Have no fear, the queen is alive and well—Queen Omega, the impressive reggae artist from Trinidad, is back with a fourth project named Stars Align.
After a few years of silence (her last album, Together, We Aspire, Together, We Achieve was produced in 2012), Queen Omega finally had the time and the inspiration to come up with a new project. She was already known in the reggae sphere for her interesting vision of this particular genre. Even though everyone kinda “knows” it, it’s mostly no further than Bob Marley, the leader of The Wailers and a very influential figure of the Rasta movement. But for Queen Omega, reggae ought to be more than that and needs to change. With only eight songs, Stars Align is quite short and leaves us wanting for more! But with its engaging mix of dancehall, Afrobeat and reggae, this EP leaves you in a state of pure joy and enjoyment.
LMK and Stonebwoy both make appearances on the project, respectively on “Free” and “Number One”. In Queen Omega’s view, the two young men from Trinidad bring a new light and form to the project due to their own career in the music industry. “I want to help other artists to be known, to be able to play on the radio or to do festivals. I have to give back to them”, she says, revealing her motivation to see music change and evolve.
If you find yourself wondering, “what do I even know about reggae, I only know about Bob Marley…”, Stars Align is your chance to reconnect with the genre and to learn more about it. Or, if you simply want to listen to a good project from a talented Black artist, here’s your chance!
PAN M 360: You were born in Trinidad, a small Caribbean island often called “the land of the hummingbird”. What are some of your best memories about growing up there?
Queen Omega: My most candid memorieswould be with my family, you know? I was the only girl, all my siblings were born males, and being the only girl, I was always treated like a princess, like a queen, being treated with extra special care. And I had so many great moments with my family, I sang a lot with them, I enjoyed nature, and the get-togethers were always something!
PAN M 360: Would you be able to remember when and where you came to the realization that you had the wish to become an artist?
Queen Omega: Ever since I know myself, you know, consciously, I knew that I was a singer because my mom told me that from inception. I was born with a gift because my mom asked the superior forces. And when I started going to school, I was beginning to realize that my voice was beautiful… because I started to be requested a lot. I was asked to perform, to sing in a lot of shows and competitions.
PAN M 360: Stars Align is your latest project. Would you say that the star aligned during the pandemic, allowing you time and inspiration to create this EP?
Queen Omega: It was perfect. It was because of the covid-19 that I really got the opportunity to work on this EP. I took the advantage of the time being still for once, you know? With the lockdown and the curfew in my country—well, everywhere in the world, too!—I took the time to go to the studio, spent a lot of long nights there and before I knew it, the EP was produced! And it was perfect timing for me. My fans wanted more music from me, my promoters wanted more music from me…
PAN M 360: With Stars Align, were you trying to tell a story, or were the songs more individual?
Queen Omega: It is a story. Everything that I write about in Stars Align are experiences. Not always personal, but sometimes, experiences that I’ve witnessed, that I learned from, because we learn from mistakes, you know? Even if those aren’t ours. The story is really true and each song is a story and I think that’s precisely why I think Stars Align is a beautiful project; it’s true, it’s authentic, it’s real and raw.
PAN M 360: What are the important themes that you wanted to tackle?
QUEEN OMEGA: I wanted to talk about the future, the future generations, the children and how misled we can be today. And we have so much to blame, you know? With the elders, with the behavior of the adults… We must take responsibility and turn the page so we can be a better place for the future! So that’s one theme. And the other would be… a great love story. And you know, love isn’t always kind to us, sometimes, things just don’t work out the way you want them to, you know? So the love story in Stars Align talks about two people who really love each other but it just… doesn’t work out. But it’s hard to say goodbye.
PAN M 360: Stars Align would be far from the first time that you released new music. Destiny and Away from Babylon were the first projects you ever did, back in 2004. In 2008, it was the turn of Servant of Jah Army, and Together We Inspire, Together We Achieve back in 2012. What did you learn from all those projects?
QUEEN OMEGA: Yeah, that’s what makes Stars Align so precious. I kind of came out of the box of doing strictly reggae. I wanted to mix genres up a little bit because I’m so versatile, I can do a lot of things. The sound of Stars Align is more of a dancehall sound from Trinidad, we also have some Afro tones, some Afro beats. The one with Stonebwoy is very Afrocentric—you know, he is a king of the Afro dancehall!—so I’m really pleased with what we achieved with him. And the song we did together is called “Number One”! So, I would say pretty suiting.
PAN M 36: What made you think that Stonebwoy would be a good fit for the project?
Queen Omega: He knew what he was doing, I think. I knew about this genre and the vibes that come with it, you know? My previous manager would always tell me about the importance of collaborating with other artists from Africa, and so I did! He actually wanted the same thing as well, so I think the universe heard us and made it happen.
PAN M 360: This year will mark the 35th edition of the Festival International des Nuits d’Afrique. In your opinion, why are those shows important and why people should go, even though they might be unfamiliar with African music?
Queen Omega: It’s important to me to participate in such projects because I think I have to do my part, my purpose, you know? I am very well looked upon, I think it’s part of my job to spread good vibes. And the more people will do it, the more people will be interested and curious, the more it will bring! I love performing at festivals because it is so diverse. We can see so many people from so many cultures with so many stories to tell and I love that. I love reaching out to people, to connect with them through my mission, my gift of music.
PAN M 360: Do you think that reggae might be a genre a little forgotten these days?
Queen Omega: Yeah, I think it’s designed to be that way but I also think that everything is about evolution. I think we are in a stage where reggae is really evolving because music grows, you know? And as it grows, we have to fuse it and so, as a reggae performer, I like to continue to explore and learn from other artists. But I’m not worried; the first thing people say when you talk about reggae is Bob Marley, a figure that will never be forgotten.
PAN M 360: Before we know it, the year is coming to an end! What are your wishes for the upcoming one? Queen Omega: I just want to do more music. I am currently working on another album, so I’m just trying to see when I can get that wrapped up! I want to be able to go back on the road, to tour, get my label out so I can help other artists, especially in Trinidad to get the circle going. We have so much talent here and I can’t wait for people to be able to finally hear them.
Ariel Posen, a singer-songwriter/guitar virtuoso from Winnipeg—who spends his time playing with The Bros. Landreth and has been given praise from the likes of John Mayer—found himself with an idea and loads of time last year. Around the time of the rollout of his album Headway, Ariel booked some studio time in Montreal to record a few instrumental tracks and some video.
He ended up coming out with a full instrumental album called Mile End, a change of pace from his singer-songwriter sound. It’s an album that probably never would have been created if it wasn’t for the pandemic, but it expresses another flavour to Ariel’s rootsy blues sound and again, conveys how adept he is at song arrangement.
Ariel had some time to chat with PAN M 360 about his latest project before he opens for Bahamas in early December.
PAN M 360: What made you want to record a full instrumental guitar album?
Ariel Posen: I used to do a lot of demo videos for companies and I’m just used to just playing solo like that. Half of me doesn’t consider Mile End a record, because it’s not the amount of work and time that goes into writing songs like on Headway or How Long. But basically, what happened is that I had the time. On my first record, How Long, when I recorded it, I only had seven songs and I wanted a full 10 track record. So I actually just had three little solo pieces that I just recorded as interludes. So when I did that, people would reach out and say, ‘Hey, we really, really liked those solo pieces. Would you ever do something more like that?’ And I always just kind of pushed it off, but it always seemed to have a warm reaction.
PAN M 360: So the idea has been on your mind for some time then?
Ariel Posen: Yeah and this past year was weird for everybody. We all found ourselves with a lot more time than usual. I’d put all this time and energy into Headway and before it even came out, I hadn’t had some time to record. So my plan was just to go into a studio and record some video or have some content put out. There was no pressure of making a record. It was just simply see what happens, hopefully get some cool videos out of it. I went in there very casually, and had a bunch of pieces that turned out better than I thought. So it’s an album, but it’s also not.
PAN M 360: So the videos of you playing the album live on YouTube are those video recordings?
Ariel Posen: Yeah. It was all live-off-the-floor. All these songs were so improvised and it was very in the moment.
PAN M 360: I think my favorite track on Mile End is “Clawhammer.” Maybe just because of the name or the intensity, but do you feel giving names to instrumental tracks influences how they sound?
Ariel Posen: I have a really hard time giving names to songs that don’t have words in them. I just tried to think of a title that somewhat suited the vibe and the sound of the song. And for “Clawhammer,” I wanted a word that sounded somewhat aggressive, but also kind of cool sounding. I also have a lot of friends who play clawhammer-style banjo. The song has nothing to do with banjo playing and doesn’t resemble any kind of banjo-like clawhammer technique, but it’s just the word that came into my mind. And it’s kind of the same with all the other songs. One song felt like after a big rain, so yeah, I try to not be too precious or too deep about the names.
PAN M 360: And for the song and album name, Mile End, is that linked to Montreal?
