Aron Ottignon used the Pacific solution to combine jazz and dance.

Log jam
By John Shand
April 15, 2005
Sydney Morning Herald


Aron Ottignon used the Pacific solution to combine jazz and dance.


Aron Ottignon can spot a rut a mile off, and the music business is furrowed with them. Rather than getting stuck in one, Ottignon found inspiration in relatively untapped musical waters.

Those waters were the log-drumming music of the South Pacific, which Ottignon heard while growing up in Auckland. The same musical odyssey led the pianist to come second in the prestigious Australian National Jazz Awards when he was only 16, then play funky soul with Jackie Orszaczky and Tina Harrod, accompany cabaret singer Paul Capsis, and do sessions for the Whitlams.

He also played at Russell Crowe’s wedding.

When Ottignon was on tour with Capsis he was exposed to all sorts of exotic European folk music, blended with contemporary dance beats. What struck him was the audiences being really excited by acoustic music. Ottignon was impressed that the musicians didn’t have to go electric or add vocals to be hip and engaging. It was the solution he had been searching for.

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Advertisement”I just wanted to design some rhythmic things around grand piano,” he says, “so I thought back to when I was young and there was log drumming – Pacific island drumming – at the markets every weekend, which I used to go and see ’cause it was great.

“I went back and found all my old Samoan, Tongan and Fijian log-drumming CDs

and really listened, and it’s all such tribal dance-orientated stuff, which is just so similar to all that techno doof-doof stuff.”

Aronas comprises Ottignon, drummers Evan Manell and Josh Green and bass player Dave Symes, who, like Ottignon, is a regular with Orszaczky. The two drummers set up Ottignon-composed polyrhythmic patterns that can suddenly shift in tempo, as the log drummers are wont to do, and as often happens in European folk music.

“All of a sudden they’ll slow down or speed up, and that really grabbed me,” Ottignon says. “That doesn’t happen in this modern, techno dance music.”

Not only does it not happen, it has become almost a taboo, which Ottignon finds boring.

His own piano playing in Aronas sometimes also has a drum-like function.

He tries to avoid falling into predictable piano grooves, such as Latin, reggae, shuffles or whatever, and the end effect is amazingly fresh, while still feeling familiar.

Aronas’s music has clicked with audiences. The recent Cockatoo Island extravaganza was the band’s first festival gig and Ottignon was over the moon about the reaction.

“I don’t know whether they were just really out of it, but they all danced,” Ottignon says. “People were walking away going, ‘We didn’t think people could dance to jazz.’”

He hopes people will also dance at tonight’s launch of their debut CD, Culture Tunnels.