Interview with Roberto Riggio for M Magazine, unedited.

Atash. With their other-worldly ethereal sound, they have made their niche across Texas and beyond, always pleasing their committed growing audience with a slew of unique eclectic middle-eastern beats, running in syncopation with the pleasingly grated voice of their lead singer, Mohammad Firoozi of Iran. We had a chance to catch up with the frontman violinist of Atash, Roberto Riggio, a former Rio Grande Valley resident, to share with us some of the current pursuits his band is taking, both locally and across the globe.

Tell me first a little about yourself, your band and the position you hold in it, and the overall history of your music.

Well, my name is Roberto Riggio, although most people in the Valley know me as either "Rob" or "Roby." I'm a violinist and composer. I direct a band called Atash, and write a lot of the music and the arrangements for the band. I was born in Monterrey, Mexico, but moved to Mexico City after a year, and then moved to Edinburg when I started elementary school. I started violin in the Edinburg string program, working with great teachers like Norma Cardenas, Kurt Roehm, and Efrain Flores, who are still teaching in Edinburg. I joined the Valley Symphony and South Texas Chamber Orchestra when I was in high school, and also played with the Edinburg High School mariachis. I moved to Austin in 1989, where I have been living on and off since then. I've also spent several stints in Europe, particularly Spain and Italy; New York; India; California; and Mexico, playing and learning music. We started Atash formally in 2001, and since then have toured in the U.S. (west coast and southwest), Taiwan, Macao (China) and Spain. We've released one album, entitled Republic of Love, which was hailed by Austin Chronicle critics as one of the best Texas albums to be released in the past few years. We come down to the Valley to play quite often, and we have a show coming up at Kaf's on December 18th. As for my life outside of Atash, I've pursued studies in Persian, Arabic, and Indian classical music, and have had the chance to work with some of the greatest teachers, like Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Pandit Ram Narayan, Dr. L. Subramaniam, Simon Shaheen and Marcel Khalife. I've also toured with some top international acts, including Fairouz, a legendary singer from Lebanon; Kazem Al-Saher, who is a great Iraqi singer; and, most recently, Youssou N'Dour, the top singer from Senegal, and one of the leaders in world music. We played Carnegie Hall on October 26th! It was a fantastic experience.

What incident from your earliest years contributed greatly towards your musical career?

I was very close to my grandfather when I was a kid. I lived in his house in Mexico City for the first years of my life. He was an opera aficionado, and a pianist and composer. He always had classical music blaring on his stereo, and he would stand there and conduct, or he would play the piano. My mother and all my aunts were musicians, played guitars, sang Latin American folk songs. When my grandfather died when I was six, my grandmother gave me all his old records and books on the composers, and I devoured them with relish. It was a way to feel that he was still with me. A few years later, one of my aunts discovered a reel-to-reel tape with one my grandfather's compositions on it, a mazurka. I studied it and taught myself to play it by ear, and composed my own variations, which is how I learned to play the piano. My mom taught me my first chords on the guitar, and all of my aunts and my grandmother taught me things, or encouraged my love for music in some way.

In terms of musicians and their respective bands, who are your earliest influences?

My earliest influences? Wow. Well, my family first and foremost. After that, Beethoven. Everyone at Robert E. Lee Elementary, even perhaps the music teacher, Miss Lois Kildahl, thought I was weird because while everyone was idolizing Kiss in the 70s, when they used to wear all the make-up and stuff, I was idolizing Beethoven. I was allergic to rock as a kid! I kind of had to go through the evolution of it to come into the present, and after many years of devoting myself to classical music, I got into the Beatles, and that started my journey to contemporary music. In high school I was into a lot of electronic bands, like Depeche Mode and New Order, and I liked Duran Duran and other bands at the time, but I was always a little retro -- still listening to a lot of classical, and to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd; when I hit puberty, I got into the "rock stars" of the Romantic era, like Paganini and Liszt. Through my mom and her sisters, I also heard a lot of Spanish music, like singers from Mexico and Latin America, and Spain, like Joan Manuel Serrat, Lucho Gatica, Violeta Parra, Inti-Illimani, Pablo Milanes, Silvio Rodriguez, Facundo Cabral, a bunch of others.

Are you fond of any other type of music outside of the kind you normally play?

I'm fond of many different kinds of music. I play in a band that has created its own form of music, which could be categorized under "world music." But world music itself is a very broad category, because, essentially, it includes all the music of the world. It originally referred to traditional "ethnic" music from different cultures, but with the evolution of tastes, and musicians getting to hear and be influenced by music from so many different places, now "world music" can mean almost anything. If it's not sung in English, call it world music, generally.