Ariel Posen: The studio I recorded it in was in Mile End, but the phrase ‘mile end’ just sounds like the end of the road. Like you’ve been driving a long time and now the journey is done. Not saying my journey is done, but I wanted to gravitate towards that vibe for this record.
PAN M 360: One thing I find so refreshing about your playing is that you give space for every solo or lick on guitar. There are so many guitarists that just shred and hit as many notes as they can to show skill.
Ariel Posen: I’m always wanting to serve the song. So even if the song is a solo guitar interlude, I want to try and be in that moment and do nothing more or nothing less than what that piece needs. I just want to connect with whoever’s listening to it and to get someone else to connect to it, I need to connect to it. And shredding, as you said, doesn’t really fit. Like if you’re gonna play basketball, you don’t want to just dribble really fast or like spin the ball on your finger the whole time. It’s a bigger picture with making music than just trying to show off your skill.
PAN M 360: And when you perform, opening up for Bahamas, is it going to be the Mile End stuff or the more singer-songwriter stuff with your band?
Ariel Posen: So I’ll be playing the singing songs with the band the song and I might hint at Mile End in a few songs with a little solo or something. That’s why I say Mile End is such a side project, like a departure from what I normally do, for fun.
Editor’s note: The excellent album House Music was launched at the end of winter 2021 by Bell Orchestre. On March 22, PAN M 360 had posted a large part of this interview with Richard Reed Parry, which we have now enhanced with this symphonic complement! Our spring interview has additional answers provided by the musician in the run-up to the concert by Bell Orchestra with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, this Thursday at the Maison symphonique.
Richard Reed Parry is one of the main people in charge of Arcade Fire’s “research and development” section. House Music, Bell Orchestre’s new album released after a long recording silence, is another convincing example of this quest, which he generously tells us about here.
Recall that the album House Music was created from motifs around which Bell Orchestre improvised collectively and then improved the first takes by means of electronic treatments, filters, the addition of instruments, and various edits. Based on the piece “V: Movement” from this album, and directed by Kaveh Nabatian, the short film IX: Nature That’s It That’s All superimposes elements of archival films featuring ecstatic crowds at a carnival.
Working with sound engineer Hans Bernhard, Bell Orchestra wired every corner of a country house owned by fiddler and singer Sarah Neufeld in Vermont—hence the pun House Music. For this immersive recording, she welcomed Pietro Amato (horn, keyboards, electronics), Michael Feuerstack (pedal steel guitar, keyboards, vocals), Kaveh Nabatian (trumpet, gongoma, keyboards, vocals), Richard Reed Parry (double bass, vocals) and Stefan Schneider (drums). The ensemble spent two weeks exploring and refining the material: daily improvisations culminating in a conclusive 90-minute session from which the fine marrow was extracted.
The material was then arranged by Owen Pallett for the Aarhus Symfoniorkester, a Danish symphony orchestra under the direction of German maestro André de Ridder. An initial performance took place in Hamburg in August 2019 and… everything stopped, which explains the delay in the release of this superb album conceived some time ago. Montreal music lovers rejoice, Bell Orchestre and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra are reviving this wonderful material!
PAN M 360: After all these years, more precisely since 2009, the year of release of the album As Seen Through Windows, one could think that Bell Orchestre was dead, which is not the case. What’s up?
Richard Reed Parry: We didn’t record for over 10 years, but there was never an official stop. Life has been busy, too many projects, and Bell Orchestra has never been a full-time band. It won’t be but it still has vitality, there is a deep musical connection between us. Honestly, this album is the best we’ve recorded so far. It best realizes what the true essence of the band is. I’m very happy with it, we captured something that is overly conceived. But it’s not raw. The heart of the album is the spontaneous eruption of what the band is and what it is capable of.
PAN M 360: Unlike previous albums from the 2000s, this one is more singular, more mature, far beyond the indie trend of the time that you were part of and witnessed.
Richard Reed Parry: Thank you! And I couldn’t agree more! (laughs).
PAN M 360: What are the differences between the previous staff and this one?
Richard Reed Parry: Mike Feuerstack is now a full member of the band, he was previously a guest. Colin Stetson was also a guest, a wonderful addition at that time. Things have changed since then, he and Sarah got divorced… the only thing you can be sure of is change, right? If you survive the change, change yourself and it works, then… yeah! If not, it’s the same staff as before.
PAN M 360: If we try to pinpoint the changes between this album and the previous ones, what would you say from your side?
Richard Reed Parry: The main difference is that the foundation of this album is improvised, not planned, not premeditated, not discussed. This 45-minute recording is essentially an hour-and-a-half-long improvisation that we did after several other improvisation sessions. We listened back to everything we recorded during those two weeks of work, we identified several very good compositional ideas, but this 90-minute session was very clear, articulate, even if sometimes abstract. Between 65 and 70 percent of the music for this album was already there.
And then we reworked the material: fill in something here, take out this part, cut this other part in half. Figuratively speaking, it’s like a sculptor looking at a huge piece of granite and in his warehouse, there are other weird shapes carved in the stone. One of them would accidentally fall, resulting in a new shape that the artist would keep for his final sculpture. Literally, some of the accidents allowed us to access new shapes and see this work very clearly as a whole. At least, that’s how I felt.
PAN M 360: More specifically, what happened?
Richard Reed Parry: Some of the movements on the album emerged during the big improvisation, some occurred in the same order as the final recording, some evolved in the treatment of the raw material. Sometimes we agreed that we had to cut five minutes because it became boring and we lost the thread, we had to edit. The raw material was sometimes reworked with new ideas for compositions, arrangements, melodic insertions, instrumental additions, overlays, editing. So you get more shine on the raw material while keeping the original properties, the benefits of the first ideas.
PAN M 360: Were your best decisions unconscious?
Richard Reed Parry: This album would have been very different if we hadn’t had these ideas while we were playing and moving around together. I believe that the unconscious musical mind can be wiser and more connective than the musical mind that comes primarily from the intellect. Of course, some artists can take an intellectual concept to a high level of refinement and break down walls. The best, in fact, is when the “holy spirit” of music emerges from the unconscious and engages the intellect as well.
PAN M 360: Improvising, recording, reshaping, editing, filtering… Isn’t this album a metaphor for creation in the digital age?
Richard Reed Parry: Not quite. One of the big inspirations for the process of this record was Miles Davis’ famous Bitches Brew album. In the way they worked, he and the musicians who participated in those sessions were pretty close to what we did. They had recorded everything they could, for as long as they could, and then made changes afterward—cutting trumpet lines, adding a keyboard, shortening certain sequences, etc. They used the technology of the tape recorder to record the music. They used the technology of the time but with that same idea: capture the original raw energy, then rearrange certain parts and manipulate the recording to achieve an effect that was unattainable in the moment. We wanted to do something like that: improvise, record, fall in love with some of the takes after listening to them and then recreate with the freshness of the ideas we got from the improvisation. I’m very happy that it worked out so well.
PAN M 360: The Orb and Talk Talk, which have little to do with Miles Davis, would also have been major influences. Explanation?
Richard Reed Parry: The Orb Live ’93 is one of my top ten albums, all styles, and eras combined. The idea was to create in real-time, to use very simple but elegantly crafted musical ideas and let in fragments of recordings, sounds of nature, sounds of the city, chaotic energies, interesting in every way. Thus deforming, distorting, extending, adding, expanding. You float in this music, very strong ideas come out. That chaos was so alive! I was in high school, I wondered how they could have made such an album. I still listen to it today with the same pleasure.
As for Talk Talk, the last two recordings [Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock] are in a similar vein: beyond the structure of the songs, it was a matter of Mark Hollis trying to capture the energy flowing at a given moment, doing things unconsciously, inviting musicians to improvise in the dark around a single element of a song. In a way, to float and remain detached from any conscious decision making, and to welcome the sacred ghost that is impossible to find normally. You can’t demand that this ephemeral quality appear, you can only wish for it.
PAN M 360: As a composer and certainly the closest to contemporary music in Arcade Fire, what is your contribution to this new Bell Orchestre album?
Richard Reed Parry: What I brought to the table was mostly harmonic loops played on my double bass, with a visceral sense of movement. Really simple things that you could sing melodies over, play different chords… We needed that kind of gravitational pull at the center of the album without it being the centerpiece. So it was kind of a sketch, otherwise, it was a very open palette from this seemingly simple idea and it opened the door to other even more interesting ideas.
THE BELL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: INTERVIEW SUPPLEMENT
PAN M 360: Can you explain how the symphonic arrangements have been designed with the band’s music?
Richard Reed Parry: We tried to intertwine the band and orchestra in many ways —sometimes we are playing in unison, blending the parts that we ourselves are playing into what the orchestra play, sometimes the orchestra takes a single small element of what a band member is doing and magnifies it in this massive acoustic way. Often the orchestra also extends our own gestures far beyond what we ourselves are doing: enhanced and extended chords, sonic gestures that intermingle with our own, and occasionally adding new chords and textures that simply weren’t there in our album.
