Deadline: 30 May 2013FEMRITE announces the call for submissions for the 5th Residency for African Women Writers which will be held from 18th to 30th November 2013. The main aim of the residency is to give women, mental and physical space to write. The 2-week residency will give selected writers the opportunity to reflect on their writing, connect with one another, read each others’ manuscripts and give feedback, interact with established writers and build literary bridges across cultures of the continent. The residency is also aimed at strengthening collaboration among women writers’ initiatives in Africa.
HOW TO SUBMIT:
Send part of a novel / short Story collection as a word document (40 pages, typed in Times New Roman, font 12, 1.5 spacing).
Send one complete short story (Minimum 3000 words) for the 5th Regional Residency publication.
A brief bio (not more than 10 lines)
This call is open to all African women writers above 18 years of age and living on the continent. Successful applicants will be notified by 30th July 2013.
THE RESIDENCY PACKAGE WILL INCLUDE:
A return air ticket for those residing outside Uganda.
Accommodation for the period of the residency.
Meals during the residency period.
Successful applicants will be expected to cater for any other related costs.
Revolver and thirty two are proud to announce our short story contest. We’re looking for your best story (only one submission per author) between 1,000 and 5,000 words. Submissions must be sent to Revolver through our submission manager.
The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2013 (midnight, EST). The winning story will be published simultaneously in thirty two and on Revolver and will receive a cash prize of $500. Revolver will also publish the 2nd and 3rd-place stories and award cash prizes of $100 and $50 respectively (thirty two may, at its discretion, choose to publish excerpts of these runners-up).
The prize-winning story will be announced and published in the October issue ofthirty two and simultaneously on Revolver.
I’ve posted below the new title track for the documentary film “The House I Live In,” an uncompromising exposé of the failures of the so-called “war on drugs” produced by John Legend, Brad Pitt, Danny Glover, and Russell Simmons, and directed by Eugene Jarecki.
“Filmed in more than twenty states, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN tells the stories of individuals at all levels of America’s War on Drugs. From the dealer to the narcotics officer, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America’s criminal justice system, revealing the profound human rights implications of U.S. drug policy. Winner of the 2012 Sundance Grand Jury Prize, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN is now available on demand.”
More than 2,500 people in the United States are serving sentences of life without possibility of parole for crimes committed as juveniles. Being locked up until death may guarantee that a young offender never harms another member of society at large. But is depriving a child of all hope of rehabilitation and release morally, ethically and financially viable? You may think you know the answer to those questions, but check your assumptionswith the facts in TakePart’s “Kids Locked Up for Life” infographic.
P.S. If you want to download the infographic, click to expand, right click the image, and you’re on your way. Or click below to embed the graphic on your site.
Do you feel more or less safe with juveniles being locked up for life in the United States? Leave your feelings in COMMENTS.
A powerful and emotionally engaging debut novel, Black Mamba Boy, which was recently longlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction, is both a historical document and a work of fiction. Nadifa Mohamed takes us back to Somalia in the 1930s, as she tells the jaw-dropping story of her father’s life and journey. It is the story of young Jama Mohamed and his childhood journey across East Africa after the death of his mother, in search of his father – a man he has only heard of but has never met. It is a journey of self-discovery, survival, exile, dislocation, dispossession and migration that will take him through Somaliland, Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Palestine and, finally, Wales. In her own words, Nadifa Mohamed’s explains the inspiration behind her novel.
Belinda: How long have you been writing and when did you come to that defining moment, when knew this is something you want to do, no matter what?
Nadifa: It was a slow realisation that I was writing something that I wanted to get published, I started writing about five years ago, basically because I wanted to commit my father’s story to paper and from there I discovered how much I, personally, got from writing.
Belinda: Let’s talk about your writing journey a little bit, are you a full time writer and when did you become a full time writer?
Nadifa: I was a full-time writer up until a year and a half ago when I started working again but with writing it’s something that you are always thinking about, working out, whatever you’re doing.
Belinda: How many stories or ideas had you already worked on and didn’t get a good response before you got your breakthrough?
Nadifa: None, ‘Black Mamba Boy’ is the first thing I have written creatively.
Belinda: What inspired Black Mamba Boy?
