Sean Steinfeger w/ Frank Chatona – saxophonist, flutist, arranger and founder of the Parisian jazz-funk band Cotonete
You originally started as a band two decades ago. When did you guys did you guys meet eachother?
The idea of a jazz-funk-Brazilian-70s group was born at the Copacabana in 2003 in a room of a building opposite the SESC-COPACABANA where we played in 2017 with Simone Mazzer. The group was formed in 2004 with musician friends from our respective networks with Florian Pellissier.
Your 2019 album “Super-villains” was claimed to be your first long player in 15 years. This means that your debut album must have been released around 2004, but it’s like a ghost, there’s no specific information about it. What happened to it?
Super-Villains is our first album, all previous recordings were failures.
What did Melik Bencheikh have to do with your decision to get back into it and record new music?
We met Melik at a festival in Almaty, Kazakhstan. From there he was totally committed to helping us make our first album. He was an exceptional artistic director, encouraging us to embrace our psychedelic, trance, ethnic, energetic and rough playing.
What’s the meaning behind the name „Cotonete“?
It’s a Brazilian brand of Cotton Swab.
As an 8-piece band, how difficult is it for you to make decisions or compose new music? How does this work for you?
There were 5 of us, then 8, and today there are 7 of us. It’s a group made up of strong personalities, with very different aesthetics and aspirations. Submitting a new creation to the collective is always a challenge.
Musicians are always involved in different projects. How about you guys? What other exiting projects are you part of?
Indeed, I occasionally accompany other artists (mainly in the studio), and since Covid (2020) I have focused on developing more committed, “in process” projects.
You’re releasing on the renowned independent label Heavenly Sweetness since 2017. How did this connection come across?
Via the Florian Pellissier 5tet.
In 2019 you released the collaboration album “Atemporal“ together with a true Brazilian soul music icon – Roberto De Melo also known as Di Melo. Could you share the beautiful story of how this recording came about?
In the spring of 2017, we had a free week in São Paulo in the middle of our tour with Simone Mazzer. We then thought about which Brazilian artist would agree to record a track with Cotonete: Marcos Valle, Ed Motta… Finally our sound engineer Rafaela personally knew Di Melo, whose eponymous album I had listened to throughout my adolescence. The appointment was made quickly, he joined us with his wife and daughter in our small Airbnb house in the Vila Madalena district and sang to us (in duet with his daughter) 14 new songs. He himself offered to record them all.
A friend Tamiris found us an unusual place to live in a squatted building. We worked on it tirelessly for several days before recording in the beautiful YB studio.
Back in Paris, we finalized the arrangements, then mixed the double album at Question-de-Son (a very beautiful Parisian studio).
It says that you’ve founded the band with the hardly secret dream of bringing a funky 70s repertoire to Brazil. When was the last time you’ve been in Brazil and do you already consider your dream fulfilled? If not, what’s missing?
It’s true that at the start we shared with Florian the dream of going to play in Brazil with this group, what we did in 2017, it was 2 magical weeks!
Are you able to name the 3 most influential jazz-funk albums that shaped your sound as a band?
Banda Black Rio – Maria Fumaça (1977)
Bennie Maupin – Slow Traffic To The Right (1977)
Eumir Deodato – Deodato 2 (1973)
Did you already played in Berlin before and what have you heard of Club Gretchen so far?
I only came to Berlin once, and I never played there. The photos of Club Gretchen remind me of La Java in Belleville. Cotonete concerts are unpredictable and can last a very long time if the audience is in a trance!
Cotonete live @ Gretchen.
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