PAN M 360: So André de Ridder had to work with Owen Pallett, who wrote the arrangements.
Richard Reed Parry: Our dear friend and a longtime collaborator for many of us. He’s so gifted at orchestration and has supported us a lot over the years. In fact, the first time Bell Orchestre played in Toronto, it was opening for Owen‘s old band Les Mouches. Andre is also a dear friend and wonderful conductor and collaborator, and was the one who proposed we do this with the MSO! He’s wonderful at making crossover collaborations happen with orchestras and other artists.
PAN M 360: What is the nature of the dialogue between the band and the big orchestra?
Richard Reed Parry: Music, though it’s obviously a common shared language, has spent so much time divided into “separate” genres by varying combinations of education, semantics, class, and creative process. I am so happy to live in an era where the borders have broken down quite a lot and we can even consider doing such collaborations, and thrilled that an orchestra as great as the OSM is open to doing such a concert. Once we are all on a stage together, we are obviously united in purpose and it’s really just about finding the quickest way to best realize this large, slightly unusual musical beast/piece and bring it to life! I have a handful of friends who play in the MSO who come see various other performances I do, so there’s a nice feeling of interchange there.
PAN M 360:What about the relationship between Bell Orchestre and OSM and its conductor for the event?
Richard Reed Parry: Hopefully we will all be functioning as one giant synergistic organism. House Music wants to feel like a combination of spur-of-the-moment decisions and interweaving spontaneous ideas that emerge and vanish, along with well-organized, well-defined compositional threads, chaotic moments, groovy sections, and sonic interplay reflecting many different musical angles simultaneously. At a certain point, the whole orchestra and band will all be singing together, which is one of my favorite parts of the whole piece…
PAN M 360: Do you see some important differences between the way it was played in Hamburg and the way it will be in Montréal?
Richard Reed Parry: Mostly that we know the whole thing by heart now! Some of us were still using scores when we performed at the Elbphilharmonie and thankfully we have totally internalized the music now, which was quite a challenge for 45 minutes of music, much of which is quite asymmetrical, to put it mildly. So it will be exciting to just be playing music, without having to read scores. The orchestra isn’t quiiiiite as familiar with the music as we are, so obviously, they will still be using scores (laughs).
Montreal hip-hop wordsmith, Shailah L. Morris, who goes by the moniker SLM (pronounced “Slim”), has been in the rap game ever since her arrival in September 2019. She released a remix of Drake’s “Money In the Grave,” kickstarting a series of remix projects, titled SLM MX. A year later she dropped her full-length debut, SLM: The Complete Flex Season.
This year she added to her spitfire sound with the REAL TALK RADIO EP where she collaborated with two other Montreal artists, La Reina and YAMA//SATO. SLM’s sound features trap, R&B, and classic hip-hop beats as she delivers lines with catchy, poetic precision. She had some time to chat with PAN M 360 about her roots, approach to songwriting, and teases what we can expect from a whole new SLM sound, before her performance during M For Montreal presented virtually to the international delegates… because of her huge potential.
PAN M 360: What made you want to start making your own hip-hop?
Shailah L. Morris, a.k.a. SLM: I’ve always had a passion for hip-hop and I wasn’t hearing what I wanted to hear out of the music scene here. So I contributed my sound to it.
PAN M 360: What weren’t you hearing?
Shailah L. Morris: Something that was inspiring, something that was outside of the box, something that was unconventional and not typical. Something that was not recycled from somebody in the past.
PAN M 360: So how do you make songs that are not deemed conventional in hip-hop?
Shailah L. Morris: I definitely think that I have elements of my songs that can be deemed conventional to people, but the way I try to separate myself, is that every word that I say, I really mean and I live and do every day. So I think that’s one aspect that makes me different in itself, but also the elements of musicality that I choose to include in my beats. In my harmonies with things, adding layers, adding texture. And just making it a point and intention, every time I am writing a song or recording a new song, that I want it to sound and feel different and good to people and myself.
PAN M 360: Your song “RENT FREE” on the latest EP REAL TALK RADIO is so unbelievably catchy. I just love the concept of you living in somebody’s head “rent free.” Could you talk about the creation process of that one?
Shailah L. Morris: So “Rent Free” was one of those songs when I had felt like there was a lot of drama in my life at the time. I felt like my name, my spirit, my personality was, living in people’s brains and in their minds very heavily to the point where they were feeling the need to send some negative vibes my way. So I was like, ‘Damn, that sucks for you.’ I’m gonna write a song about it.
PAN M 360: So it was it in response to stuff you had done beforehand as an artist or in your personal life?
Shailah L. Morris: Yeah. I don’t remember exactly what I was that was going on in my head back then, but it was a little bit of both for sure.
PAN M 360: So did that affect your confidence as an artist? I mean, your music seems very confident.
Shailah L. Morris: Yeah, it is more to empower myself and people that listen to it 100 percent. But sometimes empowered people have their moments of being down and I feel like that’s important for people to notice. No one is 100 percent good all the time and anybody who claims to be is probably hiding the fact that they’re going through something. I don’t do that. That’s why I’m venturing into a more vulnerable side of music right now. Writing about things that make me feel upset or insecure, or just low at times. Especially living in Montreal, and it being a cold place. I’m not meant for the cold. And it being a place where I feel like a lot of people do not have open minds. And that’s just based on my personal experience. I do feel like there’s a lot of people who do have open minds, don’t get me wrong, but there are definitely people who don’t. And I’ve dealt with both, you know what I mean? So it’s more about how those negative feelings and emotions that have been projected onto me have made me feel.
PAN M 360: You have had a good number of views on your music videos in the past? Do you have any plans to do one for a song on the EP or anything you’re working on now?
Shailah L. Morris: Yeah I do have plans to do stuff for the EP. I wanted to do one for “JUST LIKE THAT” and “HEAVY” and “RENT FREE” as well. But definitely in the works, we’re doing one for “HEAVY” right now. And “JUST LIKE THAT” sometime soon. I have a vision for that one that can’t really be executed during the season. And for all the new stuff that I’m working on, I’m really taking my time with everything new that I’ve been working on, making sure that I have all of the video content before I actually release anything, just so that the rollout is complete.
PAN M 360: I’ve always felt it tough to listen to a modern hip-hop album front to back because nowadays with streaming, it feels like a singles game. But REAL TALK RADIO is very cohesive front to back. How did you achieve this?
Shailah L. Morris: First of all, all of the songs on that EP, and album [SLM: The Complete Flex Season] were made with the intention of making either an EP or an album. That’s the first thing I try to do is think, okay, what is the intention of this project, and does it fit with what I’m doing at the time? Also working with the same producer or primarily the same producer and finding beats that fit the vibe. For REAL TALK RADIO, I knew I wanted it to be something that made people feel like they could blast it out of their windows in their car while they’re driving on the highway, or play it out at a party. But you could also play it late at night by yourself in headphones to give you that energy boost. I also think all of the songs on the EP are in succession.
PAN M 360: Meaning they were written one after the other?
Shailah L. Morris: So the first two were produced by Keita [Saint]. He just kind of sent me some beats one day when I was still working on the album. So I went back and revisited them after the album was long out and I was ready to go back into the studio and make some new stuff. And those two beats really resonated with me out of like the six pack that he sent me. For “BIG BAG,” La Reina hit me up at like 12 and was like, ‘What are you doing right now?’, and we made that. We didn’t really know each other, but I like to just cook up with somebody new and just collab to see what happens. So yeah, that session became the start of “BIG BAG.”
PAN M 360: And how do you go about translating these songs to a live setting?
Shailah L. Morris: So for the M For Montreal thing they suggested I have some live instrumentation and a light bulb went off in my head. And the guys that I’m working with on my newer stuff right now actually are instrumentalists and they were super down to just help me out and work with me and do that show. We had a couple of rehearsals before and they had just listened to the beats and created a sort of composition based on that. I had nothing to do with composition at all. They kind of just were able to play it by ear and make it sound great. I love the live instruments sound and my newer stuff is definitely going to incorporate that. They’re pretty much still in like the demo, early mix stages. And I’m in no rush to release anything anytime soon because I feel like I’ve released quite a bit of things in the past two years already. I really want to refine this sound because it’s unlike anything anyone’s heard from me yet. It’s going to be a new SLM.
Whether through literature, music, or images, Mauvay is a storyteller of universal stories about love. Usually accompanied by his musicians, he will be alone on stage for his Montreal premiere as part of M for Montreal. The creator proposes a cinematic experience, mixing music, light, and image. In addition to the songs that made him popular, he will perform live exclusives and a selection of pieces from his next album to be released next year.
PAN M 360: You were born in Ghana and you grew up between the UK and Canada; How did those places shape you as a person, an artist and how did it shape your music?
