Damo Suzuki
Sette Modi Per Salvare Roma

Who is “really” Damo Suzuki?

- How old was he when he learned to walk? - I know I was doing pretty well by 4 - When did you leave the farm? - At 16 - And it really took 12 years to make up your mind…. (Cary Grant in “People Will Talk” by L.C. Mankiewitz, 1951)

Just over 16 years old, Kenji “Damo” Suzuki decided he could walk well enough to travel the world.

Goodbye to an overbearing mother and a silent father, goodbye to a sister who kept giving him musical instruments he never learned to play, and goodbye to Japan and any cultural affiliation.

Kenji wanted to be a citizen of the world.

And he sets off. He hustles as he goes. He mainly sustains himself by singing and playing (oh well, more like tormenting) a guitar – blessed be his sister – and dancing.

And he walks.

At some point – in ’67 or thereabouts – he arrives in Europe. First, we find him in Sweden, in a sort of commune with about fifty other folks like him, enjoying life in that unspoiled nature and doing nothing (his words). Then he goes to Finland, France, Switzerland, England, Ireland, until – finally – he arrives in Germany.

- Do you like music Mr. Shaunderson? -Above all else (“People Will Talk” op. cit.)

He wandered around Munich beginning to think about returning to Japan when he happened to be offered a job: playing in a musical (!).

It was a good job, but it wasn't for someone like Damo: he didn't conceive of music that way, it was routine. Always the same notes, always the same way, always the same.

So, whenever he could, he went out on the street and performed singing, shouting, and dancing, torturing a poor guitar.

"O mortal thoughts, oh vain wanderings of men, cause both týchē and the gods to exist. For if there is týchē, why is there need for the gods? And if the power is of the gods, then týchē is nothing." (Euripides from "Hypsipyle")

Týchē, chance, fortune, or whatever the hell you want to call her. Whether it’s the will of the gods or a non-linear sequence of accidents, the incomprehensible actions of a blindfolded lady (and female….) or the planetary influence of Jupiter, in the end, however you look at it, it’s always a matter of luck.

Because you can't explain it any other way what happened.

I mean, while our yellow imp Damo was shouting and jumping along the sidewalk near a café in Munich, in that very café were Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, who were wondering where to find someone to replace Malcom Mooney, the singer of their band (is there anyone who doesn't know I'm talking about CAN?) whose mind had gone and who had abruptly returned to the USA on his shrink's orders.

What is genius? Jaki and Holger didn’t think twice: they took that fiery little lemon and brought him to perform in concert with them.

Without even rehearsing.

What followed is 20th Century Music History. Four extraordinary masterpieces (Soundtracks, Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi, Future Days). Four epoch-making albums. And then dazzling concerts and performances. Music never heard before, the result of a creative freedom and lopsided vision that had no – and still has no – equal.

In short, if you know, what's the point of telling you? And, if you don't know, one of us is obviously in the wrong place.

And then.

-Have you ever noticed, dear Shaunderson, that skulls always smile? Now, why should a man die and then smile for eternity? (“People Will Talk” op. cit.).

I really don't know why but when I think of Damo I don't think of sacred texts or Music's great Histories. I should mention, say, Debord (De Bore as the rough kids of Luther Blisset say) and situationism, as few have embodied the situationist ideal of an Art of change that is the pure expression of impossible change more than CAN. Or, perhaps, Baudrillard or Deleuze.

Most of all, I should mention “lettrism” and Isidore Isou (a movement that also saw Debord's first steps): probably Damo Suzuki was the most important and consistent exponent of that cultural movement and that form of poetic and verbal expression of which, however, our Hero had no knowledge.

No. When I think of Damo, for some reason, I always think of this little 1951 Mankiewitz film – “People Will Talk” – about a Ludwig “Noah” Praetorius, a gynecologist, philosopher, and musician who goes around with an undead and who – apart from music – has really nothing in common with our Damo.

Perhaps it’s because I love that film and its razor-sharp script, despite a certain underlying pro-life and anti-abortion morality, (it was still 1951!), but in reality much more oblique and deviant than it might seem at first, superficial, viewing, that I talk about it whenever I can.

