Episode 29 — Access, Ancestry and a Flute Made From A Leg
This one is a conversation about bodies, access and where music really begins. Steve talks with Jono Enser — an interdisciplinary artist, musician and amputee — about navigating venues, rethinking design, and transforming injury into practice. It stretches from contemporary stages to very old instruments: the ethics and history of bone flutes. This episode of On the Origin of the Pieces asks how we design for bodies — onstage, offstage and across time.
Access, bodies & design
Access & design: how small choices shape who gets to play and who gets to listen. The chat ranges from green-room stairs and stage layouts to funding realities (see Arts Council England) and practical fixes that let creativity lead.
Ancestry, ethics & the bone flute
Ancestry & instruments: what does it mean to make music with a bone flute? The conversation touches on lineage, consent, ritual, and how objects carry stories — including Neanderthal-era finds and the uneasy beauty of sound from remains.
Oceans, festivals & collaborators
Oceans & collaborations: threads to festival shows and science-art work — from Lowestoft’s First Light Festival to London’s National Maritime Museum, and conversations with Helen Czerski. Plus musical tangents towards Nubiyan Twist and Matters Unknown.
Support & extras: For extras and early releases, support the show on Patreon, or join the mailing list for live dates and new episodes.
Full Transcript
Verbatim transcript from the episode, reflowed for readability. No wording changes have been made.
Hello, my name is Steve Pretty. I'm a musician, composer and performer from London. And welcome to my podcast, Steve Pretty On The Origin of the Pieces.This is the show that helps you to hear, understand and enjoy music in new ways.Hello, everyone, it's lovely to be back in your ears, back with this new season that we kicked off the last episode where I spoke to the artist Jeremy Deller about Acid Brass, ahead of the Acid Brass show that we did a few weeks ago, which was super fun, really fun night at Earth in Hackney. So do go back and have a listen to that episode if you like the sound of that. And Jeremy's such a fascinating character, and I think we had a really interesting chat about that project and what it means to him, what it means for I guess the societal impact of that and the juxtaposition of Acid House and traditional brass band music.And I also explored the 303, which is a type of synthesizer that is specifically used to make Acid House music. So yeah, go back and check out Episode 26 if that sounds like your cup of tea. And today we've got a really fascinating chat with an amazing guy.He's a friend of mine who I've known for several years. We actually, this interview was actually conducted about a year ago and I've alluded in the last few weeks to the fact that I've got a lot of stuff in the vaults which I just need to get round to editing and releasing. And this is one of those fascinating chats.And the reason I'm releasing it today is that as you'll hear, Jono is a disabled artist and so we talk about disability. And I wanted to drop that today because of course here in the UK, disability rights and disability cuts are in the news. There's been a big welfare bill going through the House of Commons.And I'm not going to talk about the politics of it here, but I think it's on people's minds a lot what this welfare bill can mean for disabled people. And it really applies to this conversation today. So we get really into some fascinating areas around access to venues and thinking about how to make gigs accessible for wheelchair users and for people with different disabilities, how to even get to gigs in the first place.It was a really, really great chat. And then in the second half of the interview, it took a turn for something pretty unexpected. So I'm gonna cut in halfway through our chat and drop a little bit of music just to break things up, which I'll explain in that section.And then I'm gonna play the last bit of the interview, which believe me, does not go to a place that you might have expected. If you have ever thought about playing a part of your own body as a musical instrument, and I'm not talking about just hitting your chest or singing, then stay tuned. It's a really, really interesting and kind of crazy project that Jono is undertaking, which I'm really fascinated by.Anyway, without further ado, here is Jono Enser in my studio about a year ago.My name is Jonathan Enser. I am an interdisciplinary artist, horned dork, brass specialist, composer, producer.That's all beautiful and big, big scale, deep stuff. But we met just as trumpet players, right? Because you're a great trumpet player as well. And also now you play tuba a lot as well.Yeah, that was definitely has been a huge part of the last couple of years of my life. My grandfather was a tubist. And not whilst I knew him, but before I was born.And so when I grew up, he invested in my musical education and all of my siblings' musical educations, even though he was a man of quite modest means himself from working class background in the village that he grew up in and had been living