Contact
Carl Cleves, PO BOX 1492 Byron Bay, NSW, Australia
+ 61 2 5613 0031
carl@carlcleves.com
Find Carl at
facebook:
www.facebook.com/CarlCleves
myspace:
www.myspace.com/carlcleves
youtube:
www.youtube.com/carlcleves
sonicbids:
www.sonicbids.com/CarlCleves
Carl Cleves
Carl Cleves, originally from Belgium, is a contemporary of Bert Jansch, Nick Drake, Paul Simon, John Martyn and other songwriters that emerged in the 1960s and 70s and with whom he shared the stages of the London folk clubs during the time of the folk boom.
Unlike the others who stayed in the scene, Carl’s wanderlust led him to a life of travelling, guitar in hand, to Africa, Asia, the Pacific, South America and Australia, where he has now settled. Along the way he has acquired a loyal following in Europe, Brazil and Australia while avoiding the radar of the international music industry.
‘A legend? Hardly, I’m a rumour, a whisper’.
Carl's nomadic past results in highly original songs which have won many awards in world & roots categories - most recently, MUSICOZ & Australian Songwriters Association - BEST FOLK SONG AWARDS.
Carl's unmistakable guitar style was learnt from Brazilian players, bluesmen, Bert Jansch & Caetano Veloso, from the American banjo and the arabic oud. Traces of Brazil, Africa, folk and blues are the spice in the stew of Carl's songs which range from polyrhythmic exuberance to intimate subtlety, the personal to the political. Poetry and emotion.
'Tarab
- Travels with my guitar'
From the Sudan to Northern New South Wales, Tarab is an epic, mesmerizing
tale of high adventure and the search for meaning. Carl Cleves escapes
national service in Belgium to live in South Africa at the height of the
Apartheid era. So begins the adventures and quests, wanderings and narrow
escapes, mishaps and illuminations of a guitar-toting troubadour in his
roles as young beat poet, law student, single father, ethnomusicologist,
relief worker in India and recording star in Brazil. Cleves's page turning
memoir is no simple music biography, but rather the story of an artist's
quest for Tarab: a place where music and poetry bestow true bliss upon
the lucky one.
Carl's book 'Tarab - Travels with my guitar' is available in all good bookshops in Australia and New Zealand from or on line through Transit Lounge Publishing or Boomerang Books
New
Release
THE
HOUSE IS EMPTY
‘The House is Empty’ features 11 new songs and one hauntingly
nostalgic reworking of a classic Jacques Brel song, the most famous singer-songwriter
to emerge in Belgium during the second half of the 20th century, with
whose music Cleves grew up.