Now, to get back to us, I doubt that, as anti-abortionist as he is, gynecologist Praetorius could ever be considered a role model for ciellini [Italian Catholic movement members] or Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Because, in fact, the Jehovah's Witnesses come into the picture at this point. And love.

-I am in love with you -What makes you believe that? -I can't give you the symptoms: it's love, not rubella! (“People Will Talk” op. cit.)

So, Damo begins to be tired of the rockstar life (!), looks for something else and, at some point, he falls in love. But she is a Jehovah’s Witness.

Damo follows her.

And disappears. Swallowed for more than 11 years in a black hole.

However, let me say, no one ever wondered what this feeling between the Witnesses and quirky singers is due to? Can you imagine if David Thomas and Damo Suzuki had found themselves singing any Sunday Psalm together what could have come out of it?

I would even have pretended to convert just to be there!

And then.

-Of the good God, naturally, I make no pronouncements. But I know something about Good Mother Nature: if she had her way, no human being would be left alive. -Meaning? -I merely mean that, among other things, Good Mother Nature tries to destroy us periodically through disease, pestilence, and disaster. That is why the human race has been at war with Good Mother Nature since it became a human race. -What do you mean “became a human race”? You teach such things? (“People Will Talk” op. cit.)

In fact, more than the good God, it’s Good Mother Nature that shuffles the cards with a tumor.

Damo has to undergo surgery, but he can't receive blood transfusions, according to his brethren’s view. So Damo begins to ask himself some questions.

It will take more than six months to recover. Six months without being able to walk. Six months of questioning, six months that will leave a mark on his body and soul, during which our yellow imp will realize that the only thing he has always wanted and continues to want to do is walk.

And so Damo sets off again.

And resumes singing.

Because it’s what he knows how to do, and to travel the world you have to find a way to sustain yourself. But he is no longer just anyone, he is no longer a busker, a penniless street musician collecting insults and coins from passers-by.

He is Damo Suzuki!

He notices that he has not been forgotten at all, on the contrary! The myth has grown over the years, people like John Lydon or Mark E. Smith (not exactly gentle types with their peers!) honor him as their role model. Mark even dedicates one of his most beautiful songs to him: “I Am Damo Suzuki”.

First, he joins a German band, Dunkelziffer (somewhere there are three of their records, as beautiful as they are hard to find).

Then he decides he has been still long enough and invents the “Network”.

Basically, it goes like this: Damo just says “I'm coming to such and such a place” and local musicians flock to play with him, concert halls open their doors for him and there’s an audience waiting to see him. And not just the concert halls! Art galleries, bookstores, literary cafés, universities look for him, invite him to speak, to play, to be interviewed, to do whatever he likes. Someone films him, documentaries and videos are made about him.

The one who is most surprised is Damo himself!

This is what he calls the “Damo Suzuki's Network” (or “Sound Carriers” in some cases): his band is the World, his group consists of all the musicians who, from time to time, want to come play with him.

Without rehearsing.

It's not improvisation, he calls it “creative composition” and, damn, it works! (I mean, it almost always works....).

If you're not lucky enough to see him in concert (that's the ideal dimension for his music) try listening to one of the records derived from those performances.

For example, this “Sette Modi Per Salvare Roma”, the result of a 2011 Roman concert, at the Circolo degli artisti, accompanied by Xabier Iorondo, Emanuel Agnelli, Enrico Gabrielli and Cristiano Calcagnile. What comes out is a dissonant and alluring sonic magma; quirky but not as chaotic as you might expect, on which "that" voice, which anyone who has loved CAN as viscerally as I have, knows in all its nuances. Certainly, it's not music for every occasion but it gives the mind a nice shake-up.

And even today, our Damo, as he approaches seventy springs, continues to walk, with some difficulty, but never stopping.

Once he even reached the Sahara Desert.

And got lost.

It was only a stroke of luck that two guys happened by and gave him a lift, certainly not knowing who he was.

But how can you not love him?

-Are all your patients women, Dr. Praetorius? And are they all in love with you? (“People Will Talk”)