The Master and Margarita - 2001
The Tea Party
The Tea Party was een Canadese rockband met blues, progressieve rock, Indische en Midden-Oosterse invloeden. De band was actief van in de jaren 1990 tot in 2005, toen de band uiteenviel, The Tea Party bracht acht albums uit, en verkocht 1,6 miljoen platen wereldwijd.
Met The Interzone Mantras (2001) was de band aan zijn zesde album, dat tekstueel putte uit het werk van moderne schrijvers als Aleister Crowley, Michail Boelgakov en Wim Wenders. Eén van de liedjes heette The Master and Margarita.
Hieronder volgt de tekst van een TV-interview met Jeff Martin, frontman van The Tea Party, over de reden waarom hij The Master and Margarita schreef:
«Communism didn't work. What it did was take away the rights of the individual and artistic expression and freedom of choice, and freedom of religion, and all these things that should be the right of any soul. So the only way that these artists -- whether they were authors, painters, sculptors or musicians - could criticize the regime that was in place was to use parables, hide their meanings and hopefully someone would get it in an underground sense. So Boelgakov wrote a book called The Master and the Margarita. It's a very funny book. Some Russian friends of mine in Montreal did one of the first theatrical productions of the book. It's about Satan himself, who manifests in Moskou in 1926 as the angel of light and he basically teaches all the Muscovites (the joie de vivre), how to enjoy life to the fullest, and in doing so brings down the suppressive government and everything goes back to normal in a very unusal sort of way. That's the philosophical tenet of what I'm trying to say in this song. And in this song, I get to play the devil which is something I do quite well.»
The Tea Party - The Master and Margarita
Jeff Martin (The Tea Party)
Technische details
Album
The Interzone Mantras
Uitvoerders
Jeff Martin - gitaar, sitar
Stuart Chatwood - basgitaar, keyboards, mandoline, harmonium
Jeff Burrows - drums, percussie
Label
EMI, 2001