14 October 2012 was a dark day for Antwerp: after 70 years of socialism, the neoliberal clown Bart De Wever was voted in to become ‘our’ mayor. Needless to say most colleagues were pretty down that night. While I was gently weeping at Café De Kat, my phone beeps: it was Ghédalia, who never texted me before: “I would rather have Bart Simpson for mayor”.

There’s less than a few magicians who stand out as much as Ghédalia Tazartès did. His name sounds like a two-word poem, and apparently he was the only Ghédalia on Earth that was not a gangster or a rabbi.

He made music that sounded like a painting, songs that sweep away the so-called freedom that improvisors have been struggling with for decades. It is music that sounds exactly the way his apartment looks, a masterpiece, meticulously constructed over decades, and truly and entirely his own. A Gesamtkunstwerk filled with puppets in glass cages, rugs that you should lick for maximum pleasure, arms and legs where one expects bread and butter. This tidy paradise should turn into a protected monument, like Panamarenko’s house, but without the helicopter pad on the roof. One could guess his apartment was from a different time, but in that different time it was also something from a different time, and so on. It was bought for him by some friends, so he could work on his work.

Much like Groucho Marx, Ghédalia never wanted to belong to the clubs that wanted to grant him membership, although in the past two decades an international coterie of likeminded souls and difficult characters fell in love with him because he is straightforward, honest and one hundred per cent real. He would crack a nasty joke and follow it up with a personal family anecdote (and tears). He was generous with his humble smile and vivid laughter, dusting off classic rock ’n’ roll friendship, a rolling stone, as free as the music he created, allowing in every influence that might have otherwise passed him by.

Listening to a Ghédalia Tazartès record is a little like watching El Topo. Pour yourself a nice glass of whatever strength you drink and sit down for the entire sunset. Think prog without the instruments, and double the mood swings! Within a few minutes, the opener of a Ghédalia Tazartès album might drag the baffled listener from a Sex Pistols loop, through Morocco, to a trance festival where Goran Bregović gets muffled by a pack of barking dogs, a lullaby is sung by stuffed dolls under a glass bell jar, and a moving vehicle carries a voice that melts ancient throat singing with a punk primitive shake. Tazartès was a heart-and-soul revolutionary, and his entire life is spread over these records: his children are on them, his apartment is omnipresent in them. His psychedelic recordings resonated with many different worlds: a ballet class, a film theatre, or the deepest basement overrun with primates. Rules do not apply in any way, certainly not the unwritten ones, to any of his compositions.

I think we first met in 2008 at the international family party that is the Colour Out Of Space festival, hosted by Chocolate Monk’s Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance, where Ghédalia played a wonderful concert with Jo Tanz and El-G as Reines D’Angleterre. We only really hit off – in a constant ping-pong of jokes, working the kind of ‘humour’ that only survives in a backstage room or a dive bar – when Chris Corsano and myself played a duo gig in Berlin that was set up by another charmer, Bill Kouligas of Pan. On a few occasions henceforth Corsano and I performed together with Ghédalia as a trio in Belgium – something which I can hardly remember as I was blinded by nerves, having to share the stage with these two giants.

What I do remember is the tears in his eyes when he played at the Alga Marghen night in Bozar in 2010, sharing the stage with his young son. The audience was completely silent, reverent. When listening to some of his music, one could imagine it loud, like a punk concert, but Ghédalia excelled in calm, warmth and a form of silence – he could shut an entire venue up armed with nothing more than his thousand-year-old Discman (which he brought to every gig as his main instrument) and an assortment of beautiful bells, clocks, strings and ancient harmonicas.

The live film soundtrack in Berlin; the free record, given out to friends only, published by Holidays Records; his rather spicy Italian jokes, which he was whispering to Simone Trabucchi, who happily translated them, having an entire table in giggles; spending the day after a gig with him at the Natural History Museum in Vienna; his general presence and ability to say much with few words; and his loud, open laughter. Many sweethearts from the international family of maniacs would have a lot more beauty to share about this wonderful person. In November last year we were in touch about a possible future project. His response was as sad as it was beautiful: “I won’t be able to do anything any more, I am very ill, I got two different cancers, one a very bad one. Please don’t worry, I had a wonderful life”. Thank you Ghédalia Tazartès. Rest in peace!

Read Nick Cain's 2008 interview with Ghédalia Tazartès in The Wire 295 via the online archive.