Nadifa: It was inspired by my father’s unusual life and I wanted to write his story but also about his generation of Somalis.
Belinda: Does the title have any symbolic meaning?
Nadifa: Yes, it is a translation of my father’s nickname. When my father was born he reminded his mother of a black mamba that had crawled over her stomach when she was pregnant.
Belinda: How long did it take to write the novel?
Nadifa: I started the novel in a cottage in Wales in 2005 and I finished editing late 2009.
Belinda: There is the art of writing and the discipline of writing, how do you combine being a writer with other aspects of life without giving one more power over the other and strike a balance?
Nadifa: What I love about writing is that it is actually enriched by the other aspects of my life; the films I see, music I listen to, the experiences I have all help me to write. You need discipline to meet deadlines but the actual creation process for me is fluid and grows organically.
Belinda: Who are your influences when it comes to literature or for their writing style?
Nadifa: I love poetic, gorgeous writing that describes the world. I am influenced probably by everything that I have read, seen and listened to, and it all comes out when you write. In terms of literature, I love lyrical writing: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall, Beloved by Toni Morrison but so many others too. Banjo by Claude Mckay and Waiting For The Wild Beasts To Vote by Ahmadou Kourouma definitely affected the style of my novel.
Belinda: How would you describe your writing style and voice?
Nadifa: That’s hard! I wanted to celebrate my father’s life and wrote very subjectively because of that. The novel begins when he is a child so I wanted the innocence and adventure of childhood to come through. I also wanted the writing to do justice to the beauty of his life and environment and absorb the poetry of Somali culture.
Belinda: You father’s story serves as a lens for readers to go back in time and experience life in Somalia like we have never heard or seen it. What’s the story about Somalia and East Africa, and your background that were you keen to get across to your reader or anyone who picks up your book?
Nadifa: I was interested in exploring how life in Somalia has changed since my father’s birth and how it has remained the same. I didn’t realise that Somalis generally, and my family particularly, were so mobile. There was a huge community of Somalis in Aden but also in Sudan, Egypt, and South Africa. They grabbed at the opportunities that were presented to them and changed a lifestyle that had lasted centuries overnight, only their nomadism stayed the same. And that we have an interesting, largely unknown history that spans vast distances and that all of the horrors of the last century are an important part of our story but are not the beginning or end of it.
Belinda: You explore different themes in your book, political disorder, war, violence, dislocation and dispossession, migration among others. But it stands out that this was your father’s journey and one that has migration at its core. Was that a subject you wanted to explore based on your heritage?
Nadifa: Yes. I am an immigrant but I didn’t know that I was a third generation immigrant. My grandparents and father had also settled outside of Somalia, and in similar ways had to acclimatise to different cultures. That knowledge closed the gap between me and them. Migration is still a huge issue for Somalis, we gain and lose through it, and it was incredible to learn that from the mid-eighteenth-century Somalis have been smuggling themselves into countries that they know next to nothing about. However, I also wanted to bring attention to the negative consequences that western colonialism had on the region; the recruitment of child soldiers, dispossession of land, enforced labour, and segregation. People had to flee Somalia not just because of drought and unemployment but also because their country was not under their own control.
Belinda: How far back did you go when researching your story in order to be as accurate as you could be about the historical aspects and details of your book?
Nadifa: I went back to sixteenth-century texts because my father thought that one of his ancestors had fought with Ahmed Gurey and I wanted all of that history and mythology in the novel. Most of the historical sources I used were from 1850-1945 when Europeans began to write about the region and although they described the environment very well, they were pretty useless at describing Somalis as real people. I was ecstatic to find an autobiography by a Somali sailor written in 1929, and it was perfect. He recorded not only his physical journey but his thoughts, feelings, and experiences as well. Somali life has changed so drastically that some details have been lost as generations have disappeared, taking that knowledge with them, hopefully we can record more now.
Belinda: Did you find you were more objective when writing because you did not live in your father’s shoes and so was far removed from the situation?
Nadifa: About some things yes, I could see why my father fought for the Italians to earn a living but I also empathised with the Ethiopians who were fighting to free their country.
Belinda: You write so much about the level of poverty that was endured by many, was this a major concern for you when your father started telling you his story?