Mauvey: That’s a really good question, I mean firstly it has really founded my music taste because I was exposed to afrobeat, 90’s R&B, soul music… just being able to experience different kinds of music is really valuable. Also just trying to figure out my place was the most difficult part, because other than Ghana, everywhere I’ve been I’m so different. I went to England being the only black person when I went to Canada just feeling different because you’re English, on top of that you are black. The journey of trying to fit in is why now my music stands out, at a certain point I was tired of trying to fit in and I just went to be me.
PAN M 360: Before writing music, you were writing novels and short stories, how did your creative process evolve from writing literature to music?
Mauvay: For me, they are all stories, whether it’s a novel, a feature film, or a song. The difference is a story that takes three minutes, a novel is longer, I approach the story the same. When you need to get to the top and descend to the end, how far is the distance? I started writing poems and then short stories and then essays, novels… so it was an easy transition to songwriting because I have got the accompaniment of melody which makes telling a story easier. When you have a melody that it’s compelling it makes writing the words easier.
PAN M 360: Music clips are also another way to tell stories, are you involved in some way in the creation of your music videos?
Mauvay: I actually directed the short films that will be released on Friday, I wrote the story, co-directed the film with a company called Amazing Factory based in Vancouver. It’s very much the same thing, being able to tell a visual story is really fun and the most exciting thing to me right now.
PAN M 360: On YouTube I saw you launched “9 days of flower”, an initiative to connect to members of your audiences, can you tell me more about it?
Mauvay: I just wanted to say thank you and celebrate the people who celebrated me. People who helped me, the first single that was released was “9” so it’s nine days of flower. I went to people’s houses, said thank you and give them flowers. My purpose in doing this is to distribute love. One of the easiest ways is to distribute flowers, you get a smile, you get happiness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFYJ-K6cm1E
PAN M 360: Can you tell me more about the Florist Film Series you created, did the “9 days of flowers” inspire you in any way?
Mauvey: Actually I wrote the Florist Film Series a couple of years ago. The character I created years ago and was the inspiration to go deliver flowers. Inspiration came for me that if in another life if we got paid the same for every job and I could just pick what I wanted to do, I would probably be a delivery man, it’s a really easy way to make people happy. That was my initial thought and I wrote the story of the Florist and I turned it into a film series.
PAN M 360: The character you created, the Florist, seems inspired by silent movies, comedy especially, I feel a bit of a Buster Keaton vibe… a mix of sadness, funny, and uplifting.
Mauvey: I love and I’m very inspired by silent films. This is something that maybe has nothing really to do with the Florist but there is a silent film called The Snowman and it plays every Christmas, it’s like a cartoon but the idea of trying to convey emotions without words, really inspires me, it’s actually more emotional. Of course, you listen to the music but if you are really looking at the images, the stories are quite heartbreaking, trying to explain different avenues of love and it’s quite emotional. I have got a lot of inspiration just in my life in general but there’s a few references to the Neverland world in the films. Other than that truly, all the characters are me in different ways and that’s why I play them, they reflect my real life.
PAN M 360: When we look at your EP covers, we can easily see the color mauve grew on you, going from details to full-on, does it reflectgrowing confidence in your music or in your personality as an artist?
Mauvey: The color mauve, obviously it’s my name Mauvey. I love all shades of purple and when I found this shade of mauve, it was the hardest for me to define. It’s a bit purple, a bit blue, a bit silver, a bit pink, a bit grey and when you would look at my music, it’s a bit pop, cinematic, hip-hop… that’s kind of why I connected to that color. I made a commitment, whenever I perform, it’s all mauve, I want people to see that color in a store, in nature and they think of me.
PAN M 360: What can you tell us about the music scene in Vancouver?
Mauvey: There is an incredible amount of talent here. It’s a phenomenal place for creation with the mountains, the water, the forest. The scene is very competitive but at the same time, I can say that I found some of my peers and we are working to support each other.
PAN M 360: What about your musicians, are they from here?
Mauvay: If I’m in Europe I will tour with the same band and when I’m here I will play with the same band. When I come to Montreal or even Toronto, I’m actually be playing by myself. With help from my producer we created a cinematic show, it’s just me performing. It’s a bit scarier to be on stage by yourself but I’m really excited to explore that as well. It’s a different type of energy when you are by yourself. I have included unreleased songs, sneak peeks of my album that will be out next year, songs that only play live and may never be recorded. It’s an occasion to showcase the different genres I explore.
Mauvey will play M pour Montréal on Friday, November 19th, from 8 to 11 p.m., with Jaywood and Naya Ali at La SAT.
Like a new planet revealed in the far-flung reaches of the solar system, Tokyo trio KUUNATIC are a fairly recent and eminently worthy addition to the constellation of Japanese psych-rock, and the exciting pan-Asian wave of alternative music immersed in the continent’s folklore, faiths and ritualism. Founded five years ago, the tribal-psych trio of keyboardist Fumie Kikuchi, drummer Yuko Araki and bassist Shoko Yoshida (all three also handle vocals) has given shape to a strange yet engaging auditory realm sewn together from elements of ancient traditions from around the world, the more exploratory music of recent decades, and their own uninhibited imaginations. Their latest release is the album Gate of Klüna, produced by Tim DeWit of Gang Gang Dance, and stepping through that gate leads to an entire world, one that’s equally familiar and mysterious. PAN M 360 connected with these emissaries from the planet Kuurandia for further insights and revelations, which they provided collectively.
PAN M 360: Gate of Klüna tells a specific story over the course of the record, an arc of the history of your imagined planet Kuurandia. Can you briefly summarize that story cycle?
KUUNATIC: Our first EP’s title KUURANDIA is the name of a fantasy planet we live on—like a prologue of a story, the last song of the EP, “Battle of Goddesses”, was about Armageddon of deities, and as a result, a new planet, Kuurandia,was born. So we extended the concept for our new album Gate of Klüna, which is inspired by ancient myths, and the story goes like this… Sacred bells ring at the dawn of a new era. Our new empress rises with magical refrains. As the planet prospers, Kuurandians hold a ball under the full moon and celebrate the richness of the harvest. The peaceful time seems to last forever… until a gigantic volcano emerges in the middle of the moonrise mountains. KUUNATIC chant enigmatic mantras like praying, to prevent its eruption. However, unidentified invaders appear from its roaming lava, and the war of predation begins. KUUNATIC fight and release their magical spells, and finally they win the battle. Then three pythonesses sing a mystic triumph song, leading their people to a deep, dreamy forest.
PAN M 360: You are not alone among artists in presenting to your audience your vision of a utopia, an imaginary land or even world (such as Kuurandia). Such an imagined place is not necessarily a paradise, but here is clearly a reward to exploring these ideas, for both artist and audience. For the members of KUUNATIC, what is the value in doing this?
KUUNATIC: For us, music is a surreal experience. You have your own reality, but you can escape to a different world while you create or listen to music. You know it’s a fantasy, but we would like to think that our music is something that coexists with your reality, a parallel universe you can experience. It’s very dreamy and thrilling at the same time. When the reactions from listeners come back to us, we can recall the surreal experience again as well.
PAN M 360: There are certainly uniquely Japanese elements in KUUNATIC’s music. I hear minyo, traditional festival music, in “Dewbow” and “Full Moon Spree”, for instance. But I also hear elements borrowed from other folkloric and spiritual traditions as well, from around the world. Can you offer some insights about this?
KUUNATIC: The image of Kuurandia is the ancient but also the future. There are no geographic borders on this planet. Probably, we are trying to picture a utopia by musically fusing cultures scattered all around the world. This always makes us realize that completely unrelated cultures can have very similar customs, and that the world is actually connected. Playing music with a primitive sense is also our main theme to embody mystical feelings that all human beings can have in common.
PAN M 360: Similarly, you use multiple languages in your lyrics, names and titles. Sometimes the languages are even mixed together. Japanese, English, Finnish, I think there is even some indigenous Hawaiian in the lyrics to “Lava Naksh”. What do you feel is the purpose of language in the art you make?
KUUNATIC: Each song we compose has a story and we like to adopt languages according to the narrative. Using and mixing different languages simply makes sense to us for colouring and shaping the tale. Some lyrics that you might think are Japanese are actually in our own language called Kuurandish, which is based on Japanese phonology. It is also a very fascinating experiment for us to find out how people will perceive our ideas, listening to our music and the languages.
PAN M 360: There are other current Asian musical artists mixing psych-rock with traditional and folkloric elements. Examples are Mong Tong from Taiwan, or Haepaary and TENGGER from South Korea. Do you feel a particular affinity or kinship with these bands? It sometimes seems that such music is more appreciated by foreign audiences than at home.
KUUNATIC: Our main concept is “fantasy”, so it might be slightly different from their styles, but we are big fans of tribal and traditional music, so we really like their music too. Music from different cultures often sounds very exotic and more exciting to people with other cultural backgrounds, that’s how we feel. But this fact also makes us cherish our own roots more.