in, the family that had been living in Kirlington for 500 years, actually, which is hilarious. They went back through the graveyard records. And yeah, that's how far back it went, which is quite interesting.Wow, that's amazing.Yeah. But yeah, anyway, so he was a tubist. And then when he passed away, I got some inheritance from him.And so I invested that in a tuba, which is one of the most expensive instruments you can buy.It really is.I mean, it's no harp or double bass, but in terms of brass.Oh, certainly in terms of brass. Yeah, it was just a lot of physically a lot of metal, isn't it?Yeah, there is.Yeah.But it's definitely took over for a while in terms of my interest in playing. Like I was way, way more inspired to play the tuba than the trumpet because it didn't hurt my face. And because I like playing riffs and bass lines.Yeah. I didn't want to learn bass guitar or double bass. I wanted to learn how to use my breath, which is a big part of my spiritual practice as well, is like how I interact with my breath.And so tuba was a really nice way to deepen that further and like, yeah, leverage a bit more perspective on how that feels using large quantities of air rather than with trumpet where it's large quantities of pressure with small amounts of air. And what's really interesting is it doesn't require as, as a trumpet player trying to translate what my experiences have been on playing to the tuba, almost put me at a bit of a disadvantage because tuba is more about the inhale and then allowing your diaphragm to do the work for you. Whereas with the trumpet, it's so much about tightening the diaphragm to support the air that's coming out because it's got to be so fast.And so I actually almost, I didn't get an injury, but as many tuba players do end up having an injury, was like within the first couple of years was pushing a bit too hard. Yeah, right. Didn't get a hernia, but definitely felt some muscles being tense that should not have been.Definitely know at least a couple of tuba players who've had hernias and stuff. Yeah, exactly that.Brutal.Yeah, it's dangerous.Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, it's definitely much more about the inhale and then the support of that air out. So many tuba players I know all resonate on it, which is like, it's just a lot of the intonation in the lower register is like practice and guesswork, well-informed guesswork, because like intonation in the lower register, the waves are just so big and the lips are moving so slowly that it's just, yeah, it's really interesting to control in the same way in the different, it's so different to trumpet where it's like the small minutiae of like aperture opening will flatten that note, whereas the tuba is like, oh god, there's so many other things.Yeah, there's a lot more, a lot more things to state. You've got a couple of fantastic projects that you're busy with. You've got Nubian Twist, a fantastic band who are smashing it.We've just released our record, our fourth studio album, which is called Find Your Flame. Nubian Twist is a collaborative project that's run and produced by a musician, guitarist, Tom Excell, who's deep in African diasporic immersion, having grown up with a dad who had a huge record collection, and that's a big proponent of where the band exists and sounds as it does. Yeah, 40 gigs since April has been absolutely exhausting, especially since I'm an amputee, I only have one leg below the knee amputation that I had in February last year, that has also put a lot of extra stresses on life as a touring artist.It sounds like you guys are smashing it with those different things. You mentioned you're an amputee and we want to talk to you partly about the work you've been doing, your observations on accessible venues and things like that, because I'm really interested in that side of things. I talked to Robin Stewart, a great trumpet player, autistic person who has been doing lots of brilliant work about accessibility for venues and things, I'm sure you know Robin.Yeah, and so I've sort of talked to her a bit about that on the show and I'll be interested to know what your thoughts are on how it is as a touring musician, because you're quite recently in amputee, right? Do you want to just briefly summarise your story?There's so many lenses when it comes to access. As a disabled person, you all of a sudden start to engage with it in a way that isn't this thing where it's like, oh, it's a ramp at a venue, it's like so many things from the weight of a door to a door being there in the first place, to a slight lip at the front of a building, to it being a bit too loud or too many flashing lights. There's so many different things.For me, actually, the biggest thing that I struggle with is actually how I'm going to get to the place because the public transport network isn't very forgiving. My friend Natalie has been stuck on a bus for two hours before because she's a power assisted wheelchair user. I've been on two buses where the ramp has stopped working whilst I was on the bus, and so she just has to wait for an engineer to come and get her off the bus.So for me a big part of access to art and access to music is in