Musical sunshine

Anna Sayburn interviews guitarist Branco Stoysin

We’re sitting in the café at DPG and guitarist Branco Stoysin is thinking about what inspires his music. He turns his face to the sunlight streaming through the windows.
‘It’s just sunny days… just like today,’ he says. ‘It’s the way it makes me feel.’

With titles like Quiet Stream Breaks the Rocksand Mellow Sun, the inspiration for Branco’s meditative, life-affirming compositions clearly comes straight from the natural world. His work also draws on memories of his native land, the former Yugoslavia.
‘Back in Yugoslavia, I had a favourite spot on the river Danube. I used to watch the sun set, then go back home and try to get that in music,’ he says.

Branco moved to London in 1992, and has lived in Dulwich for 14 years. He says Dulwich is ‘gorgeous, I love it’ and Dulwich Park ‘kept me sane’ when he first arrived in the busy capital.
Since then, he has built up a dedicated following for his live gigs (with the Branco Stoysin Trio) and has released five albums. Two more are in progress. Branco also teaches guitar to private students locally, and at Goldsmiths College.

I was surprised to learn that Branco rarely listens to music, except his own. He says it could distract him from his own process of composition, making his music derivative. ‘It’s from my head, wherever it comes. If it comes like that, it’s true. Anything else is not.

I have so much music in my own head that if I listen to other music, I will explode!’

But one early influence that is still with him is traditional folk music from Yugoslavia. He’s delighted by how well London audiences have responded to these traditional Slavic songs, which he weaves in among his own compositions in concerts and on albums.
Slavic music shares common ground with Arabic, Greek, Spanish and Jewish music, with heart-stopping gypsy rhythms and plangent melodies. It contrasts well with his own, more laid-back compositions. Branco also loves jazz, and the ‘surgical precision’ of classical music.

Love of precision explains his own perfectionism. Branco admits to having destroyed almost all of the original recording of his first album, believing it not good enough and recording it again. ‘Then I found two tracks I didn’t ruin and listened to it – and there was nothing wrong with it!’ The first draft of the album took 2 years to record.

He has little time for loud rock music and thinks there’s not enough silence in the world. ‘You see kids and they have headphones on, and there’s constantly something blasting their heads. [They don’t know] what is really there, who am I? How can you tell, if it’s constantly boom, boom?’ So it’s appropriate that his own music gives the listener quietly reflective space, to notice the beauty of the world.

Branco affects a slightly curmudgeonly air ( he says ‘boredom is good for children’ and claims to shout at his students) but his music reflects a gentle and romantic soul. Two days later, he emails me to add one extra source of inspiration – his girlfriend. They’d recently met when he wrote his second album, Amber, and most of the songs were written for her.

For more information, see http://www.brancostoysin.co.uk
[Image: Branco Stoysin trio at Pizza Express jazz club, Sept 2007]