The Bay Area musician talks Coachella, jazz, hip hop, “sound baths,” and AI
By Gary Moskowitz
Will Magid is a trumpet player and music producer in Oakland, California, best known for his work as Balkan Bump, which combines southeastern European brass music with heavy bass lines and electronic beats.
Magid got his start doing residencies at venues like Cafe Du Nord and Monarch in San Francisco, but things ramped up after the electronic music producer Gramatik signed Magid to his label, and the two artists began to tour and collaborate together. One of those collaborations — a song called “Aymo” that featured rapper Talib Kweli — was featured in a Porsche ad that aired during the 2020 Super Bowl.
Balkan Bump has gone on to play large festivals like Coachella, and Magid has collaborated with artists like Erykah Badu, Bonobo, Beats Antique, Solomon Burke, and Pretty Lights. Most recently, Magid has been opening for Thievery Corporation on their latest tour. MUSIC NERD spoke with Magid by phone about Balkan Bump, and his recent experiments with “sound baths.”
You’ve been touring with Thievery Corporation. How did that gig come about?
They saw a video clip of me playing at a wine bar where I was doing live looping and improvising, and they really wanted that vibe on the tour. I basically sketch out the opening groove and then just see where it goes. It’s so much fun.
You’ve been working on various iterations of Balkan Bump since 2017, sometimes solo, sometimes with guest performers or a full band. How did the project come about?
The basic idea is trying to mix elements of the bass scene and hip hop with Balkan music. My family is Eastern European Jewish people, and I was playing in a Bay Area brass band called Inspector Gadje at the time, so I felt a real connection to the past and present of that brass style of music from those areas.
Trap music — Southern hip hop with heavy bass and rapid high-hat rhythms — was blowing up at that time, so I thought it would be fun to take a heavy trap beat and replace the hard, fast high hat patterns with horns. I wanted to honor the Balkan tradition and merge it with this super fat bass culture.
Since Gramatik is a Balkan dude from Slovenia, he heard it and signed me, and it caught fire. Over time we’ve incorporated new music and moved away from heavy bass, so now it’s more chill.
To make Balkan Bump work, you had to become a producer, proficient at making beats and programming loops, in addition to playing the trumpet. What was that process like?
My dad was a tech journalist, and he’s a tinkerer, so growing up there were lots of tech gizmos in the house, and it was a way to connect with my dad. I’ve always been into tech you can play with, like video games and tools you can build things with.
I play trumpet, so I don’t have the ability to play chords, or do anything other than be a lead voice. And I didn’t have a budget to book studios and hire musicians as a 22 year old, so I thought maybe I’ll just do it on my own.
I looked up to guys who were blending music traditions in ways bands are slower to do, like Bonobo, Nicodemus, Thievery Corporation, groups like Beats Antique, mixing beats with older music, like global fusion. Newer bands like Khruangbin or Altın Gün are really cool, making traditional sounds new and fresh.
Balkan Bump has performed at Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Lightning In A Bottle, and Colorado’s famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre. How did you acclimate to performing in front of large crowds?
The bigger the stage is, it’s harder to connect with people. And when shows don’t go well, it’s challenging. When you play in a room of 200 people, most are your friends. But with 2,000 people, who are probably not there to see you, you have to prove yourself.
Electronic music needs a good sound system to work. The bass has to hit hard. And high energy music depends on a high energy crowd. Sometimes I’m looking at the crowd and I can see they’re not EDM fans, or not bass heads, but I do the set and it goes off, and people will say ‘I’m not really into EDM but your stuff is great.’ I love that.
Balkan Trap music with funk elements is not mainstream, but somehow it resonated with people. Maybe it was the growing electronic music scene, or there’s just enough weirdos who want to hear some cool shit.
You bring a lot of energy at Balkan Bump shows. You’re dancing, jumping around, getting the crowd hyped, and playing the trumpet. How do you maintain that level of enthusiasm?