Photo by Shawn Chao
Ghost Woman, a garage psych outfit from Alberta, is the alias of multi-instrumentalist Evan Uschenko. Evan has made a living on being a musician for hire, playing in Michael Rault’s band, and having the opportunity to tour with King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, but in 2016 he decided to start writing and recording his own music. The result is Ghost Woman, a sound that sounds like the vintage ‘60s psych of bands like The Pretty Things mixed in with the more modern White Fence. He’s now on the UK label, Full Time Hobby, and is starting to plan his full-length debut.
Ahead of his M For Montreal performance, Evan spoke with PAN M 360 about his origins, influences, and future plans for Ghost Woman.
PAN M 360: Why did Ghost Woman start?
Evan Uschenko: Well I’ve always been, kind of largely, a hired musician for other groups throughout my life and just never really made anything of my own. And then, just kind of randomly, I was at a spot I think, emotionally or what have you, where a relationship ended and a bunch of shit started happening. And I was just like,’ maybe I should start my own stuff.’ So I just wrote a bunch of songs and then just randomly played a few shows. And lots of people liked it. And I liked it.
PAN M 360: Is there a story behind the name?
Evan Uschenko: It’s a light story but we were on tour in Portland. Oregon, I think we went to that Mississippi Records. It’s like a record store and they do like old compilations of old songs and stuff and they make their own records. I was just kind of like looking through and there was a blues compilation called Ghost Woman Blues. And I believe it’s a tune by … I can’t remember his name because I’m a little bit hungover.
PAN M 360: George Carter I think?
Evan Uschenko: Yeah I think so. So they made this compilation and I just kind of looked at it and thought ‘that’s cool,’ it reads well, and I just kind of wrote it down in my phone and thought ‘maybe we can use that one day.’ And then I just ended up using it. And so that’s kind of roughly the story. Then throughout the years, I’ve noticed that in any kind of like relationship I find myself in, everyone just ends up kind of leaving without saying a whole lot. So maybe that’s the common theme in my life—women who ghost, but I don’t know. You can make anything up you want to but basically it just sounded neat.
PAN M 360: I read somewhere that you want to live in a van at some point in your life. Is that still in the works?
Evan Uschenko: That’s like a two year goal. I got this van that I want to make into a livable situation. But that’s kind of on the back burner, something I would eventually do. I just got to get a little shop set up so I can work on it and stuff. If you check back in a year, something might be done. We’ll see.
PAN M 360: You have a few singles out and the EP, but are there plans to release a full-length at some point?
Evan Uschenko: So there’s a compiled proper album. I think the goal is to release it springtime next year. Okay, so we’re just like, like, we released that one song recently. And, like maybe a few songs released up until spring, and then they’re gonna release the record in its entirety.
PAN M 360: And the EP, Lost Echo’s, was more fuzzy garage rock, but this new single “Do You” is more laid back psych, like Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Evan Uschenko: So when the EP was written I was listening to a lot of stuff with a band and we were on the road with King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. So that was kind of where my mind was at. I was like ‘These guys lay it down and their live shows were insane.’ So I was like, okay, maybe we should try something like that. I’m really into a band called White Fence, and all that kind of stuff. And then that kind of threw me into a whole bunch of older, like, garage rock compilations from the ‘60s and stuff. Throughout the years, I got more into Brian Jonestown Massacre and liked The Black Angels and decided that vibe would be cool in a live situation.
PAN M 360: Cool. So what is the live experience of Ghost Woman like?
Evan Uschenko: It’s a good time. I always try to keep in mind, when making or like recording a song is how is this going to translate live? Because I love a good live show. They’re louder, they’re harder and, and I actually kind of prefer how they sound with the band. It’s a little different. We try to emulate the recordings as closely as we’re able to, but a lot of times we just extend them and kind of screw around a bit. We got three guitars, bass and drums. So it’s been really rock ‘n’ roll.
PAN M 360: You must get some killer melodies with three guitars? Evan Uschenko: (laughs) Yeah man, it’s like Lynyrd Skynyrd.
When he’s not busy working as a producer, mixer, and engineer for various artists across Western Canada, Mario Lepage is working in the studio on his own indie-meets-psychedelic-funk project, PONTEIX. In the small, rural Saskatchewan town of St. Denis, Lepage went for a one-man-show approach to his latest EP Amélia, meaning he wrote and played every instrument, a first for his solo work.
Lepage is a francophone artist who sometimes incorporates English in his music ,and has always strived for a seamless, grooving bilingual sound. Language and the identity surrounding it has always been very important to him and for this EP, he co-wrote the lyrics with Anique Granger, a well-known francophone artist and audio-documentarian, who is also from Saskatchewan, and now makes her home in Montreal.
Lepage had some time to chat with PAN M 360 about the Amélia EP before his performance at Coup De Coeur Francophone, and talked about some of the lyrical themes on the EP and why he’s not a fan of birthdays.
PAN M 360: Hi, Mario. We actually spoke a few years ago at BreakOut West. Back then you had one EP out called J’orage, and now you have one full-length, Bastion, and this new EP, Amélia. So tell me, what inspired the Amélia EP?
Mario Lepage: Yeah, so every sort of release has had its challenges. I guess you could call them self-imposed challenges. So for this one, I tried to do everything myself, from engineering to performing every single instrument, to the entire production. With exception of the single “Les années” that’s out now. I had my friend Blaise Borboën-Léonard do an amazing string arrangement on it that really tied the song together. Having produced many francophone artists from Saskatchewan and Western Canada, I was kind of used to playing a lot of the instruments on records, and that’s kind of just always how I’ve done things. However, it’s really hard, or I find it really hard to have the exterior producer when you’re doing it for yourself, when it’s your own songs.
PAN M 360: So you’ve decided to kind of collaborate with producers going forward?
Mario Lepage: Up until now yeah. Collaborate with and surround myself with producers to do the project. So with this release, I think I really developed that bird’s-eye view of the whole work and trying to make it as a whole on all on my own. I co-wrote lyrics with Anique Granger, who is an amazing singer-songwriter from Saskatchewan who lives in Montreal. So yeah, I learned I learned a lot from people that have helped me over the years and I tried to to do something a little bit different this time.
PAN M 360: And is Amélia a pandemic album? That is to say, you worked on it during the pandemic?
Mario Lepage: No, I started working on it I’d say two years ago by just recording some some rough ideas, some rough demos. Maybe recording a guitar and a drum beat or something like that, and kind of leaving it for two months or something like that. It was all very sporadic. The pandemic all kind of felt like a blur and I did work on it then, so I guess you could call it a pandemic album, but not thematically.
PAN M 360: And so what are some of the lyrical themes on Amélia ?
Mario Lepage: Yeah, there’s a lot of love thematics, which I haven’t really delved deep on. Like “Les années” kind of talks about my undying love for the woman that I married over the summer and when I wrote that song, the moment I decided to marry her, or ask her to marry me, I didn’t know if she wanted to marry me just yet. The song “Amélia” is me reflecting on relationships, like friendships and family. It was about me missing people during the pandemic and remembering how genuine we can be with each other in the moment, but you never really know if you will see that person again. It’s a song that creates a story about someone who I never had the chance to tell them how much I appreciated them. And then by that time, it was too late.
PAN M 360: I think that’s a very relatable theme people felt during the isolating times of the pandemic. Like taking people for granted.
Mario Lepage: Absolutely. I always make a joke about how I’m not a super fan of birthdays because it’s putting that into practice of celebrating that person for only one day. Why one particular day when it can be everyday? Just be extra nice all the time.
PAN M 360: You’ve always had a bilingual aspect to your music. Most of the songs are sung in French but the odd one is in English, but “Les années” uses both. Did it just come out that way or was it on purpose?
Mario Lepage: I find that whenever I am writing a song or working on music, I tend to create phonetic words that that work well together. For this one, it just kind of clicked and worked with the rhyming scheme in French and in English and the phonetic meshing of them both kind of felt seamless and very natural. And coming from Saskatchewan, French is my first language, and our French has a lot of English to it. There we blend a lot of both languages. So it feels now like it’s kind of like a homage to the way that we kind of speak amongst each other. I think that people who are francophone from Saskatchewan tend to sort of blend both both languages together, and I find that that’s really beautiful.
PAN M 360: And that’s where your artist name PONTEIX comes from?
Mario Lepage: Yeah, so i’m in St. Denis and Ponteix is a town more near the American border. And it’s got a similar story to St. Denis. I would say, all of the francophone communities, small rural communities in Saskatchewan, kind of have all of the same story and are living in a sort of a similar situation. And it was, phonetically, the best-sounding French town I could think of. I chose the name because I wanted something that represented, maintaining your identity even though you are surrounded by something that’s different. Something that goes against who you are, what you believe in, your culture.
Laura Anglade has the profile of a confident French singer, in North America to make her mark. This destiny of a career at least Canadian was traced, it must be said. Born in Brousse-le-Château, in the south of France, Laura grew up in Connecticut with her family who emigrated from Europe. She crossed the northern border of the United States a while ago.
An old soul in her mid-twenties, this seasoned performer and improviser has a strong preference for the modern jazz of generations before her own. She would be inspired by Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, Etta Jones, Anita O’Day, Chet Baker, Blossom Dearie.
