Love of the Awkward, Different,and Strange
Xelis de Toro and ChopChop
Jude Montague
Xelis de Toro, writer and performance artist from Galicia, performs at the Jenny Lind music pub with the band ChopChop – a collective of remarkable, inventive musicians which he fronts with his dynamic movements and poetry. The poet has been in England for about 30 years, but moved to Hastings from Brighton only last year. I met this creative neighbour on the Kings Road recently, and was delighted to find out he was from a place I have had an interest in for many years, as my good friend the artist Susana Sanromán is a creative visual artist also from Galicia.
Xelis de Toro
Xelis has a strong Galician/Spanish accent, which he uses to good effect as a poet and performer for UK audiences. Although he used to enjoy being a foreigner, he says that since Brexit some of the fun of that has been lost. He is from the green North West of his country, where it rains.
Some describe the Galician tongue as being, linguistically, more closely related to Portuguese than to Spanish. Galicia has its own illustrious history, and is internationally well-known for the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, housing the shrine of St James (discovered and attributed in the ninth century AD) that is the destination of the world-renowned pilgrimage. This phenomenon has subsequently shaped the cultural and economic development of the Kingdom. Although the Galician language has survived in modern Spain, it is seen as a minority language.
Xelis, however, is very much a defender of Galician identity. He writes books in the Galician language, a number of which have been used in the local school curriculum and been awarded important prizes. He also won a prize for the best Galician novel of the year 2000, for Os saltimbanquis no paraíso [‘The Clowns in Paradise’]. This novel and another, Feral River (2020) have been translated into English.
I know Xelis as a movement artist, and I asked him about this. I saw him perform with ChopChop at the White Rock, for their regular monthly Thursday jazz night ‘Berth of the Cool’. He explained: “I was initially a writer and was for many years. And then I started to move, dance, perform in a variety of contexts, theatre, live art, vocal improvisation. I am more a performer than a musician, I move, I dance, I gesticulate, and yes, I deliver words too. I see myself within and outside Chopchop as a performer, a mover, a word delivery machine.”
“I have always been interested in mixing text with other disciplines. In Brighton I did lots of work as a cross-disciplinary artist collaborating with other artists under the name Boca2mouth, with virtual artist Jim Sanders and artist and musician Ed Briggs. I have also done a project on the history of Sound and Concrete Poetry, of which I am a practitioner.”
MUSICAL PHILOSOPHY
Xelis explained ChopChop’s musical philosophy. “It is a band that creates new music – on the edges of experimental music but with a groove. In brief, people dance in our shows and we love it. We are not a generic band. We are sometimes seen as influenced by new wave and post-punk from New York or the Funky Fall. Far out music! Whatever they call us, as long as they keep dancing, we don’t care!”
“ChopChop is a completely democratic band, there are no leaders, no egos, we discuss, we talk and make decisions together. We know that doing new, and difficult -to-categorize music, our options are limited. But we love what we do, we get great pleasure, and after ten years we still get on well, because we still manage to surprise ourselves with new music. When I get together with my colleagues to rehearse, I count myself lucky, I think, man! There is no other place I want to be. I just love every time we come up with a new idea. I am really aware that I am working with three very sophisticated musicians. In our gigs, some of the people dance and the others look at us saying “what the hell are these guys doing?”’
He says he likes awkwardness, difference, and strangeness. He wants to see and listen to things that he doesn’t know and doesn’t understand, and wants to see more things that challenge him in Hastings. There is an experimental scene here that he values, including gigs organised by Ben Thompson and Two Ships, and impromptu gatherings hosted by Montague. Both Montague and Thompson have been regulars on Resonance FM, the experimental music station from London. Recently the former director of Resonance FM, Ed Baxter, has moved locally, and last summer initiated the Statue of Liberty big band who performed for the XMTR Festival, organised by Lucia Scazzocchio of Social Broadcasts.
THE PERSONNEL
ChopChop are Brighton based. Their line-up and instrumentation display their unusual creativity. Drummer Ed Briggs is a sound artist and instrument inventor, and uses a small kit that swaps cymbals for ‘gongs, general cluttery, and a small hat-kick.’ Al Strachan, from bands Crayola Lectern and Zofff, brings cornet, keys, synths and electronics to create a multi-layered melodic dynamism. Eddie Hayden on bass might play with gloves, and produces an eclectic sound, possibly created through his own progress from ‘noise metal’ to folk. This vital rhythm section is sometimes nicknamed ‘The Steady Eddies’. There is some humour in their experimentation.
As an audience member, I have been blown away by this band. As well as sound artists I think of such modernists and art revolutionaries that have challenged convention with energy and humour: Marcel Duchamp, the Futurists, the Brazilian Anthropophagia, Andy Warhol and Pop Art. ChopChop’s music is angular and avant-garde, visceral, with a jarring intense movement that stretches back to The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky’s pagan experiment that scandalised Paris in 1913.
ChopChop, with Xelis, will perform at ‘Adventures in Pop’ on the first Tuesday of each month at the Jenny Lind. The team are pleased to welcome the band to the ‘First Tuesday’ original creative music slot. See them on Tuesday 7 April, 8pm, free. Further information: chopchopsounds.com
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