Join New York–based Trinidadian artist and musician Zane Rodulfo as he shares his creative background and describes the process behind composing the song “Around the Circle,” inspired by reflections on Kandinsky’s painting "Calm" and other elements of his practice.
Zane Rodulfo: Can I have 12 doubles and everything sauce?
My name is Zane Rodulfo. I’m a musician, a composer, and a drummer born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, currently living in Brooklyn.
Woman: What do you call this neighborhood?
Rodulfo: Flatbush. Little Caribbean.
So we’re at the Prospect Park Boathouse. It’s by a beautiful lake and surrounded by trees. It’s this dead center in the Caribbean community.
When I first moved to New York for grad school officially, I was with my cousin. We had an apartment right down the street, you know, so I’ve spent a lot of time in the park. I know the neighborhood really well.
I might’ve been five or six years old. I was taking piano classes. I also played the steel drums, steelpans, back in Trinidad. There was something that was happening, that I was feeling from either striking the keys or playing the steelpan and being able to create these notes and these sounds. It just created this unfamiliar but euphoric feeling that I never had before.
This is the first time I’m composing in response to paintings and artwork like this. I think Kandinsky has been the perfect place to start. Something clicked about Kandinsky’s work because I could see rhythm. My method with composing the piece was interpreting his paintings as a score and seeing what I could come up with from what I saw.
I wasn’t extremely familiar with him, you know, but upon doing research, I found one of his writings, one of his books, Concerning Spirituality in Art. And I was like, “Okay, this is going to get interesting.” You know?
Because when I looked at the painting Calm, there are a lot of blues in it. He said about how certain colors made him feel. Blue, for example, has like a resounding, organ-like timbre, or a flute or a cello. That’s how he interpreted blue.
I start off the piece with a drone and with flutes, with an alto flute. To me, art can be a spiritual pursuit. He created his work from that place as well.
He’s not the only artist that I’ve seen that from, you know? I had a really close mentor who passed away last week, LeRoy Clarke. He’s probably Trinidad’s greatest artists to have lived. And we were really close.
His work was also really deeply rooted in his spirituality and African spirituality, but not just that—but in music, and in other art forms, and in seeing that each art form, whether it was dance, music, or visual art, all have a similar language.
Your philosophy behind what you do and why you do it is extremely important.
This interview was recorded at the Prospect Park Boathouse, with support from the Prospect Park Alliance.
Photo: © Stephen Knuesel