The biographical profile of this quality artist is full of indirect and direct comparisons…” For fans of: Laufey, Stacey Kent, Veronica Swift, Carla Bruni, Françoise Hardy…While Laura’s style is evocative of Julie London, Helen Merrill and Cyrille Aimée – her voice is uniquely her own.”
She certainly draws from the repertoire of classic French chanson, a distinct color to her jazz classicism when it comes to (mostly) expressing herself in English.All indications are that she could provoke things, at least in the Canadian market she’s investing in – especially since she’s living in Toronto after residing in Montreal for a few years.
z gypsy music of her parents. There, she has collaborated with established artists such as David Lahm, Ranee Lee, Andre White, Jean-Michel Pilc and Alec Walkington.
Released in 2019, the album I’ve Just Got About Everything on Justin Time has put many chips in my ears,
And why not continue the discovery of Laura Anglade by addressing it directly?
No sooner said than done. Here is the interview with PAN M 360.
PAN M 360: Do you agree with the many comparisons or evocations in your biographical profiles?
Laura Anglade: Yes and no, I think each of these musicians is unique. I am very flattered!
PAN M 360: Are we to understand that you are somewhere between “classic” jazz singing and quality songs, French or English speaking?
Laura Anglade: Yes. I didn’t want to “jazzify” all these songs on the new album, for example those of Barbara or Piaf, my goal was to underline the lyrics, to create an arrangement around the lyrics. It’s not necessary to always fit into the framework of “jazz”, as long as the lyrics tell a sincere story and are very close to my heart.
PAN M 360: What do you want to jazzify in the French repertoire?
Laura Anglade: I think there are plenty of songs that can be interpreted in different ways. For example, “Vous Qui Passez Sans Me Voir”, the original version by Charles Trenet is beautiful, but quite slow. You get the impression that the person is sad, full of regrets. However, if you make it more “swing”, the lyrics immediately change the tone. The message becomes a little more ironic, almost mocking. You can play with the arrangement of a song quite a bit.
PAN M 360: “French classics made famous by Maurice Chevalier, Boris Vian, Edith Piaf, and Jacques Brel to name a few.”
These French (or Belgian in the case of Brel) artists are from your grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ generation! Of course, many of their songs have been “jazzified” over the decades as we know.
So what do you think?
Do you see this choice of artists as a starting point for your exploration of the francophone repertoire? Or does this classicism satisfy you and is your search elsewhere?
Laura Anglade: I wanted to do an album in French to represent my dual Franco-American identity, as if they were meeting. I was born in France but grew up in the United States. I’ve always felt in between. I also wanted to show that, as in my own life, the two worlds, the world of the Great American Songbook and the world of French song, have always been intertwined. In particular, there are many songs, including “La valse des lilas”, “La chanson de Maxence” or “Que reste-il de nos amours”, which have been adapted and translated into English and which are part of the Great American Songbook repertoire. In fact, I first learned the English adaptation of La Chanson de Maxence, “You Must Believe In Spring”. I later found out that the original version came from a Michel Legrand musical. It was important for me to give this gift to my family as well, especially my French grandparents, to bring back memories, so that they could recognize themselves through the lyrics. They liked the first album, but they didn’t understand the lyrics and these songs weren’t from their culture, which created a wall.
PAN M 360: At first sight, your style is part of the female vocal jazz of the 40s, 50s, early 60s. How do you explain this passion for this period of modern jazz history?
Laura Anglade: For me, this period is timeless. I see the music of that era as life lessons. It’s often said that older people are wiser, it’s the same with music. Whether you’ve lived through these stories or not, you still learn and can relate to them, no matter how old you are. I choose songs to sing that are similar to me or that make me feel good, that remind me of a memory or someone close to me. I am a very nostalgic person.
PAN M 360: Do you consider yourself a “classic” jazz singer?
Laura Anglade: I think so, yes. It’s by singing this repertoire that I feel the most myself, that I find myself the most.
PAN M 360: What are you trying to achieve as a performer and improviser?
Laura Anglade: I try to bring back emotions, memories. I’m looking to tell stories that we can all relate to, from generation to generation. I’d like to revive some of the lesser-known songs as well, personalize them, bring them back to the surface, the songs that got lost between “La bohême” and “La vie en rose”. It’s interesting by the way. What makes some songs become the nuggets and others not? There are so many songs that are just as beautiful, that have just as important stories and deserve to be told. In my everyday life, I try to live more in the moment and interpret it my way, which is the very definition of improvisation.
PAN M 360: What are the challenges for the development of vocal jazz in 2021?
Laura Anglade: In this day and age, it’s fantastic to be able to reach audiences all over the world, just with a shared video. I’m grateful for that because I’ve been able to interact with a lot of people that I would never have met otherwise. I recognize that we’re moving into a virtual world, and I’m adapting to that. But I also find that there can be a loss of authenticity, in the sense that we are so preoccupied with our online visibility that we forget the essential: the sharing of what we like, simply, too tied to the number of “likes” and “views”. You have to learn to step back because I’ve fallen into this trap several times. I sing because it is part of me, I have things to express and give through music.
PAN M 360: We owe you the quintet album “I’ve Got Just About Everything”. Another one is planned for 2022.
Laura Anglade: At the moment, we’ve just finished the second album, “Venez donc chez moi”, which will be released in May 2022.
PAN M 360: Could you explain your aesthetic progression through these projects, as well as your choice of collaborators?
Laura Anglade: Sam (Kirmayer) and I have been working together for several years now. We’ve gotten to know each other through music. Sometimes we even improvise in unison on stage. We recorded this album in the middle of a pandemic, stuck at home, without being able to rehearse together. There has always been a beautiful musical complicity between us, and this quasi absence of rehearsal makes the album even more spontaneous and natural, and emphasizes our mutual trust.
PAN M 360: Why are you now living in Toronto? How long did you live in Montreal?
Laura Anglade: I wanted to discover a different side of Canada and a new jazz scene, and I’ve always loved this city. I left the US when I was 18 to study translation in Montreal, and I stayed for two years after graduation. So I spent a total of six years in Montreal. I have never actually lived in France, except for vacation periods in a small village in the south of France, where my family is.
PAN M 360: Who will accompany you to the Salle Bourgie ? What are you planning to present there, roughly speaking?
Laura Anglade: Sam Kirmayer will accompany me for this concert. We will be performing music from our new album. I’m really looking forward to finally being able to share this project, especially in this beautiful venue!
With two albums, 1979’s Y and 1980’s For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder, The Pop Group unknowingly laid the foundations of post-punk. Influenced by the anarchic and aggressive aspects of punk, but with their ears tuned much more towards funk, reggae and dub, the Bristol-based band influenced an impressive number of musicians in its short career, from The Birthday Party to Sonic Youth to Bauhaus, St. Vincent and of course the entire trip-hop cohort of the British port city.
Just after Y’s 40th anniversary, The Pop Group, which reformed in 2010, called on visionary producer Dennis “Blackbeard” Bovell to resume his role at the helm and rebuild the dub version of the album he recorded with the band on a farm in the English countryside in 1979. Y in Dub is a collection of nine heavyweight dub versions reflecting the prodigious intensity of the source material, and the enterprising originality of the dub and reggae music that inspired The Pop Group.
With Y In Dub, The Pop Group and Bovell explore Y, amplifying the shadows and echoes, intensely accentuating the resonance of each element. The original material is submerged and sometimes extended, broken, shattered and sculpted into turbulent, contrasting forms that deviate from the original tracks in unpredictable ways. On this new oddity, Bovell, known for his numerous albums, the Babylon soundtrack and his work with Linton Kwesi Johnson, Fela Kuti, Madness, The Slits and many others, adds another inventive step to his illustrious career.
To tell us about this restless and confusing experimentation, we caught up with the band’s singer and lyricist Mark Stewart. A first-rate iconoclast, a gentle nutcase who’s very likeable but not always easy to follow, the man has an impressive track record, whether it’s with his band Mark Stewart & The Maffia or with the New Age Steppers, Tackhead and Adrian Sherwood’s On U Sound System crew.
PAN M 360: Why did you choose to do a dub version of Y and not For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder, for exemple?
Mark Stewart: I’ve always been very interested in dub techniques, you know, I kind of dub up my life. Dub for me, it’s the music of chance—you don’t know, when you suddenly turn off everything that’s underneath, what the bass drum is suddenly going to do on its own. It’s just such that it’s just such an interesting experiment, and time and time again. When I’m sitting with Adrian or sitting with Dennis Bovell, I just say, cut everything, and you’re on this cliff’s edge, then suddenly a violin floats in which you didn’t even realize was there. It’s really cathartic. And it’s unplanned. And it’s kind of like, there’s this thing in England called psychogeography, where you walk around the city, but you deliberately go left instead of right. And that whole procedure for me is kind of cleansing, time and time again. Because what happened was that suddenly we got the master tapes back and me and Gareth, we’re in our office, right, with this box and we open this box, and we’ve sold these tapes with our handwriting on it. We haven’t seen the tapes since 1978. Right? And I said to Gareth, I said we should dub it. Because we were using dub experiments and we were influenced by concrete music when we were making Y itself. But we said, get Dennis to dub it, but just use exactly what’s on the master tapes. Nothing fresh, no news or plugins or effects, as King Tubby or Dennis would have done it back in the day. Right? Obviously, it’s not a retro thing. For me, it was quite a heretical thing because that has become a… I don’t know, it’s become a sort of totem. And I thought it’s quite good to flip it.
