, "I'm going to impose this kind of vision or this kind of way of playing." The music's going to guide me and tell me whatever I need to do, and I'll go with whatever it is that the music is telling me to do. Sometimes it's to play very, very little, just a few notes, and that's what's going to make it really, really special.