the first place where it is. That's big part of it. Where is it?How are people able to watch it? Robin's events are great because you can watch it from home if you want to. Everything is streamed.Even within London, a lot of the grass roots, small venues that are needed to get that leverage to the next step, you know, servant jazz quarters, inaccessible, 91 living room inaccessible. So many of these places where people are doing their first gigs as artists aren't, you just don't have the, I can't even get in them. Do not even mean it's that simple. And if that's where the art's happening that I'm engaging with or even writing, it can leave you feeling pretty disenfranchised from the whole, whole thing. But there are some venues that are accessible and are doing the good work, you know, Cafe Otto is a great example. Other places like the Jago even is actually doing, has done some work to try and modernize their building.In the process of making a series of reels as a result of this last tour that I've done with Nubian Twist, these 40 dates, of about those 40, I had the energy to do about 20 where I would do a video of entry for the public lens, toilet from public ends, stage viewing access from the public lens, and then also the bar usage from the public lens. So is there a viewing platform? What's the provision there?Is it just that there's a bit at the side of the stage where they put disabled people? If that's so, that means that they don't have access to a stereo field. It also means that they don't have access to what see everyone who's on stage.And is there a lowered bar? Is there a... Yeah, what's the disabled toilet saying?Is the door weighted to get into the disabled toilet? Is it a button to get in? Is there a ramp up to the front of the venue?All these different things are things that everyone who is non-disabled, as I like to use it, because able-bodied... Eh, not sure. Everyone's going to be disabled someday, let's be honest about that.Yeah, so non-disabled folk don't ever have to think about any of these things. And actually I've had a number of situations, even when I was at Brick Lane Jazz Festival, where I was in the crowd at Rich Mix and I was using a wheelchair. I was sat watching a band and someone just came and stood straight in front of me.And you're just like... Like, I mean, I'm a tall man. Like, I've always been a tall man.I'm 6'3. And I think that I've probably been that person to people who are shorter than me, in many situations, without knowing it. And I can acknowledge that.And that's me checking my privilege. But I think that when we go to venues, as anyone who's taller, like when I'm in my wheelchair, I'm 4'2. It's not as simple as a tall person being in front of me.Anyone in front of me is going to obscure my view. And I think that anyone who's on stage, as performers, all of us, we want everyone to be able to be able to participate in that. None of us go to a gig being like, I want to disenfranchise this group of people.You know what? I'd love to go do a gig where disabled people can't come. Who would ever think that?I don't think anyone's got that in them. Do you know what I mean? I mean, but the infrastructure is not in place.I was just going to ask briefly, is there anything that venues can do, like venues that aren't accessible maybe for historic reasons?What does that mean, sorry?I just mean, I mean, so I'm thinking, for example, I've got this show coming for Williams Music Hall, right? It's hundreds of years old. When it was refurbished, they should have refurbished it in a more accessible.Yeah. I mean, it's a big, big problem. But just as in, from a kind of positive point of view, is there anything relatively simple that the venues and or artists can do to help that on just without major structural change?Because obviously major structural change needs to happen. But is there anything in the kind of intermediary time?Yeah, I just wanted I'm going to answer that question, but I just want to give you the perspective that wheelchair accessibility has been on architects minds since the Roman era. They have had wheelchair accessibility in buildings since the Romans. And it's only because of the expansion of building during the Industrial Revolution that we've ended up with this historically inaccessible buildings.That's pretty interesting.Okay, so that's why. And also because yeah, ladders, easy, doesn't take up any floor space. My dad's an architect, so like I'm like always thinking about this stuff.Like, and when it comes to these buildings that are using the grade listed building agenda as to leverage them from not holding themselves to account for their inaccessibility, I respect them for their financial issues around doing this development and such like. And I also have a huge bone to pick with the policies around developing listed buildings because why on earth are you trying to protect a building from being accessible? Like why aesthetically are you trying to preserve here?It reeks of colonialism, it reeks of a political agenda that I have nothing to do with. And so, yeah, this historical preservation, I personally have a huge issue with. It's like a big ik of mine.But