I’m not an athletic person, so none of it is probably good for my body. I do visualizations before gigs. I’m not a guy who says ‘hey everyone look at me.’ I have to work up toward that stuff.
A lot of it is like, this is my moment to do my thing, so what can I do physically to get a room from front to back engaged? People are expecting a presentation that is a little larger than life. Before a show, I look for things I can go stand on, and I use a wireless mic so I can drop into the audience, and engage with them without just getting on the mic and saying ‘get your hands up!’
You studied Ethnomusicology at UCLA. What was that experience like?
I grew up in Palo Alto with all these doctors and lawyers and fancy people. There were no professional musicians around me, no model of that in my environment. All of my friends in high school were going off to college to study things aimed at careers, but I loved music and wanted to continue with it.
I was playing a lot of jazz, and thought I could study jazz, but then I found out about Ethnomusicology, which is like anthropology, because you learn about human history, migration patterns, the physics of music, its connections to theology, and you get to ask why we make music as humans. I was into that.
Who is one of your favorite trumpet players and why?
It’s a cliche, but Miles Davis for sure. I’ve listened to him more than anybody. I don’t sound like him or try to, but he was so committed to discovery, in bebop, impressionist classical music, and large orchestrations. He was first to use a wireless mic, and played rock and roll, unafraid to make an epic record and then do something totally different, continuously throughout his career. He was not just a trumpet player, but an artist. It’s so inspiring.
Balkan Bump has collaborated with a range of performing artists. What is one of your favorite collaborations?
I was in wonderment that [rapper] Gift Of Gab, an Oakland artist, worked with me. He passed away [in 2021], but what an incredible wordsmith, with an insane rhythmic mind. I remember seeing him at an improv event, rapping in 7 or 9 [beats per measure], using all these different rhythms.
As a trumpet player, we are fixed to one monophonic instrument, but rappers lean heavily on rhythm and enunciation, the way the words hit, and they can emphasize micro-rhythms. He was a master of that.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8KXd9p-qit0?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
You recently started doing “sound bath” experiences at a yoga studio in Berkeley. That’s quite a shift from playing music festivals.
It’s just me, my horn, and some electronics. It’s spaciousness, droning, and very loose melodies and mellow sounds. I started doing these as interludes at shows, and it was often my favorite part. I could stay in this sonic world for a long time, and it was really healing for myself.
I’m no practitioner of sound healing, but it’s really good for me, having to take a deep breath and be present in my own vibration as a body and connect to it, with no rush or expectation to say anything, or entertain people or impress anyone.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/7nOFxa6rgDw?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
How do people respond?
The fun thing about dance music is you can tell right away if it’s working or not. But with [sound baths], people are lying down with their eyes closed. They could be having a traumatic experience, or just taking a nap, it’s hard to tell. I’ve had people come up to me and say their lives are hectic, and they needed a moment to get in touch with their body. A sound bath is like a massage. You’re not being asked to do anything, and that is a huge gift.
You put out a record on Bandcamp a few months ago to benefit immigration-related legal fees for those being detained by ICE. How did that come about?
It was a moment. I took it down after two months. I’m into this idea of music being alive, not focused on albums. There’s so many albums these days, I kind of feel like who cares? Music is valuable around a specific moment or space. I’m into the ephemerality of it. It feels more special, something that was needed in that moment, not about getting more streams.
What’s next for you?
I’m really into doing the live looping format, where you create new music on the spot from scratch, like what I’ve been doing with Thievery Corporation. I want to get better at that, and bring in more local musicians, and celebrate the people who are in the room at that moment. I want to get to a point where I can show up and bring people up and create on the fly, like creating something out of nothing,
I’m not embracing AI at the moment, but if it gets to a point where it can assist in real time, it would be way hipper than DJing or me playing along to prerecorded chords. Like, say I’m in a jam session, and it knows the notes I’m playing and knows the music I’m into, and can orchestrate a string section in real time? That would be fun.
