Name: C'mon Tigre
Nationality: Italian
Current release: C'mon Tigre's Habitat, featuring guest contributions by Seun Kuti, Arto Lindsay, Xênia França and Giovanni Truppi, is out via Intersuoni.
Recommendations: “Strandbeest" - a family of wind-powered, self-propelling kinetic sculptures with "autonomous life," created by the Dutch artist Theo Jansen.
"Construção" by Chico Buarque

If you enjoyed this interview with C'mon Tigre and would like to stay up to date with their music, visit their official website. The band are also on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.  
 


What were some of your earliest collaborations? How do you look back on them with hindsight?

Our artistic collaborations have been many, including with the San Diego-based Drumetrics collective, with whom we still collaborate today, and Gianluigi Toccafondo, who directed the animation film for the single 'Federation Tunisienne de football', which was C'mon Tigre's first ever release.

We consider collaborations among the most valuable things that make our project alive

There are many potential models for collaboration, from live performances and jamming/producing in the same room together up to file sharing. Which of these do you prefer – and why?  

We had many experiences, both ways, and we have to say that in each model there are good things, it is very much related to people, space and time.

Working together with artists in presence is certainly very powerful, sometimes distance serves to have more time and calm to enter the worlds of others. We have always been very satisfied with the collaborations we have managed to build.

Working at a distance with Arto Lindsay was fantastic, hearing his voice over the phone. Seun Kuti spent a day in the studio with us, which was a lot of fun

How did this particular collaboration come about?

We had a gig together with Seun Kuti in Italy, and we took the opportunity to meet up and do something together. We share the same management and booking agency and this helped us.

Playing together with Seun was very nice for us, for a project that has afrobeat as one of its basic ingredients.

What did you know about each other before working together? Describe your creative partner in a few words, please.

We always defined C'mon Tigre as a collective, an extended family.

Very often a friendship existed before the collaboration, in other cases the initial collaboration turned into a sincere friendship.

What do you generally look for in a collaborator and what made you want to collaborate with each other specifically?

We initially appreciate the style, the character, technical and artistic. If that strikes us the contact begins.

And the humanity, there has to be a thread that unites us, and up to now it has basically always been like that. We have been good, or simply lucky. We think it works like that, mutually.

Sometimes you also make contact because you have friends in common. Anyway that feeling has to be there.

Tell me a bit about your current instruments and tools, please. In which way do they support creative exchange and collaborations with others?  

Instruments are only a medium for us, we have more specific preferences and skills on some. But in general we love to think that C'mon Tigre can carry its message on several legs, and that things can change around us.

Often the very things we know less about are a source of strong inspiration.

Before you started making music together, did you in any form exchange concrete ideas, goals, or strategies? Generally speaking, what are your preferences when it comes to planning vs spontaneity in a collaboration?

C'mon Tigre was certainly born from a very clear initial idea, combining our musical style closely with a precise visual imagery, and it was a completely natural process.

We believe that planning, which is necessary to bring ideas to fruition, should always leave room for spontaneity. There must always be a good balance between the two.  

Describe the process of working together, please. What was different from your expectations and what did the other add to the music?

The work done together defines the style of C'mon Tigre, everyone adds their own and the end result is always better than the initial input.

It's a very natural process between us, there's a lot of openness and willingness to mix things up together, to work on material maybe written independently, and to change ideas as we go along.

Is there a piece which shows the different aspects you each contributed to the process particularly clearly?

We wouldn't know. Perhaps all the pieces of this puzzle retain the identity of those who collaborated

What tend to be the best collaborations in your opinion – those with artists you have a lot in common with or those where you have more differences? What happens when another musician take you outside of your comfort zone?

The best collaborations are definitely those between distant universes. This is a founding principle of C'mon Tigre.

The best results occur when thoughts and styles that are very different from each other are mixed or juxtaposed.

Decisions between creatives often work without words. How did this process work in this case?

We believe it is crucial for words to precede the beginning of collaboration to give tangible meaning to an intimate thought and make it accessible to the other.

From that moment on, the goal is to leave the creative flow as free as possible

What are your thoughts on the need for compromise vs standing by one's convictions? How did you resolve potential disagreements in this collaboration?

Being part of the collaboration process involves reaching a compromise. Holding onto one's own positions never works; nothing good is ever created that way.

The solution lies simply in engaging in dialogue.

Was/Is this collaboration fun – does it need to be?

Collaborations are almost never fun; they require concentration. To try to grasp a different thought than yours, a lot of respect towards the other is needed, and this certainly cannot be defined as enjoyable.

It rarely happens, but it does, to have fun in a collaboration, especially if there is already a past experience with the person you are collaborating with.

Do you find that thanks to this collaboration, you changed certain parts of your process or your outlook on certain creative aspects?

Certainly, this is the main condition of any encounter between two people, from which you come out different, to a greater or lesser extent, always depending on who, what, and how.

It is an enriching process that happens every time you come into contact with another human being. Fortunately :-)

Collaborating with one's heroes can be a thrill or a cause for panic. Do you have any practical experience with this and what was it like?

We have had the privilege of collaborating with numerous heroes, giants of culture, world-renowned photographers such as Paolo Pellegrin or Harri Peccinotti, authors and masters of contemporary animation like Gianluigi Toccafondo, invaluable artists and musicians.

Xenia França has just won a Grammy, and Seun Kuti represents Nigerian music worldwide, inheriting from his father a truly heroic mission. They are contemporary heroes for us.

This has never frightened us because we have always had the opportunity to engage and be heard. At times, we've been granted unexpected trust, suggesting that, in some way, we deserved it.