Nadifa: Yes and no, it was important for me to emphasise how much people’s poverty formed their lives because my father always impressed on me how much the hustle for survival dictated everything. However, I didn’t want the characters to be obscured by their situations; I wanted them to express their quirks, prejudices, hopes.
Belinda: What topics of discussion did you want to evoke in people with this historical work of fiction?
Nadifa: Many – identity and how it is formed when you are not rooted to a particular place or family unit, the problems that arise when young people are left to look after themselves and how patterns of abuse continue unresolved in communities.
Belinda: Why did you examine the staying power of the characters you created and their ability to endure the rough times and still have hope?
Nadifa: I am interested in how much people can survive, the human spirit is incredibly strong but also fragile. Some people, like my father, can emerge from violent, hopeless situations relatively unscathed while others are broken by much less. When I read about what is going on places like Somalia now I wonder what the actual details of peoples’ lives are, what they think about, what they dream about and hope for, this is what is missing from a lot of the narrative about Africa and other poorer regions.
Belinda: How challenging was the emotional journey as you wrote this book, it is about your father and you must have learnt a lot about him. Was it easy for you to separate yourself from the story and write objectively?
Nadifa: It really varied, sometimes the fact that the boy in the novel was a figment of my own imagination and not really my father was clear and I could separate myself from the story. At other times I was writing about situations my father had really endured and I couldn’t help but feel for him as a daughter rather than just someone who was writing a book based on his life.
Belinda:How important is it for you as a writer to bring the different kinds of emotional facets I could hear while you read at the Southbank into your work?
Nadifa: It’s crucial, to write a novel that people will enjoy and feel they have got something out of you have to access those emotions that people of whatever time or place share. It is one of the reasons that I wanted to write a novel rather than a biography, with novels you breathe life into a character, you make them whole and the reader can sink into their skin. We all feel grief, love, loneliness and every other emotion and we can identify with characters when we see them also struggling with these feelings.
Belinda: And there is the relationship between the powerful and powerless, especially with the relationship that existed in the house Jama’s mother lived in with Jama before she died and also when Jama went back to live with Jinnow and the way he was treated by the other people; was your aim to question that aspect of Somali society and society in general?
Nadifa: Yes, I came to the realisation that however poor or oppressed you are there is someone always worse off than you, and that is true in all societies.
Belinda: I noticed divides along the lines of tribesmen and family lineage, is this another issue that you found challenging to accept during your research?
Nadifa: I had to accept that there was another aspect to the Somali clan-system apart from the really terrible side we saw in the civil war. In my father’s life his clan was like a huge social welfare network that looked after members unquestioningly.
Belinda: What emotions did you want to evoke about that period in people and how they see life today?
Nadifa: Empathy, respect and wonder.
Belinda:What has the response to your book been like since it was released?
Nadifa: Incredible, I have received support and encouragement from all kinds of people.
Belinda: Have you had any negative responses since your book was released?
Nadifa: No! Luckily.
Belinda: What do you want readers to take away from the book after reading Black Mamba Boy?
Nadifa: The books I really enjoy are the ones that immerse me in a different life that let me life somewhere else as someone else for a while, I hope that my novel achieves that and my readers are taken on a journey that will extend their horizons a little.
Belinda: Your book explores relationships and friendships, what did you, as a writer, learn about your father from the friends he had throughout his journey?
Nadifa: That friendship can last a very long time! My father is still in contact with people he met in Eritrea seventy years ago, I hope that my own friendships are so strong.
Belinda: Has this book, in anyway redefined the lens through which you view your own personal history and life?
Nadifa: Yes, I look back on what my father experienced with wonder and pride, and I feel that I must be as generous to people as those who helped my father were.
In the second of three specially commissioned short films celebrating Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 4, we introduce you to Nadifa Mohamed, who was born in Somalia and raised in South London. Mohamed’s first novel Black Mamba Boy (which was shortlisted for numerous prizes and won the Betty Trask Award) was inspired by the life of her father who was forced to leave Somalia and set out on an odyssey that brought him to the UK. Here we join her as she explores Shepherd’s Bush Market, where there is a large Somali community, hear about her next novel (excerpted in the issue) and learn why she wants to be the griot, or storyteller, of the London she grew up in.You can also watch the first in this series of short films, on Adam Foulds.Commissioned in collaboration with the British Council.Directed and produced by The Film Atelier.
