Steve Martland: 'More creativity and we wouldn't have conflicts'

Composer Steve Martland thinks art can save the world. He reveals his plan to Christopher Wood

Steve Martland recently gave his plumber's 16 year-old assistant a piece of his mind. "Everybody should stay on at school till they're 18 by law," he told the boy, who was thinking of possibly going to college one day a week. "You should go to university, and if you have a history degree or an archaeology degree and then want to be a plumber, that's fine. That way you have the opportunity to broaden your education, meet people from different backgrounds, learn something that isn't necessarily vocational, and society would be improved."

So put that in your washing machine hose and smoke it. In case anyone doubted it, Martland – whose group, the Steve Martland Band, plays in Southampton this week – believes in education. For many years he ran a programme called Strike Out (soon to be revived), which got schoolchildren to compose their own music. Recently asked why he gets young audiences to compose rather than just explaining what the music is about, Martland replied... well, pass the soapbox: "Creativity is everything that is against what's going on in the world right now. It's to do with tolerance and understanding other people. With more creativity we wouldn't have these conflicts we're having. I know that's very idealistic, but if I didn't believe that I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. It's about seeing the differences between people and celebrating them. That's what all music is about for me."

As he will readily confess, Martland and his soapbox are never separated for long. Some 13 years after he announced his presence in stuffy English musical life by posing semi-naked on the cover of a series of discs on Tony Wilson's Factory label, Martland is still angry. He sees himself as an outsider looking in at the establishment, and still cares enough to shout about what he sees. Take jolly old Albion itself, for example. "It's a funny old place musically, England," he says. "You go to Holland [where Martland studied with Louis Andriessen] and the musical scene, the integration of people and camaraderie, is much greater than here, which seems so much to do with hype, competitiveness and personal jealousies. It's the safeness of British music and British culture that I'm against, and the conservatism of the thinking. British musical culture is devoid of intellectual content. On the continent there are aesthetic movements, manifestos, theories, ideas. British music is all run by white, Laura Ashley, middle-class people, which reinforces the idea that classical music is only for the middle classes."

Such is the state of England according to the composer of some of the most original music around at the moment. Unlike practically everything billed as such, the Steve Martland Band's latest CD, Horses of Instruction, is genuine "crossover", drawing on jazz, rock, folk and classical to forge a style uniquely Martland's own. The brilliance and immediacy of the music suggest improvisation, but Martland insists: "Improvisation doesn't really interest me. I'm a fascist in that sense. I like to be totally in control of all the musical material. I couldn't allow people to interfere. I'm a control freak. There's no doubt that this band brings something to the performance which is not in the notes. But that's to do with phrasing and the overall effect. It's not to do with changing any of the notes or adding a bit of their own."

Like all the best Jeremiahs, Martland is also very humorous, and doesn't take himself too seriously. And paradoxically, the iconoclast and one-time enfant terrible of British music is curiously old-fashioned, still believing his art is more important than career and bank balance. "I am a romantic," he confesses. "I think art matters. Horrible though this might sound, I think it improves people, it enhances the spirit. It can change the world. We are living in very hard and dark times, and music and art and access to them by anybody is even more essential than it's ever been before. The individual who has an encounter with art, their own imagination is stimulated and the knock-on effect is that we perceive the world in a better way. And we don't go to war."

The Steve Martland Band plays Turner Simms Hall, Southampton University (023 8059 5151) 8 October; Blackheath Concert Halls, London SE3 (020 8463 0100) 8 December. 'Horse of Instruction' is out on Black Box