I enjoy listening mainly to Indian and Arabic music, but I also love jazz, European and Latin American folk and art traditions, singer-songwriters, pop from the sixties through eighties. In the nineties I kind of stopped listening to music sung in English to a certain degree. Not as a rejection of it, but my interests were just elsewhere. I was absorbing all this music from around the world. I've started getting back into pop in English lately, but I have a lot of catching up to do. My friends are always shocked at how behind I am.

What do you think about the current popularity of hip-hop and rap music?

One of my roommates in college did his undergraduate honors thesis on rap music, and living in the house, he exposed me to not only rap that was current at that time (the De La Soul period), but also to the origins of rap, and he turned me on to songs like "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott Heron. I appreciate certain things about rap. Dylan, the bass player in Atash, is deep into rap and hip-hop -- he started one of the most famous hip-hop bands in Austin, Big Game Hunter. His approach to our music -- the rhythms, the feel -- has given me more appreciation of aspects to rap. If I'm in a certain mood, I enjoy listening to it, and the lyrics crack me up. The more intense political rap is cool, too. I also appreciate that rap has started a global trend, which actually harkens back to more ancient forms of street poetry. You can hear people rapping in so many different languages now, and to be able to improvise that is a very impressive talent. I was in Spain for several months this year, and I was floored by the talent of some of these kids you meet on the street. It's more common to just sit around in a plaza with a guitar and have different people joining in and what not over there, and so you get these really talented kids rapping political stuff in Spanish, very well-composed, hard-hitting politically, but smooth and obviously improvised as well. Put that together with all the guys playing flamenco guitar in the street, and you have an incredible combination. One of my favorite groups coming out of Spain these days is Ojos de Brujo, who are doing just that.

As a band, where would you like to see yourselves in the next few years?

Well, I just had my first Carnegie Hall experience playing with Youssou N'Dour, from Senegal, one of the top artists in the world today, playing the stuff off his latest Grammy-winning album, which was just incredible music. I got to work with one of the great Egyptian arrangers, Fathy Salama, in that tour, and it was just an overall incredible experience. I learned a lot, and I gained a lot of inspiration that I'm bringing back to Atash. About the only thing that could top that experience would be playing Carnegie Hall with my own music!

How close, or far away, would you say you are to reaching your dreams?

Well, Carnegie Hall itself is just an indication that your music has reached a certain level of respect. The path to getting there is a long one. Youssou N'Dour began his career in 1979, and here it is 2005 and they're now doing a retrospective of his career. I know that there are many steps along the way to get to that level, but I feel that Atash is on the way. We've cut only one album so far, but we're going into the studio to make another one. We'll have our New York debut next spring in the first-ever Persian New Year Festival at the Bowery Ballroom, really high-profile event. The main thing is to keep growing as artists and keep developing our music, which is going into new, uncharted territories. It's a mingling of Persian, Arabic, Indian and Western classical forms with jazz, rock and African music. So it's a mixing of ethereal, abstract spiritual or heady music with driving, rocking earthy beats. It's not an easy balance to make! But we love what we're creating.

What’s your favorite TV show?

It's a toss-up between the Simpsons and Seinfeld. I like South Park a lot, too.

Has your position, whatever it may be, on war in Iraq in any way influenced your creativity?

Well, it's not just the invasion of Iraq. It's global politics in general. I think it's the job of artists to help people see things from a different angle, because artists do see things from a different angle. Doing all the traveling that we do, the collaborating with different cultures, different worlds, you get to realize a lot of things. The nature of creating music is trying in some way to move people, and to understand at least some small aspect of the nature of humanity. It's a celebration of life, and a commentary upon it. Even a protest. Our approach is not to create any "us" and "them" scenarios, but rather to be against that in itself. To be about the "we" scenario that encompasses all of us as members of the human race, and to work with each other from that perspective. There are so many shades of grey to everything. Every human endeavor is painted from white to black, with every color in between. Did I agree on the invasion of Iraq? No, and I believe there were hidden agendas at work. Do I believe that everyone and everything associated with the situation in Iraq is evil? Of course not. Absolutely not! There is so much goodness in man, that even the most despicable situations allow that goodness to shine. I'm sure there's work going on there that's much needed, and people are helping others, and there's a lot of good happening, just as there's, for lack of a better word, evil on all sides, too. Good and evil are like brothers that never leave each other's side. The problem is not one specific war. The problem is how do we relate to one another as humans. With our music, we try to offer a way of doing that. And, if you look at the composition of the group, we're all from different places, different ages, different races. We don't even have the same musical tastes, or training, or influences! But we create something that we all love to play. It's an analogy. Our singer is from Iran! This is Texas! People always laugh when we say that we're from Texas, because they think we're joking. The world can't imagine that anything like us could come from Texas. But they're wrong, obviously! It just goes to show that no one really understands each other. We all think in limited ways, and then someone can walk up to you and make you realize -- "Wow, buddy, your very existence contradicts what I thought I knew about the world!" (in Valley accent) Dude, you're freaking me out!