We need to educate ourselves about the food we’re putting inside our bodies as well as those profitting from distributing genetically-modified food. If every single person does their part, a difference will be made. In the meantime, watch this…
About: THE GMO FILM PROJECT tells the story of a father’s discovery of GMOs through the symbolic act of poor Haitian farmers burning seeds in defiance of Monsanto’s gift of 475 tons of hybrid corn and vegetable seeds to Haiti shortly after the devastating earthquake of January 2010. After a journey to Haiti to learn why hungry farmers would burn seeds, the real awakening of what has happened to our food in the US, what we are feeding our families, and what is at stake for the global food supply unfolds in a trip across the United States and other countries in search of answers.
Are we at a tipping point? Is it time to take back our food? The encroaching darkness of unknown health and environmental risks, seed take over, chemical toxins, and food monopoly meets with the light of a growing resistance of organic farmers, concerned citizens, and a burgeoning movement to take back what we have lost.
Today in the United States, by the simple act of feeding ourselves, we unwittingly participate in the largest experiment ever conducted on human beings. Massive agro-chemical companies like Monsanto (Agent Orange) and Dow (Napalm) are feeding us genetically-modified food, GMOs, that have never been fully tested and aren’t labeled.
This small handful of corporations is tightening their grip on the world’s food supply—buying, modifying, and patenting seeds to ensure total control over everything we eat. We still have time to heal the planet, feed the world, and live sustainably. But we have to start now!
The war was a conflict between Spain and the U.S. over the fate of Spain’s colonies in the Americas and the Pacific. At the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the U.S. took colonial control from Spain over Cuba, Puerto Rico, parts of the West Indes, Guam and the Philippines. (The U.S. also annexed the independent nation of Hawai’I later that year). The Treaty signaled the end of the Spanish Empire in America and the Pacific Ocean and marked the beginning of an age of United States colonial power.
Via Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Fight Back!)
the cornet and its first cousin the trumpet were the first solo instruments of jazz, the first horns to carry the tone of defiance, slicing the air with the gleaming sassiness of a straight razor wielded with expert precision on someone who was dead but didn’t know it yet (the hit was so quick that the head fell off before the body knew it had been cut). these brass siblings were the hot horns that caught the feel of august in the sun, a hundred-pound sack shading the curve of your aching back. especially the trumpet with its ringing blare which could be heard cross the river on a slow day when somebody in algiers was practicing while a bunch of other bodies was sweating, toting barrels and lifting bales on the eastbank riverfront.
the second brass voice was the nasty trombone. you stuck stuff up its filthy bell. it was not loud but was indeed very lewd. a toilet plunger its regular accessory. of course you had drums and some sort of harmony instrument, a string bass where available, a tuba, sousaphone, banjo or even a piano in certain joints.
now the reed of choice was the clarinet. long. slender. difficult to master. the snakelike black reed. and that was the basis of your early jass bands.
everybody had a part. bechet was a clarinetist. an excellent clarinetist. extraordinary even. but no matter how well he sucked on that licorice stick he could never get it up the way he wanted it. get it to make the sound inside bechet’s head. until he heard the sound of the soprano saxophone. the fingering was similar so he was familiar with covering and uncovering the holes. familiar with the right stiffness of reed and the just tough enough strength of embrochure. what the soprano saxophone did was enable him to challenge the trumpet—just ask louie armstrong or give a listen to clarence williams and his blue five when bechet and louie took turns walking them jazz babies on home.
this mytho-poetic orpheus sired by omer soaked his reeds in mississippi muck and washed down the horn’s bell in bayou goo.
what bechet did was press the humidity of crescent city summers into every quivering note he played with a vibrato so pronouced it sounded like a foreign dialect.
what bechet did was alter the course of history, the clarinet faded after bechet switched and the saxophone became the great horn of jazz. sure there were a couple of great trumpets in years to come (little jazz, fats, dizzy, brownie, and, of course, miles) but none of them turned the music around like the saxophonists did, like bechet, like bird, like trane not to mention hodges, hawkins and the prez, and the list can go on and on. the point here is that bechet was the one, the first, the progenitor of a royal succession that is all but synonymous with jazz as an instrumental music.
