About a month ago I was at a turning point in my blogging career, I lost myself in the “hustle,” trying to make a living, and grow the website. I was focused more on the sponsored articles (which are great and I am thankful, don’t get me wrong) and I was delegating the fun artist type interviews to my contributors. This is me being 100% honest.

ChicpeaJC started feeling like a job, and I was having a hard time writing. I was in a creative funk. Until, one day, I got an email from Germain who plays the trumpet in a band called Conundrum. I heard their music a while ago, and I totally dug their whole vibe. Something inside of me said that I needed to interview them.

We set a date to meet in the Heights by Modcup Coffee. I did not bring a fancy photographer; I wanted this to be an old school ChicpeaJC blogger experience. It was me, “Rosy” (my adopted Canon camera) and Conundrum. We ended up sitting on top of the gazebo in Riverview Park overlooking the most amazing view. We sat down on the ground and got to know each other. These guys are amazing, not only are they talented musicians; they are just really freaking cool and down to earth.

The icing on the cake is when they did a set for me right there in the park. I was on cloud nine. Perfect weather, amazing music, and good vibes all around. It awakened me to why I do what I do, for the connection I make and for these moments of pure bliss. I really love my job.

Conundrum brings the soul and heart back into music and brought happiness back into my heart.

What are your names?

My name is Isaac Sanchez, and I play guitar for Conundrum. My name is Charles Tyler, and I play drums for Conundrum. I am Germain Brito, and I play the trumpet for Conundrum.

So what is Conundrum?

Germain: For starters Charles started the name.

Isaac: That’s what the definition of Conundrum is. So I guess our music is hard to understand if you try to break it down like note by note, chord by chord or this song or this form. It’s going to be hard to get it because we are so free with our music, but Conundrum I guess the main idea of vibe would be just positivity, and you know energy and vibrations.

How long has the band been around?

Charles: About a year ago we just like started the idea of getting a band together when he got back from school and then we got together in my little room in Jersey City, and we just went from there.

Isaac: So basically each of us we all went to Bayonne high school together, and we graduated in the jazz band, so we were all musically with each other but then after high school we were just like well let’s continue to play music.

And I guess we wanted to be or in my eyes. We wanted to be almost like a hip hop instrumental group, so listening to Joey Badass and the 1999 mixtape that’s what influenced us to step out of the jazz, but more into hip hop, but keep the jazz improv aspect in our music. So yeah that’s our style of music.

Did you guys grow up together?

Isaac: Well, I met Germain and Charles my senior year in high school, so I was like seventeen at the time, but I feel like I have known them my whole life. We really connected. This was meant to be. Synchronicity, you know.

Charles: I have known Germain since the 6th grade. Then we both met up in high school and been playing ever since then. We are like super comfortable with each other.

Germain: It’s like a weird relationship we got, but they keep me like stretching the limits, my limits as a human being like individual but sometimes they also keep me like controlled.

That’s good. You make each other better. How would you define your style of music like your genre?

Isaac: I’d say live hip-hop. I also like defining our music as social music, because it’s in the middle of hip hop and the middle of jazz, it’s weird, and it’s funky as well so definitely just social music that’s the type of style I guess. We really connect with like The Roots from Philadelphia, the hip hop band.

Germain: Those are our idols.

Isaac: We take a lot of influences from the roots and then Miles Davis as well, the late 60s he made Bitches Brew, an amazing record. The first time they started using electric base all of this it was very free.

It’s very free and very open, and it’s almost confusing hard to understand kind of like how Germain said. You just take a musical idea and just go in that direction, and we trust each other enough so that we can kind of drive our way through the music.

What is your creative process?

Germain: Sometimes we are like hours in working on a beat or something and sometimes it’s just like snaps fingers. We get caught in an idea, and we are just going to go with it. Keep the idea and we are just going to push it from here.

Charles: A lot of it is, just we don’t think about what we are going to do. We just like we just got for it

Germain: In reality music is not suppose to make you think its just suppose to make you feel, so it’s like when you think. If I’m listening to a song and I notice I am thinking too much about the other stuff, then the song don’t touch me. Music, really if you think about it, it’s not supposed to make you think. The songs that you love they make you feel or it makes you think of a situation that makes you feel that way.

Charles: One of our main objectives is to make people feel, we want to make you feel, you know.

How do you feel about music, in general, these days? The way hip hop is and how it’s changed or pop music or jazz. How do you feel about what’s popular now?

Charles: I think the current state of rap music and pretty much mainstream music is not in a good place right now. I feel like everything is about just what’s catchy.

Isaac: Everything in pop and rap nowadays it’s like a copy of a copy and it’s just filtered.

In my opinion, that is where we are at today. Everyone is just copying each other. And no one is breaking out of a mold.

And I guess that is what we are trying to do. Just trying to experiment and play what is true in our hearts.

Are you all classically trained? What’s your background?

Isaac: I started playing guitar when I was twelve, and I was self-taught and senior year it’s when I picked up a base, lied to my professor and said, “Yeah I know how to play base, I know how to read music.” I didn’t know how to do any of that so the first week of high school. The first week of senior year in jazz band they hated me because I had no idea how to play base the right way, I didn’t know how to swing, I didn’t know how to play any of the jazz. I trained in rock by myself. So entering college, that’s when I started playing classical guitar, and that’s where I am at right now. It’s really only benefited me and opened me to more music and to more styles of playing.