Would you say the overall band market here in the Rio Grande Valley is oversaturated?

Not at all. As a matter of fact, I feel very blessed to be in the position I'm in, because I'm from the Valley, and I live in Austin. I think the Valley should have more of a live music scene. I've traveled all over the world, and I've never found a music scene like the one in Austin. Just the quality of the average musician is so high there. But, being from the Valley, and coming here a lot, I know there's a lot of raw talent here. And there's a soul. There's something about the Valley that's very different from the rest of the United States. It's not quite Mexico, but it's not quite the U.S., either. It's got its own culture and its own vibe. People are hungry for things to do here, and they have an ability to enjoy life that is different from the general "American" way.

I'm happy to see that the Valley is growing, and the music scene is growing, and I'd like to be a force in that scene. There are some great bands in Austin that are made up of people from the Valley, like Echo Base, Del Castillo...Atash! (laughs) There are also great musicians in Austin that could influence musicians here in the Valley. I'd like to create some kind of musical pipeline between the Valley and Austin. There's so much talent in the Valley, but all talent needs to be fed and nourished in order to grow, and the great professionalism and mastery of some Austin artists, who are working hard everyday at gig after gig, could nourish up-and-coming Valley talent. There are also a lot of hidden gems right here in the Valley, that take you by surprise. Great trios and mariachi groups, Mexican musicians, jazz and country players, classical musicians like Geoffrey Wong. These people need to be respected and brought into the light! Businesses should embrace the idea of having live music, to feed the culture a little bit more.

At what venues do you like to play the most?

The only venue we ever play is Kaf's. I started supporting that establishment when it was a little coffee shop, owned by Fernando and Mo, from Colombia, and I've seen it through all its evolutions to be what it is now. Adrian, who runs the place now, wants to be a force for culture in the Valley, whether it's through wine, or music, or design, cooking, whatever. They've always treated us well and, though it's a kind of small place, we prefer to play there. But we need to switch to a larger venue down here eventually, because we're developing quite a following. We also do performances in big theaters and auditoriums, with dancers and stage design, etc. We need to find the right venue to put that on.

Do you feel that the popularity of Tejano music is waning here in the Valley? If so, why?

I don't think Tejano music can ever die here. It's definitely not dying in Austin. I live on the east side, and you hear Tejano music everywhere. If anything, it will evolve. I've heard some pretty cool spin-offs of Tejano music, and, just as has happened with other "world" music, it will be influenced by outside forces and change, and grow. I think people who like Tejano, and even those who don't, should listen to Manu Chao. He's a singer from France who lives in Barcelona -- I just met him a few months ago at a semi-private show of his there -- and he's considered to be one of the coolest musicians in Europe right now. Like, what Beck was to the U.S. a few years ago. His music is in Spanish, and it draws on some simple chuck-chuck folk stylings, but infuses it with punk, and North African music and other stuff, and it's, like, phenomenal. The Valley has some interesting musical heritage to draw from -- Mexico to the south, Texas country to the north, border traditional Tejano music, which, musically, sounds a lot like music from southern Austria, where they use the same button-accordion, and everything. Cumbia is really cool, too, and I know that it's popular down here.

What’s your advice to aspiring musicians of the Rio Grande Valley?

My advice would be the standard: follow your dreams, and believe in yourself. To that I would add: never settle for less than the best from yourself, but be patient with yourself when you aren't doing your best; and, of course, remember where you come from, and give thanks along the way!

The members of Atash are as follows:

Mohammad Firoozi, lead vocals
Roberto Riggio, violin and oud
John Moon, violin
Christian Fernandez, vocals, flamenco guitar
Dylan Jones, upright bass
Alseny Sylla, djembe
Rob Hooper, drumset
Jason McKenzie, percussion

Atash will be appearing on Sunday, Dec. 18th: McAllen, TX Kaf's, 400 W. Nolana, 8pm; doors open at 7pm. $15 cover. (956) 664-2464.
Eloy Gonzalez II - M Magazine (December, 2005 -- edited form published in February, 2006)