to answer your question, I think that holding the venues to account, letting them know that like, you have three audience members who have bought tickets, who are person-independence payments receipts, they need an accessibility ticket. That means that they can have a carer come along with them to the show. That's a huge thing.But beyond that, how are they going to get in? Because a venue like Scala, their provision was to carry me up four flights of stairs, which is totally not a vibe. As soon as they said that was it, I then chose to put my life into my own hands, rather than in four people that I never met hands, and go up four flights of stairs using my crutches, which is not safe at all.So it's like, you know, some people can make things work. If you're a power assisted wheelchair, no way. You don't have a, you have no option.If you have lower back problems or upper back problems, or you're a tetraplegic, any of those things. As an artist, I think that it's really important that anyone is like finding out, A, what their access policy is at the venue before you take the booking. We all want gigs.Don't get me wrong. We all want money. Like, we've got to eat.But like, finding out ahead of a gig what the access provision is. And then you need to work out whether you're accepting the fact that, you know, more than 10% of the population in the UK is disabled. Are you willing to not have that open to those 10% of people as an artist?Are you willing to be a proponent of that situation? Or are you more excited about trying to find solutions, like going to places where they have put the investment into that, or are funded publicly? Which is also the huge issue behind all of this, which is that, as we were talking earlier, most venues in mainland Europe are publicly funded, and they do have the resources to do those adaptions to buildings, no matter how old they are.In the UK, we don't have that public funding available to us, unless you're, like, banned on the wall, or the glass house in Newcastle, or, like, the South Bank Centre, which also have issues as well. I'm not gonna lie, South Bank has issues, or was there at the weekend. You, as a disabled person, have to do so much extra administration to, like, how are you going to get to the venue?How are you going to be able to view? Do they have the personal independence payments care assistant there to help you so that you don't get overwhelmed by the situation? And that's also, like, to say that, like, at that point, are you actually even willing to put in all that emotional labour to go to these gigs, if that's all of the hurdles that you, as a person who's disabled, have to put in to get to them?You know, I have a friend, Natalie, who's a tetraplegic, and I'll always consider her when I'm taking a gig. That's it. Like, I think that when we're voting, and when we're booking gigs, or we're trying to build new infrastructure, we need to be thinking about the people who are most disenfranchised within our society, and most vulnerable, you know?That's it. Because, like, as white men, who are middle class, that's our responsibility, to check our privilege and do that work.Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. That's really fascinating insight into it. And yeah, that's a very interesting observation about historically inaccessible buildings.Yeah, and I hadn't thought about it in those terms before.And it's so frustrating because I want to go do gigs in these buildings.Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.I'd love to do a gig at Wilton Museum. I would love to go do a gig at 191 Living Room, but I'm just not prepared to do it anymore. If not me, who?I mean, if I'm not going to be the social change that means that people see this for what it is, like, it's not going to be someone else, you know? Like, everyone's got to eat, but like, I've got to eat too, but I'm just willing to put that at risk. I'm willing to put my own artistic, like, projection at risk in order that people understand what it is that I'm trying to do.I think that as a result of that, ultimately more people will come to my gigs because they'll see that I'm doing the right thing. I'm not just doing it because I'm doing this because I've got some music and I need to present it and I need a gig to eat. It's because this is of societal, social, cultural importance to me, what I do.It's not just a gig, you know, it's like a presentation. The whole infrastructure around it has been understood.So before I continue this interview with Jono, I just wanted to cut in and play a bit of music from a project that I've been working on recently, as well as the Acid Brass project that I've talked about last time. Since the last episode, I was also artist in residence at the amazing First Light Festival over in Lowestoft again this year. I talked about it a bit last year.There are lots of different things that I did there, including interviewing the Lowestoft Longshoremen, who are a fantastic shanty choir. So go back and check that episode out from about this time last year. But this year I was also involved with a brilliant project called Ocean Songs or Blue Machine.This is inspired by my