and what was even more incredible back in the twenties and thirties was bechet’s sense of africa as source and blues people as the funnel through which the source sound was poured. bechet speaks of that specifically. in bechet’s autobiography he goes on for pages (pgs. 6-44 out of 219 pages of text) talking about his grandfather who danced in congo square, overlaying the legendary bras coupe (a runaway, maroon warrior of the early 1800s) story onto the life story of his grandfather handed down to bechet through bechet’s father, thereby insuring that the statement of resistance was made, the resistance that fuels the internal integrity of our music.
bechet was an early african american griot. one of the first to consciously understand the music he played so well. to articulate the ancestral worship implicit in the call and response. or as bechet describes the music: “It’s the remembering song. There’s so much to remember. There’s so much wanting, and there’s so much sorrow, and there’s so much waiting for the sorrow to end. My people, all they want is a place where they can be people, a place where they can stand up and be part of that place, just being natural to the place without worrying how someone may be coming along to take that place away from them.” in brasil they call this feeling “saudade,” this longing to be whole again, this we know that we were whole once and with all our being quiver with an anxiety, an almost unbearable longing, to be whole again, this hope—dare i say this optimism colored by the reality of the blues—that, yes, someday, someway, we will be whole in some soon come future.
like a mighty river which never ceases to flow and which has seen it all before, bechet’s sound was an ever unfurling cornucopia of lyric delight, its alluvial melodies inundating us, fertilizing our spirits, rendering us both funky and fecund.
bechet’s music was brazen, was brilliant, was growling sun bold. startling in its intensity. powerful in its keening. knowing—he was a philosopher of sorrow, was both intimate with hurt as well as on a first-name speaking terms with joy. while life had its ups and downs, bechet played it hard at both extremes and always with a sparkle of hope shining irrepressibly behind and through whatever tears temporarily clouded his eye.
all of that, all of his life, his individual self and his people’s birthright, all was played through the bell of bechet’s horn, so strong and unmistakable. unmissable. one listen and you got it. the force hit you. you felt it. bechet. bechet. he seemed to be that special sound you had been waiting all your life to hear.
Over a Skype connection from Cape Town to Belgium, I ring up the rapperBaloji. Our chat has been delayed multiple times, which is understandable; Baloji Tshiani is a busy man. This past year alone, he toured both North and South America, did major festivals across Europe, and performed for the first time in his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo – in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, the latter being where he was born. His mother did, however, give him up for adoption to Belgian parents when he was still very young, and Belgium is a country he continues to reside in to this very day. Starting off at age sixteen as a member of the now-defunct hip-hop outfit, Starflam, Baloji rode the wave of the collective’s ubiquity, but became disenfranchised with the music industry and quit it for close to ten years. He re-emerged with a new resolve in 2007 with his debut offering, Hotel Impala, a “response” from his biological mother during their only “telephone conversation in April 2005.”
Since we last spoke, Baloji has done more cutting-edge work, some of which includes being a representative for a Studio Africa initiative supported by Diesel and EDUN. During our chat, we discussed his current obsession with American rap up-and-comer Kendrick Lamar, touched a bit upon the situation in his country of birth, and spoke at length about the music industry and how, maybe, he was just not made for its cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach to the marketing and promotion of music.
Ts’eliso Monaheng: You did the BBC proms in August 2012 with Staff Benda Bilili. Take us through the experience.
Baloji: That was really cool, playing in this amazing venue, Royal Albert Hall, and especially to share the stage with Staff Benda Bilili.
TM: Did you feel that the audience ‘got’ what you were doing on-stage?
B: I don’t know what they were expecting. You never know what the audience expects, you just do your thing and you expect them to enjoy your performance. But there is nothing predictable; you cannot have an idea of what they like or what they dislike. Just do what you do nobly; if they like it, it’s good, if they don’t, too bad. But stick to what you are.
TM: One of the most important things that you got to do was to perform in both Lubumbashi and Kinshasa. Take us through that experience.
