Jay Malinowski & the Deadcoast, fronted by Canadian artist and Bedouin Soundclash lead singer Jay Malinowski, will soon release their first album, titled Martel. The album is inspired by the life and times of Malinowski’s sailor ancestor, Charles Martel, whose adventures at sea were often retold to Malinowski as he grew up. In anticipation of Martel’s release, The Varsity sat down with Malinowski to talk about the album’s namesake and production.
The Varsity: Your ancestor, Charles Martel, is the inspiration for the album. Can you elaborate on how you came about choosing that topic?
Jay Malinowski: Charles Martel was a household topic for my grandfather. So originally, it was my grandfather telling me about the past as I was growing up — where we’d come from; that was really important for my grandfather. When I was young, I remember being really interested in it, but when it came to actually writing this record, the questions [became]: Why do we become the people we become? Why do we make the choices we make? Are they based on our self-definition or a set of vast, vast circumstances that were decided maybe 300 years in the past or 600 years in the past by our parents? I can’t control where I was born, but do I also have characteristics from something that’s way deeper? That was where it came to me from. And that’s the question that Martel asks; it’s the spirit of Martel on the record, as he goes through the oceans.
TV: Do all of the songs refer to real or re-imagined experiences of Charles Martel? Or did you integrate your own experiences into each of them?
JM: [I integrated] my personal experiences. I was seeing a pattern develop. I’d always been transplanted my whole life: I was born in Montréal, my parents are from Toronto, I grew up in Vancouver, and my grandfather is from Cape Breton. So there was this period of displacement; I’m sort of from Montréal, but really, I feel strongly towards the Pacific Ocean. Even in the choices I was making in life I was seeing a pattern with Charles Martel and with my grandfather. Maybe I wasn’t a sailor, like all the other Martels, but then, how different was my life, really? I was travelling a lot… I was always in transit. So I related so much to the story [of Martel]; I found [it] fascinating…
I wanted to make something that, for me, was drawing on the history of my family…[Charles Martel] started in Lyon, his mother was beheaded, his life was upheaved, he came across to the new world, fought against the country he was from, and then ends up becoming a Justice of the Peace in Màin a Dieu. With all those events that transpired…How does someone survive? His was a very dramatic section of life, but I think we all do that — we all find ourselves having to survive — so that’s something I related to.
TV: How did you go about researching for the album?
JM: For the beginning of it, it was all through my grandfather. My grandfather left behind all these notes… I think it was a generational thing for him too — family trees were important… He left behind all this genealogy… He had this line [of Martels] that he had written out, and then there were the stories. And so I went to Louisburg, and then his house…and I corroborated all the stuff I had been reading about. There’s a writer at the Cape Breton Post who’s a Martel historian as well, so there was a lot of stuff that I could get for it. And then you actually see it in person; [there are] graveyards, all the anchors — they’re right by the seashore — for all the Martels dating back. [The process] was profoundly moving.
TV: There’s a heavy use of strings and piano in Martel, more than there is in your other work. How did your experience working with these instruments differ from that of your previous works?
JM: Strings were key — it was all piano and strings — which was totally different for me; before it was always guitar. Arranging with [strings] was very different. I remember the first time we played a song and [the band members] were like: “Okay, that’s great, but we can’t do that twice,” and I was like, “Well, that’s the chorus — that has to happen at least three times.” For classical musicians, where you stop is just as important as the chorus; if you’re a pop musician, you’re like, “Well, that area’s kind of grey, but don’t worry about it — the chorus and the verse, that’s it, and whatever happens there is kinda alright,” whereas [for classical music] everything’s very written out and transcribed, so it was a completely different process.
TV: In addition to the album, you’ll be releasing a novella. What gave you the idea to add this as an accompaniment to the album? What can we expect from the novella?
JM: I had all the background to all the songs, which slowly became novels that I was sending to my publisher. And so I would go through the lessons of each song, and my publisher said: “Maybe you should think about giving these to people who are gonna listen to the record.” I went to art school, but music became the communication tool — it was so much more effective — and this was the first time that I was like: “No, there needs to be a written component to communicate.” ‘Cause the record does get it, but [the novella] is a huge tool in understanding the background and everything. …My grandfather [passed] me down stories, but then there were all these little notes and scribbled things that I never got to ask him about, so I’m going on this kind of treasure trail of things that he’d left. I kind of use that as the basis for Martel as a sailor, writing to his granddaughter; for the first time, it kind of tempers his rugged personality. Each letter has a lesson at the end, although the first chapter, “Skulls and Bones,” really just lays out the historical places — who Charles Martel is. The rest are sort of like dark fairy tales that actually happened; they correspond to songs… Some of them are based on my own experiences, some of them are based off of what my grandfather would tell me, but they all fit into the spirit of Martel.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