friend Helen Czerski's book called Blue Machine. It's an album, really, of songs and music about the sea, about the ocean. It's inspired by that great book which delves into the idea of the ocean as a machine that kind of keeps the world turning, as it were.It supports life in ways that we are only just beginning to understand. And all of the fascinating depths, excuse the pun, that the ocean contains. So we were really inspired by this book and we were commissioned to write an album, myself and Nick Pendlebury from Trinity and also Colin Riley, fantastic composer who's based up in Cumbria, and Lottie P from the band Goat Girl.And we did a really, really lovely gig for Sunrise at First Light. And for the album version of this, I went down to a beach just a few miles south of Lowestoft and recorded in somewhere called Benacre Broad. I went at dawn, I took my shells, I took my electronics, I took a battery, I took some headphones, and I recorded my contribution for the sunrise element of this album at dawn back in May.So I'm just gonna play you a little bit of that right now. And a reminder that of course you're probably listening, but you can also watch this. There's gonna be, this whole thing is being recorded in video as well, so hello if you're watching.And if you wanna see the whole performance of this little clip, then I'm gonna be putting that on my Patreon for the patrons. So do head over to Origin of the Pieces on Patreon, or just originofthepieces.com. And before I play this I should say that we are also doing a gig at the Maritime Museum, National Maritime Museum in London, which I'm very excited about, on the 11th of July.So that's next Friday as I'm recording this. So anyway, over to me back in May, playing my shells through some fancy electronics on the beach in Benacre.You've got a project you're telling me about just now, which I didn't even know about actually, when we arranged for you to come in. But you were telling me about this just now. It sounds absolutely fascinating, because part of the reason we met today was because you're interested in shells, right?And the work I've been doing with conch shells and things. And so after this, we're gonna go and cut up a shell.Yeah, I'm really excited.But before we do that, you started talking to me about this amazing sounding project, which is so far up my alley, it's unbelievable. So I'm really excited to hear more about this. Could you just give us a bit of an overview?Yeah, so in short, from a podcast that I'm really into, I found out about the 60,000 year old Neanderthal bone flute that was found in Slovenia.Sorry to interrupt, but this is the kind of birth of the Origin of the Pieces show, which I first did in 2010. You know, if I first read about this in 2010, I've gotten really, really into exactly this sort of monument to human expression and creativity that was found in this case.Well, what's really interesting about it, even more than human expression, is that it's pre-, it's human adjacent as well. Like, Neanderthal man didn't have the capacity supposedly to engage with language in the way that we can.They had communication, but they couldn't necessarily form sentences. Like, they could definitely be able to give instructions to one another about what was going on, and they could problem solve to some degree. But they didn't have the capacity of gaining language.But yet, through ceremonial practice, as we've seen from this flute, they were able to create instruments and play them in cave spaces. I realized that as a person who was born with club feet, both bilateral, so that's both feet, my right one was reversed, and the left hand side was just to the left. They managed to correct that using non-surgical process, but the right one, they used surgical processes.And basically, that meant that I had a lifelong chronic pain condition as a result of my ankle being pinned in position, onset arthritis and acute tendonitis throughout my entire foot. So I've lived with chronic pain my entire life. I found out in May of 2022 that I point X of the processes that I could do was, you know, physio, all these things, but amputation was eventually where it was going to lead.And so I started thinking about this cave bone flute that was made out of bear, cave bear leg, fibula, which is this bone, the big bone, which is a much better bone to use than what I'm going to use. But I have a leg. And so I was like, oh, cool.Well, I'm going to have my leg cut off. Why don't I work out how to play my own body as an instrument? Like, why?Why? I think I may be the first person to be able to do this. What a privilege this is.Like, so instantly negotiating with myself from what many people would see as one of the most traumatic things they'd have to go through in their entire life. And I hope for most people that they don't ever have to have anything as traumatic as this happened to them. But for me, instantly leverage that into being something that was creative and insightful and spiritual.And so I managed to negotiate through much, much work with the hospital to give me my leg back. It's in my freezer at my parents' house still.Is it really? I thought it must be in a