Dutch ex-punk and Jim Jarmusch bandmate Jozef Van Wissem is on a mission to make the lute a 'real pop instrument again'. The musician, likely the world’s most notorious contemporary lutenist, owns eight lutes, some bespoke, and has created nearly 50 albums. His latest, 'This Is My Blood', is released in May.
Van Wissem composes each Easter in Warsaw, finding the quiet city more conducive to work than noisy Rotterdam. He often 'steals' traditional themes and repeats them, but argues the classical lute repertoire is vast and open to interpretation. His 14-course theorbo has 'sacrilegious' inbuilt microphones and a foldable neck, with reentrant tuning that breaks the usual pitch sequence.
Best known for film scores, including Jim Jarmusch’s 'Only Lovers Left Alive', Van Wissem’s new album was composed for a documentary about a psychedelic cure for alcoholism. The first and last pieces use a bottleneck slide, which he says makes classical audiences leave while experimental music fans love it.
Van Wissem relishes his four-decade battle with academic orthodoxy. He claims the lute was 'omnipresent' before its 250-year disappearance, found in brothels and taverns as well as courts. He sees parallels with the 'direct, stripped-back emotion' of Coil. Repairs and innovations often cause standoffs with traditionalists who resist putting microphones inside the instrument.
His nonconformity stems from the Dutch punk scene of the early 1980s, where he played in bands like Mort Subite and Desert Corbusier. In 1979, his Maastricht squat was set on fire by football fans. He later ran a riotous bar in Groningen before moving to New York in 1993 to study lute, leaving behind a scene he found increasingly mundane.
