Tavi Scurtu Guides Us Into The Most Beautiful Journey Into Jazz Music -

A rhythm born out the pain and suffering of the opressed. A sound driven by improvisations, by the groove paterns aligned with the artist’s gut feeling, by the passion that pushes the humans into creating memorable pieces of music. This is the Jazz DNA, inherited by a few subgenres of electronic music.

This is where we met Tavi Scurtu, also known as punct8, a Romanian drummer and percussionist involved in quite a few musical projects: A-C Leonte & The BASH, iordache, Știința Fantasticului, Ninigra.

Tavi grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Kraftwerk, Pink Floyd and Jean-Michel Jarre. The passion for percussions developed since he was a child, as popular music was dominated by rhythmic music, more exactly music with a strong drum beat: from rock, to pop, to electronic and dance music. Even if nowadays Tavi Scurtu’s musical universe revolves around Jazz music, this expandes to all that is rooted in the African culture. “All, part of the african diaspora inspired music continuum, that took over the world: afro-cuban, afro beat, brasilian, funk,rock, dub, hip hop, jungle / drum and bass, breakbeat, broken beat, fusion, the works.

Tavi Scurtu is part of that rare breed of artists who can see the bigger picture of the world we are living in: out of the system, not touched by the corporate speeches and spiritually awaken. These are the reasons why his musical selection below is more valuable than any other selection we did until now. And his words of wisdom can be a guideline for any artist out there, be it underground or mainstream. Enjoy every piece of it!

“Hopefully the Romanians’ appetite for Jazz music will grow stronger, and the trend to transform the music of the liberators, the marginals, the minorities, the hep, into shallow, by the numbers, entertainment for the corporate domination system, will not “stepford” all music, as it tries to do now; real music is not a mere ornament or accessory, not a distraction, not an incentive for those that obey anti-human laws, not a soundtrack for a cute life, lived as in a commercial-inspired trance. Lest we forget deception is not creativity: jazz is supposed to be driven by innovation, which does not bring safe revenues and social stability. As long as “safety” is far more cherished than freedom, “jazz” will remain a shadown of its own self everywhere.”