"I didn't come from a musical family, I just got into music as a teenager, like the classic kind of teaching yourself rock guitar type thing. There was someone else in my year at school who was a lot better than me at guitar, so I started playing bass, so that I could actually get a chance to play. I came to the bass quite late. I played music with some people at school. I ended up taking up double bass as well and realised that I wanted to study music.
"I came up to Glasgow from London, where I grew up, to study in The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2011. I always thought I'd go back to London but I ended up really liking Glasgow, so I stayed. What I like about Glasgow is, it's a kind of small enough music scene that you know everyone but there's still loads of stuff going on. I like how there's the jazz scene, the folk scene, the pop scene, but because it's a smaller city they all have to really mix and match quite a lot. In London, you have all these pockets of players and because there's so many of them, you can just stick to your own musical styles, whereas here you're almost forced to collaborate. I really like that, and I think you can hear that in the music that comes out of Glasgow as well.
"The band that I run is called Mezcla – we do kind of a jazz fusion sort of world music type thing. The name means mixture, and the idea is that it's a kind of blend of everything that I'm into, because I'm into a lot of different types of music, so there's a bit of rock, a bit of funk. I spent a bit of time studying in Ghana so there's a bit of world music influence, and obviously jazz - that's the main one. We're actually recording our debut album next week so we're pretty excited about that. That'll be out probably at the end of the year or beginning to early next year, to be realistic. I studied in Ghana through The Green Door Studio in Glasgow, it was amazing, one of the best things I've ever done. It’s had such a big influence, particularly because I did it just after I'd left music college.
When you’re studying formally, you get quite a skewed perception of what music is about because it's all about the art - you need to be as good as you can be, everything is the best and of the highest quality, whereas, it's good to go out where music is a community thing for people, it's something they do for fun. It's such an obvious thing but it's just a little reminder that this is actually meant to be fun. You can take it as your career and everything but you shouldn't lose sight of enjoying it. I’ve continued a bit of community music in Glasgow. I work on a project called Baby Strings. We teach in pairs in the east end of the city, going into primary schools, teaching violin, viola and cello to younger pupils. The idea is that everyone gets to have a go on an instrument. This is the second year that it’s been running it and it seems to be going well, teachers are reporting some nice effects from the project, so I've been enjoying doing that.
"I also play in the Fergus McCreadie Trio. Fergus is a piano player really influenced by Scottish folk music, so the sound of that trio is sort of jazz mixed with Scottish folk. That’s been quite busy recently, we just finished our tour last week around the UK and Europe. I really like going to play music in different places. It can be pretty exhausting, but I feel pretty lucky when I get to do that because, a lot of the places I play music in, might not be somewhere that had ever been on my radar and when you get there, you realise it’s an awesome, beautiful place.
"The first time I played at the Glasgow Jazz Festival was maybe four years ago and I've performed every year since then. This is the third year in a row that Mezcla has played the festival. This year I'm doing one gig with Mezcla and one with the Fergus McCreadie Trio and I'm hosting the late set at The Blue Arrow jazz club which should be good. I'm looking forward to that, it could be quite wild potentially.
"You could argue that the Glasgow Jazz Festival is the highlight of the jazz year - everything sort of centres around it I guess. I've always really enjoyed playing it and I've seen lots of things and it's nice to have big artists come to Glasgow to play during the festival.
"I guess the best thing about being a musician for me, is an obvious answer – that it's nice to be able to express yourself, and it's something that's a lot of fun to do, and you get paid for it and you don't necessarily sit at a desk all day. It's a way of relating to people who you wouldn't necessarily have the opportunity to meet otherwise."
For more information: JazzFest2019 and DavidBowden
