We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jan Strandqvist. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jan below.
Hi Jan, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
As I am an autodidact, my learning probably started in an early age, without me even knowing it. My uncle lived in close connection to our summer house and introduced me the bands of the late sixties: Stones, Beatles, Cream Led Zeppelin, Kinks etc and I was amazed. Later I discovered by myself early electronica like Jean Michelle Jarre, Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder and so on and with the impact of the punk rock movement I realized that I could try, or I should try to make music of my own. You really didn´t need to be educated in any way if you had the ideas and the go-for-it. So I joined a local punk band. We were rather experimental, even with punk standards, so very soon we added some synthesizers in the set up. Learning from copying others to a start, as everyone does. Punk transformed into post punk and bands like Joy Division suddenly meant the world to me. Shifting focus more to the inner world and more to my connection to life´s questions and meaning. The bands learned to play and so did I. The most important skills to have as a musician, is to communicate, I think. And the process of letting go when composing. It´s an abstract skill, difficult to explain, but I´m not fully in control of the composing process. I have to let go and just go with it. I have difficulties in setting up plans beforehand. It will almost never land in the original idea, but in something very different. I´ve never learned to read notes. I’ve thought that it would be an obstacle and inhibit me in the creative process. But I don’t know if that’s the case. Not now at least. I’ve already built my own, without borders, musical world.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Well, I´m a musician. Engineer and producer. But first of all a musician. I´ve started calling myself a musician rather recently. From the point when we were starting playing in Europe, outside of Sweden, and people actually enjoyed my music and came to the concerts, I sort of realized that I could call me that. I think I desribed in the question before how I got into it. I´m maybe most proud of winning the Manifest Award (Swedish alternative/indie grammy award you could call it) for the album Electricity in 2016 and being nominated for I See Darkness in Youin 2018. And that the title song from I See Darkness in You made it to soundtrack sync in two episodes of HBO’s Killing Eve, my favourite TV show at the time. Red Mecca is my main project but I have two other sideprojects: Imma (Mist), ambient works and Hemvärnet (The Home Guard), post punk.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Since I first went to see a local punk band in 1979 at the local rock club, which by the way has a 50 years anniversary next year, still up and running and thriving, it came to me with terrific impact: I want to do the same thing! I draw sketches and painted much at the time. Wrote some as well., but I was still a child and hadn’t the faintest clue what to become. Next day I bought a guitar. Or my parents bought me a guitar, thinking it was a phase. But the guitar wasn’t my instrument. So as mentioned before, I bought a synthesizer. And now I was home. My goal or mission in the creative process, is to keep my own sanity. If I’m not in the process, in the forward motion, I lose my everyday, colloquial place in life and land in confusion. That’s one point of it. The other equally important is the communication with other people. If I have the ability to make other people understand things. Feel things. Elevation. Sadness. Happyness. You name it. Music is all about feelings. And the pictures coming with it. The soundtrack of our lives really.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
As I am a musician, there´s always the meeting with the audience. The moment when the flow is intertwined. When you find yourself in an undemanding interaction and an experience occurs that is hard to describe. The moment. That´s rewarding to the degree you may well be hung over. Emotionally hung over. But as I said in the question before, it´s all about communication. The alternative question: “Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?” is sort of related in a way to this. I assume you mean non-fiction in this case. I can´t really say. But nevertheless I want to point out in a different direction and bring up the fiction. The fiction which have significantly impacted me as an artist. Maybe not so much my entreprenaurial thinking as my creative process. The creative process always comes first. I have always been heavily influenced by movies and books. And that´s like the starting platform in which to begin the process. But I probably kick in open doors by saying this. It´s obvious. Transforming that into other art. Like music. So basically the creative process in itself, is the greatest reward. To be able to make it happen. To have the ability. And maybe touching people.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://redmecca.se/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redmeccaofficial/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redmeccasundsvall
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/RedMecca2
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmqKZeDx1r4ZZzOgU-sga6w
- Others: Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/artist/3ooJ0beiCHfcxsvM0Zhvmp?si=heVpoBrXTaKE6Kfe7yk_-w , https://redmekka.bandcamp.com/
Image Credits
Lia Jacobi Elvira Jacobi Gabriella Ljungberg Angela Michel