Interviewed by Joe Montague

 

My favorite guitarists include smooth jazz diva Joyce Cooling, Eric Clapton, my good friend Roman Morykit of Gypsy Soul, blues guitarist Deb Davies and Canadian Latin guitarist Johannes Linstead, who although his heritage is both German and British, is considered to be one of the top Latin guitarists in the world. Late in 2009, Johannes Linstead took time to discuss his current recording gem Mistico, which opens with the upbeat “The Happy Song (Felicidad),” a song whose spirited melody moves well, as Linstead’s nimble fingers dance along the frets of his acoustic guitar, while accompanied by Frank Marcos Aular’s bass and some subtle percussion courtesy of Jalidan Ruiz, who plays the congas on this song.

 

Unlike his previous albums, which had an entirely and distinct Latin feel to them, Linstead’s current project Mistico is more diverse and he is capitalizing on the fact that smooth jazz radio stations in Canada have been playing his music and in 2007 he received the award as Guitarist of the Year at the Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards.

 

Linstead acknowledges that the inclusion of a couple of smooth jazz tunes on Mistico was deliberate, “That was the intent, because primarily I have been limited to being (considered as) a new age artist and I never felt that comfortable with it, because new age music to me, is usually dreamy and the kind of stuff that you can fall asleep to. I always felt that my music was far too energetic and festive for that. For this album, even though my music hasn’t really been smooth jazz, I have had some success with smooth jazz (stations), so I thought that if I could bend a little bit on one or two tracks, I could expand to that audience as well. I hired a radio promoter who specializes in smooth jazz radio and I thought if they are going to play my music I might as well capitalize on that.”

 

“I have been getting such good support from the smooth jazz world, so I thought that I should see if I could bridge the gap between smooth jazz and my Latin guitar. It took a lot of work, because a lot of the times the electric guitar just won’t fit in. I played around with a few compositions and I finally came up with “Rico.” I thought that the electric guitar would add a nice flavor to it. This is the first song in my ten year career in which I have incorporated the electric guitar,” he says.

 

At various times throughout his career and on his previous albums, Linstead has played the bouzouki, the piano, the sitar, percussion and the wood flute and he grew up equally playing classical and electric guitars, so he says that recording with an electric guitar for the song “Rico!” was not as big a step as learning to play some of the other instruments.

 

“Mistico,” the title track takes Johannes Linstead down even more diverse pathways with his music with a definite Middle Eastern flavor that conjures up images of caravans traveling across the dessert and at other times a more festive mood is created by violinist Yosvani Castaneda and Sina Khosravi who serves up some great percussion on the doumbek. Laura Fernandez’s vocalizations compliment Linstead’s guitar. In listening to this piece you are reminded that not only is Johannes Linstead an excellent guitarist, but he is also a very good composer and arranger, whose songs are imaginative.

 

“Middle Eastern music always has a mystical sound to it. It sounds so ethnic and so exotic and the word mistico translates as one who is a mystic. That is how I try to live my life in a less mundane way, rather than getting a regular job, working from nine to five, getting married and having kids. I’ve never followed that path of the average person. It seems to me that’s what most people do in life, they get a job, they have a family and they have kids or whatever. I have always approached my life in a more spiritual way and putting that first, and as such I feel that I have become somewhat of a mystic, so I guess I like to see the more mysterious aspects of life and the things that are hidden; the ethereal and the spiritual.  That approach to life naturally translates through my speech and through my music,” says Linstead.

 

In talking about the title track, Linstead says, “The violinist was Yosvani Castaneda, who is from Cuba and he wasn’t well versed in playing in a Middle Eastern style, but he is so talented as a violinist, that I gave him some ideas by playing them on the guitar and he went searching on the internet for Middle Eastern music. We basically gave him a course on (that type of) music in ten minutes. He never heard the song, before he came down to record and I told him to try improvising some stuff.