medical storage unit.So no, they would only keep it for a month and then they would incinerate it. So it would take a lot of work. I had to involve the Human Tissue Authority in order to get the leg back.So it's sitting at my parents' house and I'm currently doing an Arts Council application to essentially make from the bone a, make it into a head joint for a flute because at the moment it's only that long, you know, which is a very high pitch piccolo sounding instrument I have no interest in the timbre of, to be quite honest. So I'm going to use clay and wood to make two different extensions so I can make it into a more lengthy Bansuri style flute. So Bansuri is a sort of Indian style?Indian classical flute or like, you know, a trad flute style thing. Their flutes are much the same all around the world. In China, they've got Zhao flutes which have like nine, ten holes.Most have six. Basically, I'm going to be making this flute and going and performing in cave spaces around the UK. And through the practice of researching into what cave spaces are in the UK and how they've developed through time and how resonance works, as you've previously explored in your podcast about how resonance works with vibrations and chambers.I realized that I would be the mouthpiece within the instrument that is the land. That then means that I'm in direct communication with ecology through my artistic practice and my spiritual practice in this situation. I'm creating an ensemble that can play within these spaces too.And I've gone and done some R&D around the Peat District. I went to four different caves and found it was quite challenging access wise. I really want to make the project as accessible as a performance and as an ecosystematic practice.So somatics is about focus on your body and how you're feeling and allowing you to re-enter your body when we in a society spend so much time occupying our minds and not being fully integrated with our bodies instead we're like, oh, I've got to go there, I've got to do that, I've got to do this and then that, that, this, this, this, I've got this job and all this thing and money, money, money. Somatics is about bringing you back into your body, listening to your heartbeat, finding, attuning to your nervous system and resonating with your own body. And so this practice is about trying to reintegrate people with their bodies.By collaborating with this amazing therapeutic practitioner, who works within Ecosomatics already and an ensemble, I'm going to be using technology to take the cave resonance that we go to these spaces using ambisonic microphones and then being able to then transplant that experience into accessible venues around the UK and doing a tour and it being not just a gig but a ceremony, a ritual, that is trying to give voice to what was that 60,000 year old expression of being in a cave and playing flute and listening to the world itself, like instead of being internal, being eternal, you know what I mean, like really listening outwards because you know flutes and brass instruments are naturally occurring, you know, that's it. Reeds are natural flutes that exist in nature, conch shells, animal horns are natural brass instruments that exist within nature. So it's very clear that there's all these sounds that are already permeating everywhere around us and so this project is about bringing some of that nature back into ourselves whilst using technology to make it accessible for people as well.So sort of like cyborg, science fiction meets ancestral practice means ethics and ecology you know, it's like a pretty expansive project that's going to be an 18-month project, long project and I've been made artist in residence at Greenwich University so I can use their lab and their theatre where they have 360 sound rig which is also an accessible theatre. So I've got a venue, I've got the concept, more R&D needed, the leg bone needs to be made in a very precarious operation that I need to try and work out how to do as effectively as possible. So I've kind of got this project that's going to start as soon as the funding comes in alongside these partnerships with different universities and everything like that too.It sounds absolutely incredible. I didn't know anything about this as I say when you arrived today and so it's such an interesting idea again tapping into those ancient flutes that we've been playing for all these millennia but also the other thing it reminds me of is I spent a lot of time working with Tibetans in Northern India and you may well be aware of this but the Tibetan thighbone trumpet is a...No.Wow. You need to know about this. This is very relevant I'm sure to your work.So I'm going to get this slightly wrong because it's been a long time since I was there but when I was with Tibetans there I briefly lived in a monastery and I was researching Tibetan music and things while I was there and they have this trumpet that the monks play which is made from a human thigh bone. Wow.It sounds quite similar so there's also, have you seen the Chieftains' Flute which is a Bronze Age flute that was played by a chief's own ancestor. Ah. And there's different barrows and performance spaces that they would dig into the land even in this country from five, six thousand years ago where they would create these resonant spaces under the ground and they would be playing their own ancestors' bones.Wow. Even in this country.That's amazing.Yeah, yeah, yeah.That's amazing.So it's like, the beautiful thing about this whole project is that none of it is original.Yeah.But I'm the only person that could ever do this at the same time.Yeah, the same, yeah.Do you know what I mean? Because find me another amputee musician who's been that inspired by this whole ancestral practice.Yeah.And has their own leg.Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's extraordinary.Yeah. So coming back to what I was just saying about the Tibetan Thaibhoun trumpet, it's called the Kangling. And I witnessed some ceremonies when I was over there in various religious practices that involved playing these things.And I mean, they sound mad. They sound kind of very, very haunting and not nice necessarily, but they definitely tap into that use of music as a ceremonial practice as much as anything. One of the things I'm interested in in general with music is it's many uses, right?It's used for entertainment. It's used for, in this case, ceremony. It's used for communication.All of the different things it can, and often they overlap, of course.Yeah, I'm going to say that they're the same thing. Ultimately, I think that like ever since the cult of Dionysus, that the whole idea of music as part of theater, as part of culture, as part of ceremony, has always been integrated. And I think that even if it's watching Dua Lipa on a stage at Glastonbury, whilst it's not necessarily spiritually intended, I think that it still has that capacity to elate.Collective resonance comes to mind, that when you have that many people in a space, all singing together in like a church, or at Glastonbury watching Dua Lipa, it's hard to draw a line between those two, in my head. But I think that when it comes to specific religious purposes, I think that's what I can see that.Well, again, the Tibetan thing is worth looking into, because it's quite a big part of Tibetan Buddhist traditions. This is going back a long time, so I hope I'm getting this right. It's essentially that you're playing a dead monk's thigh bone, a very revered monk.So it's a sort of sense of honoring the people who've gone before you in that tradition. It immediately made me think of it when you mentioned this.That's so beautiful. I think that is part of the reason that this project has so much weight is that I am giving my pain a song. With each time I'll be playing my own leg bone.That's it. It's like what has been something that has been a long-term journey of pain and suffering for me, giving that the voice that it needs to in the same way that the blues implores the spirit to express. To express is to force out by applying pressure.That's the root of the word expression. I think in the same way, that's what I'm going for with this whole project. Then also to be able to give it my own life through my breath.Inspire is breath, to give breath. That's the translation from the Latin of spire is breath, to give life, inspire. That's why I like playing wind instruments, why I play the tuba instead of the double bass, and that's why I want to play my own leg bone.Yeah. Wow. What an amazing place to wrap up that chat.Yeah. It's so fascinating hearing your ideas about this. Again, talking to someone who's thought about these things so deeply and as part of their practice as a musician.Because again, we were talking before we started recording about the fact that you can get, not disenfranchised necessarily, but as a musician, some gigs you do just for money, some gigs you do, but I think having something underlying that, underlying the purpose that you're there to be a musician rather than to go off and do something else with your life is so important I think for me, is what kind of drives me and certainly I think even more so you to carry on because I mean playing music, playing gigs for a living is really fun. But there's lots of downsides, there's the insecurity of it, the financial issues we've talked about and all of these many reasons why you wouldn't do it. With that in mind, something that I often ask people in this show is, what's the point of music?So this feels like a good time to ask you that question.I guess I can only offer my own quite sheltered perspective on what, why music, do you know what I mean? For me, I've never had the choice, which is quite lucky, I guess, in some ways, that when I wake up in the morning, there is a melody. And that when I'm in my studio, there is just music.And that it's a slow process of bringing that forward and refining that. And I think that's partly down to my lens within music as a spiritual practice, which is that, like, if you look below the everyday troubles and, you know, strifes and everything that we're dealing with, that, like, if you can get, if you can free your mind of that stuff, there is usually music below that surface for me. Maybe I'm on the spectrum or maybe that's because I just, that's the way I like to feel about life.For