B: I learnt a lot from the first time I played in Kinshasa. Trying to please the audience, that was the biggest mistake I could ever make. The more you try to please the audience, the more you lose yourself. You don’t give something that is yours; it doesn’t have to be radical, but has to be what you are. By definition, what you are is unique. We’re all different persons, so we have to put that in front instead of searching and looking for a way to please the audience, to make the music that they want to hear for certain reasons.
TM: On your current project, ‘Kinshasa Succursale’, your ability to let the song’s rhythm dictate your flow stands out. Is song structure important to your writing process?
B: The rhythm dictates the flow, so that was an interesting experience for me because rap is not made for the 6/8 rhythm, which is the basis for Congolese music and for West African music. You can even see the way that rap has changed lately, people rap on different kind of rhythms – double-time, treble-time. It’s a movement that’s going [that direction], and it’s good to challenge emcees.
TM: How do you feel that your art has progressed since the days of Starflam in the late nineties?
B: Now it’s really different. When I was in Starflam, I was just sixteen years old; I was the youngest member of the group. It was a group with seven people, nobody really took a decision. We always followed the direction that pleased most of the group.
TM: You did say in one interview that it is impossible to have a democracy in a group setting.
B: I don’t believe in democracy in music, I really don’t. We try to push that, but it’s not possible. Somebody always has to make the decision and seek what is the best thing to do. So that’s really the key.
TM: You mention on the song “Karibu ya Bintou” that ‘failure’s not an option’, in the context of the Congo and the Congolese people. Do you feel that our leaders on the African continent have failed us as people?
B: I don’t know, the African situation is so complex. Sometimes I can think that what happened in South Africa is the same situation that happened Nigeria, it’s the same that happened in the Congo, but that is not true. It’s all different situations with different histories. That makes the situation what it is, unique and with its own solution, its own path, and its own history. It’s a song about ‘keep believing [in] what you’re doing, instead of being insecure and searching for wrong explanations.’
TM: Another aspect to the Congo is this conflict that continues to divide the country. Can you give a bit of background into how it started?
B: What happened yesterday for example* [is that] army groups are now approaching Goma and are about to invade the city, literally. That’s a really strange situation and no one can really explain that, that’s really sad. So we don’t have a solution for that.
TM: So what is the unifying factor amongst Congolese people currently?
B: A lot of things, people are proud of being Congolese like any other country.
TM: You have recorded with a broad range of artists, from Spoek Mathambo to Blitz the Ambassador. Do you have plans to do more cross-continental collaborations?
B: We did a couple of things. The thing is that I don’t know when it’s gonna be released, I have some label issues for the moment. So I don’t know how things are going to happen, but we’ll see.
TM: It’s interesting how you funded the entire recording process of ‘Kinshasa Succursale’ out of your own pocket, and how all the ‘cool’ labels rejected the final product. What does it take for an artist to break free of the mould of being labelled as ‘special’?
B: There are no rules. I mean [for some people] there is one rule: follow a marketing plan and stick to a formula, and make something that is synchronised with what the hipster movement is about now. Or you can try to do something different. I made a song with Petite Noir from South Africa, and there’s already a marketing plan. He doesn’t have an album yet, but he already has a marketing plan – which media, which songs, what kind of visuals and what kind of approach you have to put out to make them like your stuff. And that works. I don’t know if I’m ready to do that, but I have to respect the way he put his whole structure around what’s happening now and how to please key media and alternative audiences. I’m really far from that, and I thought that I was doing something that was different, that was interesting for those labels. But then I realised when I sent the album first, then the album with the video, then the album with the video and the visual…there was nothing that was happening at that time that they could associate it with. So that’s always the problem, and that’s why people want to create a movement, which is something I’m not really up for. A movement means they put you in a box, and I’m against that. You have to study this business, and a lot of young artists are just studying this business.
TM: So what is your current approach? Are you going to stick to touring? What’s the plan?
B: For the moment, I’m working on a new album, writing, and I feel good about it from what I have so far. Things are getting together, but we’re not there yet. Basically I’m broke, all the money was invested in Kinshasa Succursale. You pay for everything, everything! That’s why I’m always surprised by all these people who stay independent, I don’t know how they do that. [Either] they trick it, or they’re liars – it’s one or the other. Or they have a lot of connections and friends and people who put money in it. Money-wise, it’s too difficult.
TM: Are you going to follow the same formula for the new album as you did for the last one?
