Jojo Mayer is a man-machine. The Zurich drummer is as precise as Swiss clockwork. However, he became a role model for an entire generation of drummers in New York.
Jojo only returns to his home country to rock the stage with his drum'n'bass band .
For example, on September 28 at Kaufleuten in Zurich. In his luggage: the new documentary film about the globally successful Swiss drummer.
The drummer set off for New York 27 years ago to finally be taken seriously as a musician. "The profession of musician has zero status in Switzerland," says Jojo Mayer as he sips his cappuccino, still a little sleepy. Born in Zurich, he feels at home in the Big Apple. When we meet at the Rintintin restaurant in Nolita, which incidentally belongs to Swiss expat DJ Oliver Stumm, he makes a relaxed impression. "My everyday life is improvisation. Sometimes I have nothing to do for a week. Then I live like a tourist." But when the frontman of the band Nerve is working on his sounds, he doesn't know when to call it a day. "It can get quite intense, so I work through the night. I create a bubble and crawl into it."
Mayer's music career began on his father's lap. As a 2-year-old, he was allowed to handle drumsticks for the first time. A year later, little Jojo had his first gig as a drummer - in Hong Kong. At the time, his father, Vali Mayer, was on tour in Asia with the American jazz musician Tony Scott as a bass player. Jojo taught himself to play the drums. He simply drummed along to the songs of his favorite bands. His parents introduced him to the Beatles, James Brown and Jimi Hendrix. "I grew up with live sound. It was normal for people to still be playing music in the living room at five in the morning," recalls the New Yorker by choice. That was formative. "I was obsessed with music. The drums were a refuge for me. Everything else was unimportant." Mayer dropped out of school at the age of 14. Three years later, he went on tour with jazz pianist Monty Alexander. The drummer was on the road all over Europe. There was little understanding for this in his home country. "Dealing with the ignorance cost me a lot of strength. At some point I thought: now I have to get out."
Music mecca New York
So let's get out! "My antenna pointed to New York. Because jazz, hip-hop - almost everything that inspired me - came from there." But the scene there tested the young drummer first. "I fell flat on my face a few times, but right from the start people realized: 'This guy from Sweden is really good'," laughs Mayer.