me, it's a fundamental thing. And I think that you can hear that within some people's compositions. I naturally resonate with people's compositions when I'm like, oh, yeah, they're doing this for, that's a spirit thing, rather than, you know, they're so studious that they worked out how to write a song, is that it's like something that's come out of them.So for me, like, it's fundamental. I think that why music for everyone else is it because it frees us from our minds a little bit. I think that when we bring rhythm, harmony, melody, lyrics, or poetry in all in context with one another, any one of those on its own sounds beautiful, but all together is totally stimulating.And I think that anyone who's been to see a gig before, an experience that has found that elation of every hair on your body standing on end, and there's a reason for that. You know, it's fundamentally human as well. I think that experience of like, here we go.Like, that's that inspiration that I needed in my life. Do you know what I mean? I think that's why music as a listener, and I think that's why music as me as a composer.Both things are kind of fundamental to the human condition, but from different perspectives. But I also can't wait to listen to some of your podcasts and see what other people said.Yeah, there's some really interesting, quite varied answers. There's several answers along those lines. Some more practically based, you know, needs to make a living or, you know, whatever.I find it fascinating because there's obviously no right answer. Everyone's got their own roots into that. But it's just funny because, as I've often talked about, that sitting at the end of my garden in this glorified shed, making silly noises, it's interesting to think about why I'm doing that and what that taps back into in terms of our ancient history.Speaking of ancient history, we should wrap up because we've got to go and cut some shells.Just please, let's cut the shell.Before we do that, firstly, you must come back when you've got your flute.I would love to.I would love to hear this flute. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm really keen to do it.And if people are looking to check out my music, my project, my own project is called Matters Unknown and it features some incredible artists from the heart of London's very vibrant improvised music community and Nubian Twist you can check out too. Everything's on YouTube, everything's on Instagram, everything is on Spotify.Oh, great. Well, thanks so much, man. That's absolutely fascinating.And yeah, so many interesting things there. And this, I can't wait to find out more about this, this leg project. Yeah, it's pretty encompassing throughout all sorts of different ideas. So whether you're just into geeky sound art or whether you're into finding out about history or you're into spirituality or shamanic practice or just want to know more about access, there's something this project has for you.So amazing. Well, great, great work, man. Right, let's go and cut some shelves up.So there we have it. What an amazing person Jono is. I mean, to have gone through that adversity and to have come out so creative and so full of this sort of restless creative spirit is really admirable.And I'm really in awe of Jono. Actually, Jono also performed at the First Light Festival, which I mentioned from that Sunrise performance earlier with his band. Nubian Twist.So do check them out. They're doing lots of tour dates and festivals and the like over the summer and I think into the autumn. So they're a great band.And of course, Jono's own project, Matters Unknown, as he mentions at the end there. I'll be updating this as I know more about his leg horn, his leg flute. So stay tuned for that.Meanwhile, thanks again for listening. I'm gonna be still raiding the vaults over the next few weeks. There's lots of stuff going on.And for anyone who's interested, I'm doing a live podcast at ALSO Festival, which is in a couple of weekends time. I did the same thing last year and had a really interesting chat with Juliet Russell, which I played on episode a few months back. And this year is gonna be another fascinating chat and exploration of music.I'm doing a live horror soundtrack to a horror film and all sorts of other stuff at ALSO Festival, so do roll up for that. And of course the 11th of July, I'm gonna be with the Blue Machine gang, the Ocean Songs Project at the National Maritime Museum. So that's gonna be a really fun and interesting performance of this suite of ocean-themed music that we've written for, yeah, to kind of celebrate the sea.So that's the 11th of July. Right, meanwhile, do go over to the Patreon page to help support the show. It really, really makes a huge difference.As always, please do rate and review and spread the word. It really, really helps me to get the word out and to keep this podcast going and thriving and keep me motivated to get all this musically curious stuff into your ears. And yeah, there's a lot of very fun stuff coming up.So once again, my huge thanks to Jono Enser. And of course, the theme is by Hackney Colory Band and Angelique Kidjo. And I will speak to you again in a few weeks.Bye.