Part 1

Name: Maroulita de Kol
Nationality: Greek
Occupation: musician, facilitator
Current Release: Anásana on Phantom Limb
Recommendations: Any sculpture by Auguste Rodin/ Island by Aldous Huxley

If you enjoyed this interview with Maroulita de Kol visit her website to listen to music, watch videos and learn more about her work. 


When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Music for me provides very strong experiences and is a basic ingredient of my everyday life flow and my everyday sanity maintenance. Depending on what I need - to energise myself, to calm myself, to make me feel more, to neutralise me - I can chose the right piece or song and then it happens for me - all that I need. Some other times a song comes unexpected and I can have tears in my eyes - out of sadness or gratitude - other times I can have goosebumps all over my body and then stand up and dance it all out. I listen with my eyes open or closed, I listen to music all day long!

What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

I am going to talk now about the first album “Mora” I ever recorded with my band Reverse Mode. Back then we had no idea what we were doing, we were so excited and romantic about music and art in general. Making an album is like writing a book about a whole era of your life and when you are doing this as a shared experience with other musicians then the experience is priceless! We did so much personal work and we put so much passion inside this work without having any idea how to promote it or share it with the world. That was also a valuable lesson for all of us in the continuation of our musical lives.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music meant to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

Those teenage years were for me very crucial as for the dreams that were being planted inside me concerning music. Some of them have been realised and some of them are yet to be realised. I remember being a piano student at the age of 14, listening to “OK Computer” by Radiohead understanding deeply inside me that making music “like this” is what I am here for. I remember this excitement - this rush - when I realised the infinite possibilities of music creation! It really opened for me a new universe, a new meaning and a purpose in life. My relationship with music remains mostly on these levels of excitement and importance till today.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

Piano is definitely the master instrument of my compositions in the sense that usually everything starts from there. As a trained soloist, I have a very close relationship with this instrument since I was 5 years old. It always had prominent place in my life, if not the most central. I dare to say that I feel so close to this instrument that sometimes I don’t separate it from my body. Playing the piano for me is like breathing.
Then came the voice which expressively brings me in my most vulnerable state. Through singing I came to find places in me I didn’t know they exist and I explored and still exploring states of being that we don’t have words for. It was also through singing that I reclaimed my connection with my country’s heritage during my on-going musical trip with traditional Greek music.

Last but not least, my connection with the Moog Synthesiser changed my musical life as it brought me gently to the world of electronic music and defined the sound of my music a lot.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

Nature and my connection to nature is often the starting point of my creations. In my upcoming album “Anásana" I have explored a lot the sound world of the elements of Water and Earth as well as the vast space of the Universe in an attempt to strengthen my relationship to them and also become nurtured and empowered through these creations.

Many of my pieces are written for beloved friends and loved ones. They are hymns of love and dedication towards them, honouring who they are and what they bring to my life. Other times I want to give sound and feeling to greater ideas or spaces, like for example the space of Love or to create restorative music for the empowerment of women.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

Yeah, I must agree here with Paul Simon but instead of overall sound I would call it the general vibration and the state of being that my music puts me inside. It’s quite meditative I would say with explosions of emotions and often dramatic through epic outbursts. I haven’t been able to create a single song till now in my life - you know - a song with verses and a chorus. My creations are more like repetitive spells, or poems that are freely improvised. So the music has inside some special freshness along with some “mistakes” that I usually keep cause I don’t want to ruin the freshness. It’s certainly ambient and pretty psychedelic in the way the Greeks used to use this word: it’s moving the soul and allowing it to travel. Last but not least my music is folk, it comes out of all the traditions I have stepped inside of throughout my life.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

What a beautiful question! Having been raised in a farm and being close to the sea all my life I am very connected with these sounds and they make the soundscape of my childhood and teenage years. All these sounds could be perceived as quite random, but it’s really more of a well tuned orchestra of Nature, the music of the Earth. They are very musical as long as there is somebody there to pay enough attention! Inside this composition that sounds like an ambient soundscape you can tell apart so many different timbres of sound that come from different animals, or different movements of materials and elements.

There is so much variety of life in motion. It’s really a magical world expressed through sound. The most crazy sound experience I have every year in Greece is the very loud constant minimalistic soundscape of the cicadas which if you pay attention, is a beautiful composition that says a lot about what the cicadas are on at different moments of the day.