PAN M 360: Tell me a bit about about Dennis Bovell. Why did you choose to work with with him in the first place for the original Y?
Mark Stewart: Right. So we were still in school and we were just playing these clubs. And then suddenly, these music editors of Melody Maker and NME started taking about us really seriously and doing these interviews with us. And I was, you know, I was out there anyway, I would have been out there even if I wasn’t in the band. I was reading Apollinaire and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I thought I was some kind of intellectual. But suddenly, they start saying, ‘oh, this is so weird, it sounds like Captain Beefheart’. I didn’t really know who Captain Beefheart was. And reading all their theories… The Pop Group is a perfect thing for journalists to reuse their college essay as a review. So I was going to a lot of soundsystems and the late-night clubs in Bristol, which are basically reggae clubs or soundsystems or dub clubs, and I just loved scooped-out versions of the classic reggae and deejay [or toaster, not to be confused with DJ] tracks that were happening at the time: U Roy, I Roy, Aggrovators. I was immersed in reggae. Where my mom grew up is where all the Jamaicans came to live, you know, when they came on the Windrush. But in Bristol, we don’t really see colour. we’re just Bristolians, right? Anyway, so the label, we had a really cool guy, Andrew Lauder, who ran UA, who signed us up, right? And he was really open-minded. He was going, ‘well, who do you want to work with?’ And we said, we don’t really want to work with anybody. And he was going, ‘well, you know, people use producers’. And so we all said John Cale straightaway because of his work with Nico, and we loved Marble Index. And he’s worked with the Stooges. And it’s quite free jazzy, the arrangements of the sax and stuff… And so they flew John over and we had a meeting with him in our school during lunch break, and John kept on falling asleep. Perhaps he was jet-lagged or so, but we couldn’t understand what was going on. But then, because we were so much into rhythms and reggae and funk and the rhythm sections, we kept on saying we wanted to work with King Tubby, but then we found out King Tubby had been shot. And all the way from the age of 13 onwards, I was knocking off school a lot and I’d hang out, when it was raining, in this record shop called Revolver. Every Friday, when what we called “the van from Zion” arrived with that week’s prereleases from Jamaica, the little seven-inches, I’d just be in the other room saying, ‘play the version, play the version!’ Bought them all with my dinner money. I didn’t eat. And it turned out Adrian Sherwood was a delivery man driving the van down from London. But anyway, so there was one record that I was really into, like, just before we were having these meetings, and it was called “Feel Like Making Love”, by Elizabeth Archer and The Equators, but there was a version called “Feel Like Making Dub”, and it was slowed down and there were lightning crashes. It was full-on. You know, the dub I like is messianic. It’s just full-on and it sends a shiver. It’s like lightning! What do they say? The bassline is in your spine, or something? Anyway, that’s what gets me going, the full-on Biblical dub. And they said Dennis Bovell, and I knew Dennis was in Matumbi, because they were sort of playing around England at the time. And so I just said, see if this guy can do it. And we reached out to him and we had a meeting with him. And as soon as we met him, he’s just like, a big furry bear like somebody from Sesame Street. You know, I got this saying, don’t grow up–it’s a trap. I’m still in my kung-fu pajamas I’ve been wearing since I was 12, you know? And Dennis was just so playful and naive and excitable. So he gave us the excuse to be idiots. I’m not gonna call it art, but it’s all about play. When you play, you juxtapose, then stuff happens. He just encouraged us. And he was very playful. And suddenly we have like, 50 takes of this track called “Blood Money”. And there’s a track called “:338”, which was just like “Beyond Good and Evil” backwards, which has turned out really good on this dub album. It sounds like a sort of mad Neu track or something. Again, it’s just suddenly something which started off as a sort of one-two-three-four punk song or whatever, when we were kids doing “I Wanna Be Your Dog” or something, and it suddenly becomes something else. You know, there wasn’t a lot of thought into it. If you flip something or turn it backwards or open it up, suddenly, you’re in another universe.
PAN M 360: Did you want to steer away from the original album or stay close to it ?
Mark Stewart: I don’t go into these things with preconceptions. We believed some of the politics of punk were non-hierarchical. We don’t tell somebody what to do, we just harness whatever anybody’s doing and flip it again and try and crash that energy with some other energy. I don’t know how to explain it. We didn’t know what was going to happen. And that’s what I like, you go in somewhere, you come out the next day at 7 o’clock in the morning, and something else has happened. You’ve got to keep your third eye open, you know, throughout life.
PAN M 360: And during these dub sessions, was it only Dennis working on it, or were you also with the band?
Mark Stewart: Basically, Gareth was there a lot. I was involved kind of remotely and throwing curveballs on the phone into it and just making stupid jokes, you know? And we were going backwards and forwards, and strip it down and turn it off and summit whatever, and I got overruled, because I weighed upon loads of farmyard noises and stuff like all those Joe Gibbs ones when there’s like cockerels. I would have started toasting “Old MacDonald Had A Farm”!
What’s really interesting to me is turning stuff off and opening it up, especially being the lyricist. I was interested in cut-ups. going back to Brion Gysin. And my stuff is just like collections of bits I sort of crash together just because I’m excited about these lines or whatever. Some of the stuff I wrote when I was 13-14. I call it psychic archaeology, it’s about going back into those tapes. Philosophically, my younger self helped me last year and the year before with these kind of messages. These lines came through to me, which helped some quite heavy situations I was in or trying to deal with in my mind at the time, it’s quite weird.
PAN M 360: Did this dub exercise help you rediscover the album?
MarkStewart: I rediscovered the energy, it was like a seance. I hate to word use the word ritual, but we sort of conjured something up, we kind of bottled an energy, we managed to get this energy onto ferric oxide, And Dennis with his way in dub was like rubbing Sinbad’s lamp, and the thing jumped out again, but it’s a different sort of golem. They asked me what his name is but I can’t even pronounce it. It’s really long. I think it’s friendly. What do you reckon?
PAN M 360: Do you think that the dub version sheds a new light on the album?
Mark Stewart: Yes. Well, for me, the genie that we bottled and the ideas that I had for it were frozen in the vault of the label. They shed a new light on the situation I was in last year. So the light beams from the past into the future. You know, my grandmother was a clairvoyant and my father was obsessed with the power of paranormal things. But I think that maybe these messages are coming from the future. Why are they constantly thinking it’s coming from the past, or dead people? Who knows where these things are coming from?
PAN M 360: Do you remember how Y was originally conceived? And recorded?
Mark Stewart: Totally, totally because we went to this really weird farm called Rich Farm. We worked in a barn for a month with Dennis. And it was a crazy, it was one of the first time I’d really kind of been away from home, apart from when I was in the Boy Scouts, for such a long period of time, and we just had such a laugh. Staying up all night, coming across in the snow in our pajamas, you know, we were out of anybody’s control. Feral, absolutely feral. I mean, The Slits went there about two years later because we started helping The Slits, and we were touring and working with them, really, and they got Dennis to produce them as well later on. They did Cut there and you can see the effect it had on them on the cover of the Slits album, it got them naked, covered in what looks like manure.
PAN M 360: I read that you were influenced by much more than music at the start of the band.
Mark Stewart: Totally. The funny thing is movies were very influential on us. And then Patti Smith took us on tour with her when we were making this record, the original Y. And her piano player was called Richard “Death in Venice” Sohl. People don’t realize films were as influential as music, you know? And the thing is, when punk rock was kicking off, you could only wear mad clothes to these kind of art-centre bars. There were two art centres, a place called Dr. Finney and another one called the Actual Art Center. And it was the only place that people didn’t want to pick a fight with you. You know, you could go and wear your rubber fireman’s trousers you bought in the army surplus shop. Clothes are the most important, obviously, speaking to a unified gentleman of leisure like yourself.
PAN M 360: Ha ha! I used to be into that stuff. And at one point I said to myself, what’s this uniform I’m wearing?
Mark Stewart: Well, that was the point of the Pop Group. Because our best friends were in a local punk band called The Cortinas, and we were going up to this punk club where everybody played called The Roxy, up in London. And we just said to each other, let’s form a band. But punk was already not punk. We thought punk was about experimenting and challenging things, but it became… It was weird. It was kind of like pub rock. I mean, there was attitude, but it became traditional very, very quick.
PAN M 360: It somehow morphed into the no wave thing. And that was more interesting and more, I don’t know… adventurous?