B: I don’t know, now I don’t have money to do that anymore. That’s why I’m searching for a situation with people that can put in money. I was with a label that had good intentions, but no money. And I mean money to make this project; it’s expensive with the travelling and all these expenses. You need a little bit of money to make it. That’s part of the game; I agreed to do it, and we have to understand that it’s difficult.
TM: You play with very seasoned musicians. Where are they based?
B: They’re based in Belgium, just like me. It took me some time to find that we understand each other. For example, my guitar player is sixty-five years old, he’s been a musician since he was sixteen, and he’s not really a fan of rap. It took time to meet each other in-between. It took us two years, literally two years to be somewhere that we understand each other, and to do music that we both agree to do. That’s the true life. Anyone who tries to say that to go on stage is easy, that a frontman doesn’t need his musicians, that he can just replace them with whatever random musician – it’s not true. You need to have a sound and to have something cohesive. You need to work with people, you need to understand them. They need to get your point across clearly. That’s why I never change my musicians; I always work with the same people. And it’s the same for the rest, I’m still doing my [album] cover with the same guy, my mix with the same guy, same engineer – always the same people.
TM: So that you’ll have this uniform identity throughout the career that you’re currently building…
B: We’re trying. I believe that when you find good people, you stick to them, and that helps you to understand each other and to go deeper. And again you save money, because you already know each other.
TM: You had issues with your mother a few years back. Are you on speaking terms now?
B: Not really. We haven’t really had the chance to speak to each other. It’s a strange situation when the person you’re supposed to be the closest to is a stranger, and has a different perspective. Living in your world, you get a European perspective, and she just has a Congolese perspective. They don’t really match; one of the two has to give up some parts of their own ideas to meet the other one’s expectation. That’s the situation in the diaspora, to find your way between the country you are staying in, that reminds you everyday that you are different, and your native country. Also the fact that you have access to stuff that they don’t have, your vision changes. When you have time to think, that means you have less time to think about what you’re gonna eat. Everybody says that philosophy is something to do when your stomach is full. So there are different approaches. My family in Africa has a different approach.
TM: Was it a conscious decision to re-make songs from ‘Hotel Impala’ on your second album?
B: For me, Kinshasa Succursale was an in-between project. It was something I felt the urge to do, just the Congolese version of the first album. But then you get there, you meet people, and everything changes. What happened during those sessions was so great that when I came back I felt the need to work on this project, to give it a proper release and the proper exposure, and to give my best to this record. But my publisher thought it was trash, my label thought it was trash, all my friends were like ‘have you lost your mind?’ And that pushed me to say ‘fuck it, I’m gonna do it!’ It took me two years to have that record in my hand, two years of struggle! But with the struggle we had so much luck – I say now that we had luck. I put all my money in it because I believed in it. You don’t like the album, are you gonna like it with the video? No?! So what are we gonna do? [We] put the band on the road and maybe convince them. It took time, it took us a year and a half for the band to have something that made sense. And then we had some great responses from the US and the press – Guardian, New York Times – they basically saved us. Then all the people that thought I was trash liked it. Then we finally said ‘okay, if we want to go bigger with this live band, we need to have an album out.’ And now it became ‘wow, you created something!’, and I’m like the same people had that record two years ago!
TM: Does the radio show you support out there?
B: No, because it doesn’t fit the format. It’s nice to play a catchy, almost-cheesy song like ‘Independence cha-cha,’ but it’s not for the format. It’s not something that you can play next to Rihanna or whatever electronic beats. It has nothing to do with all this movement that is on the radio now. So we don’t have a lot of radio support.
TM: What keeps you motivated?
B: A lot of things, I love this music. I’m honest with it, I do it because it’s what I love the most, and in a way it’s fun. So it’s not just struggling, because I have the freedom to do what I want, or I take that freedom. So just trying to be yourself and doing what you are, it’s you and your luck at the end of the day. Now I think I’m quite lucky. I know some people who tried to please the market and to please the audience, they’re not around anymore.
*The interview took place in early December 2012.
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Ts’eliso Monaheng is a Lesotho-born writer with a keen interest in music. His focus is in covering emerging music scenes (mainly jazz and hip-hop) in Africa and the diaspora.