Germain: I love that about Isaac honestly. He is self-taught. He is all feeling, all ear, all feeling. That is how he learned.

Isaac: It’s stressful though

Germain: I can imagine.

Isaac: Even now because the other musicians in our group they go to the new school in NYC and our piano player is amazing, he loses me, but he brings in different colors into the music that I can’t bring so we are all in it for a reason, and I wish he were here.

Isaac: There’s seven of us.

So how come we couldn’t get all of them here? 

Charles: We are the core of Conundrum.

Isaac: We’re the core, and we are the ones who are usually in Hudson County most of the time. Our base player is living in New Brunswick going to school at Rutgers, the two other musicians, the piano player and the saxophone player are in NYC right now, and our Latin percussionist is in PA.

Tell me a little bit about the shows that you did in Jersey City or you have upcoming. 

Isaac: We’ve played at the Citizen when it was the Dopeness over the summer, and personally I love playing in Jersey City because number one that’s like a home that’s our hometown and that is where all our friends and our fans and our family can come and see us. Most of the time we are playing in NYC, playing in Harlem or Brooklyn, so whenever we get the opportunity to play in the area in Hudson County, it’s always awesome. The experiences have only been positive; everyone loves it, and they always ask us to come back to play, so we are always down.

Lynn: Wait, what are your musical backgrounds?

Charles: I grew up playing the violin.

Charles: I didn’t start playing drums seriously until freshmen year, and then I met this guy, and he told me he was in the marching band. He is one of the reasons why I got back into drums because he had a drum kit at his house and I would go to his house a lot, and we would play so like eventually I was just like I want to play drums a lot again.

Germain: My dad is a musician, well he was a musician now he is a teacher, but so I guess music always has since I was young a part of my life. The first instrument was a piano when I was like eight, and then I got a trumpet when I was ten, which is funny cause my dad named me after his best friend from the Dominican Republic who is also a trumpet player.

Oh, that is so funny, so you were like destined.

Germain: Yeah, out of nowhere. This is bae. I love the trumpet.

What do you love about playing the trumpet?

Germain: Trumpet for starters is the mirror of your mind, that’s what they call it. So it’s like if you don’t hear it, like a piano you can’t just press a key and the sound comes out. It’s a lot of work and energy and vibrations with your mouth that comes through the trumpet. It forces me to like take a leadership role because ever since I was young the trumpet being that it’s such a high pitched instrument in any ensemble its like you have to listen to the new trumpet player. So I was always playing lead. Even when I was in high school, I was still a little scared about taking leadership, but I guess now I have to be just like, follow me. That’s cool follow me. I like to lead; I love it I think its important.

In high school, that’s when me and Charles really started playing a lot of music. We joined the jazz program at NJPAC, and that’s where it made us take jazz more serious, and we eventually met Isaac and we just took off from there.

Charles: We also met our base player at the program too, he was a guitar player.

Isaac: He is also from Jersey City as well. Japanese, Kyosuke Nonoyama.

Charles: We have a very diverse band.

Do you have any females on the band?

Isaac: We work with singers. We are working with Karma, who also is from Jersey City, but that’s the only female musician that we have worked with so far.

Lynn: Are you guys always open to collaboration?

Germain: Oh yeah.

Charles: Yes.

Isaac: I mean if it sounds good.

Germain: Even like a painter, I’d love to just like make music with an artist. Like to their painting we are just going on back and forth exchanging energy and stuff. That’s great.

Are you guys all from Jersey City? Where are you guys from?

Charles: I’m from Jersey City.

Isaac: Originally from Jersey City.

Germain: I live in Bayonne. Yeah, I’m the Bayonne guy.

Isaac: We started on The Hill, between Martin Luther King Drive and Ocean Avenue. Our roots are in Jersey City.

Lynn: You guys are Jersey City, you guys play in Jersey City, you guys are in Jersey City, you’re good.

But, both of you are you born and raised?

Charles: I moved to Bayonne for a few years, but then I moved back to Jersey City like two years ago.

What are your favorite Jersey City hangout spots?

Charles: I like hanging out recently in downtown a lot because I have been getting into longboarding and its like really cool to like board over there. This guy got me into it actually, so yeah catch me downtown.

Isaac: It all depends on what activities we are doing.

 

What about like food or bars or like yeah your favorite food spots?

Isaac: My favorite, well I love pizza, so my favorite pizzeria that I grew up with was Rizzo’s on Central Ave.

Charles: Crowned Fried Chickens is always reliable in downtown, Jersey City.

Do you have any upcoming gigs that you want to promote?

Germain: We have a great show with a big band, they are called butcher brown super funky we are playing with them August 12th at Rockwood Music Hall.

Charles: They are a Virginia-based band. We are like huge fans of them. They are like an older version of us.

Germain: We are taking a break from gigging because our base player he is going to be in Japan for awhile. So those gigs that we had that we could tell you about from May, June, and July we’re like uh oh we got to cancel and reschedule. August 15th we will be at Rutgers in New Brunswick and then August 10th at Post Center House.

Charles: We got a monthly show at Post Center House in Hoboken on 14th st.

Isaac: It’s like Beer Garden its pretty dope.

Lynn: Nice! That’s awesome. Great. Keep it up. Any last words?

Isaac: Follow your heart and follow us on Twitter. Hit that follow button.

Love it. 

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