Erika Stucky
  • country:Switzerland
  • style(s):Jazz
  • label:TRAUMTON Records
  • artist posted by:Traumton Records

Links

Can anything 'normal' be expected of
some one who grew up in San
Francisco in the sixties, was kissed
by the world-embracing love of
hippies and pinched by Frank
Zappa's cutting mockery of America,
and then moves to the backwoods
(or backworld?) of Oberwallis, to
Mörel, a mountain village where the
folklore club, yodelling, and apricots
thrive, and which sports a dialect
that, to 'High German' ears, makes
Swiss German sound like the
language of a Hanoverian
linguist??? Anybody who doesn't go
a little crazy after that would have to
be suspected of being insensitive.

But Stucky does not become Heidi.
Doesn't let the alpine pastures and
peaks become a nightmare.
Yodelling isn't enough for her so in
the eighties she moves to Paris to be
professionally trained as a jazz
singer. But then scatting isn't enough
for her so she goes to acting school.
And the desire to share her bi-, tri-,
no, multicultural experience keeps
growing: with another
Swiss-American and the
French-Swiss 'Sophisticrats' bassist
she creates an imaginary place that
unites the common interests of
these homeless souls - Bubble
Town (1991). And so Frau Stucky
becomes Mrs. Bubble. In 1997 she
finds further confederates (though
not fellow citizens this time) in
trombonists Ray Anderson and Art
Baron and tubist Jose Devila to form
Mrs. Bubble & Bones.

The instrumental norm(ality) has
never interested her. The
Sophisticrats consisted of four
singers and a bassist; and her
International Alphorn Orchestra
hardly meets the expectations of
aesthetic instrumental (sound)
culture. And now a high, ringing
woman's voice between trombone
and tuba ('what the hell was that
now?!??'). The enlightened listener
of the early twenty-first century has
heard much - but this?

Stucky never made things easy for
herself. But she makes it easy for the
audience to get enthused by her.
Bubble makes just one single
condition: the inclined consumer has
to get up out of his/her wornout old
arm(ear)chair and comfortable old
listening habits every now and then.
And then take a different position. So
she recommends to stiff middle and
west Europeans the US motto (Hey
guys have fun!') and to entertainment
addicted Americans the artistic
Euro-credo ('How about just
listening?'). Serious fun. It's all in the
mix. Stucky knows how to do it. And
presents neither la-la-la nor
l'art-pour-l'art as she goes.

Instead: Entertainment,
avantgarde-jazz and pop music,
interspersed with theatrical forms of
expression and super- 8 projections,
presented in a hotchpotch of genuine
American English, solid Swiss
dialect and dadaistic air bubbles.