Mark Stewart: My timeline is not the same. I was always listening to funk, originally, and then reggae, going out clubbing and stuff in Bristol, right. I never said we were a genre or anything, but we went straight from school to New York. You know, when we were playing Y, and we were there, us and the Gang of Four. We were the flavour of New York. And I was in New York weeks and weeks on end. And I was in these clubs next to Keith Haring, you know, it’s just mad. And the way that no wave kicked off in New York, we weren’t aware, really. I mean, we knew about Patti Smith, but to suddenly find out about James Chance and stuff like that was weird. We were playing these clubs, you know, we were so young. Seventeen, man.
PAN M 360: It’s crazy how influential the band became. I delved into Y, an album that I haven’t listened in a while, and I was struck by how much The Birthday Party was influenced by the band.
Mark Stewart: Yeah, Nick [Cave] says that. I don’t like talking about that, you know… It’s a circle… who was influencing your influence? We were totally influenced by like Ornette Coleman, and seeing free jazz guys like Derek Bailey and stuff. For us, it’s anybody that goes into the wilderness or makes an outsider decision to try and take a risk and challenge themselves first. We had this whole thing about deconditioning ourselves and questioning what we were doing, and the process of making Y with Dennis and Rich Farm Studios, of which Y in Dub is the process continuing. For me, it’s very difficult to sum stuff up and I don’t understand why one record means something and another record means something else. You know, another record I made, As The Veneer of Democracy Starts To Fade, may have kickstarted industrial music, I don’t know. Who knows? I get ideas from like mad R&B, the experiments they’re doing with tuning down kick drums and stuff, or like crunk, all that chop-and-screw stuff, you know?
PAN M 360: The band regrouped in 2010. You did two new albums, Citizen Zombie in 2015 and Honeymoon On Mars the year after. Is there any new stuff coming up?
Mark Stewart: Yeah, we’re still going. And we’ve just done Y In Dub live. Terry Hall from the Specials asked us to do something. He was in charge of Coventry City of Culture. Really, really interesting experiment. Because in the rehearsals, we were cutting the track, we were playing every third beat. It was really, really weird. It was like going through some sort of Marines training or something, stopping yourself from playing bits of your own soul. It was quite a heavy thing. You know, like when drummers tie one arm on to their leg to try become more ambidextrous. Can you imagine the songs you’ve played often and that you know intrinsically, and you have to just go ching instead of ching, ching, ching. It was really interesting. So Dennis had space to dub live.
PAN M 360: So are you thinking of doing that again?
Mark Stewart: Yeah! It was a very, very interesting experiment for us. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Again, it’s a it’s a kind of deconditioning you know, it’s a cleansing thing. I found it very, very interesting. I can’t compare it to anything. But it was it was really, really quite weird.
PAN M 360: Are the songs “It’s Beyond Good and Evil” and “:338” recorded live on the Y in Dub album?
Mark Stewart: Basically, what happened was, when we got the master tapes, we were trying to do some things. We had this idea of this Y salon with performance art and poet mates and whatever, and just doing these weird old pop-up things in these record shops, no sort of a big deal, just to launch Y. And I said, we’ve got the master tapes, why don’t we get our engineer to bring them and get Dennis to dub them on a mixing desk live from the tapes? So Dennis did that. And I was standing next to him and I was shouting at him and nagging him on. I was really dancing next to the bass bins in the Rough Trade shop with all these heavyweight fans, you know they’re virtually mates now, and it came out really, really good and it was a brilliant experience, it was like hearing my shit on a really good sound system, it was like a dream come true.
PAN M 360: Do you have the intention of making a dub version of the second album?
Mark Stewart: Now that you say it! I’m thinking about doing a Christmas single. Me and Gareth have been working on “Silent Night”, which goes really well with the lockdowns and the curfew over here. I was working with Lee Perry on some of my solo stuff just before he died. And I did a radio show with him and the guy from Wire and Cosey Fanni Tutti. I asked Cosey but I haven’t heard back from her yet, but I’ve just reached out to David Thomas from Pere Ubu. I like these versus things, like The Pop Group versus Pere Ubu’s Christmas song or something. We’re constantly doing stuff. I’m in a room surrounded by stacks of stuff. I’m working with all sorts of people on all sorts of different projects.
PAN M 360: What’s your definition of dub?
Mark Stewart: (long silence) I try and dub up my life. Dub is the music of chance, and to dub something is to flip it. Postmodernists call it deconstruction or something, but again it’s wide open. So dub is like being on the shores of endless worlds. It’s an index of possibilities, like a Rubik’s Cube, you know? And I love it. I was just listening to some Don Carlos stuff earlier on. My problem is when I go to soundsystems, I hear a tune out but I can never find the bloody tune because I don’t know all the names of everything, right? I used to chat to the old reggae singers, they used to just queue up and five different people would sing five different songs on the same rhythm section in the same day.
PAN M 360: And if push comes to shove, what’s your favourite dub album, then?
Mark Stewart: It’s not really albums, it’s tracks. There’s a track called “Stone” by Prince Alla, with all these lightning crashes and stuff, (singing) “I man saw a stone just come to mash down Rome”, or the dub version of “Jahovia” by the Twinkle Brothers… it’s endless, I could be talking about it for hours and hours! And every time I go on YouTube, people are posting these crazy dubbed versions of tunes I heard. There’s this classic club in Bristol called the Bamboo Club where I saw I Roy, The Revolutionaries, Style Scott… You know, it’s the love of my life. My friend from Primal Scream says wives come and go but your football team stays forever. It’s the same with dub. I think I’m still going to be playing dub tunes when I’m in a bloody old-punks retirement home.
(photo : Chiara Meattelli)
In the last few years, the Arabic electronic/hip-hop band 47Soul, led by Tareq Abu Kwaik, have performed a few times in Montreal. Without a doubt, some of the best Arabic grooves in the world today! Based in London, this explosive Palestinian unit express their people’s deep considerations and concerns, needless to say. To achieve this musically, 47Soul fuses chaabi, hip-hop, electronic dub and dubstep, a very personal style the band calls Shamstep.
For the Festival du monde arabe de Montréal, Tareq Abu Kwaik arrives as El Far3i and unleashes his solo project, a superb avant-folk mix of Middle Eastern music, hip-hop and electro. We’re talking about a considerable workload during the last decade, with six albums already out—Sout Min Khashab (2012), Far3 El Madakhel (2012), Kaman Dafsheh (2014), El Rajol El Khashabi (2017), and Lazim Tisa (2021).
A week before his concert at the FMA, PAN M 360 had the opportunity to talk to Tareq Abu Kwaik aka El Far3i. Here are our questions, here are his answers.
PAN M 360: Can you identify the main formal differences between your solo project, and 47Soul and El Morabba3 before that?
Tareq Abu Kwaik: My solo project El Far3i is very focused on the freedom to express using different types of production as mediums for musical ideas, words and thoughts. For that reason, it focuses on the idea of a rapper that plays guitar and a singer that sings their hook on their own rap verse. Just like El Far3i allows freedom to do organic acoustic music and rap, songs over beats, collaborations with producers and forming musical groups is also a part of the meaning of El Far3i. The branch cannot grow if it hooks off from the tree… to say that your growth as an individual is not separated from the growth and wellbeing of the group. I co-founded El Morabba3 in 2009 as an Arabic independent band with some rock influences, and later co-founded my current band 47Soul as an electronic and shaabi (Shamstep ) group… In the end I am trying to say that each one of us fits or belongs even in several spaces and groups, but that should not stop the freedom to grow the self… there should not be compromises. We are both social brings and individual souls.
PAN M 360: As an artist who is fond of discoveries and sound exploration, you fuse Arab folk music and hip-hop. Since the ’80s we have observed many bands from South Asia and the U.K. who fuse hip-hop, electro and their own culture—Asian Dub Foundation, Monsoon, Talvin Singh, much more… From Arabic and North African culture, we had Hamid Baroudi, Transglobal Underground, Natacha Atlas, Zebda, Acid Arab, Gnawa Diffusion, Emel Mathlouthi, Khaled, Rachid Taha, and so many others. All those experiences happened mainly through immigration to the U.K. and France. So… what about the Middle East and North Africa? What happened? Who were your models when you grew up? How did you imagine your own sound? Tareq Abu Kwaik: First, I must say after this great list of artists you’ve put down, that it was an honour for 47Soul to collaborate with Asian Dub Foundation on the track “Human 47” from their latest Access Denied (Deluxe). We’ve always looked up to them as legends! As far as the influence in our region, you can say in a way with exceptions my generation was the one that started fusing stuff more, but we are certainly influenced by Khaled, Rachid Taha, Mohammad Munir, Mohammad Muneeb, Ziad Rahbani, George Wassof and all the Shaabi sounds, Dabkat, Mijwez, Choubie… then everyone adds whatever they like from outside the region. For me it was Anthrax, Deftones, Cypress Hill, Lupe Fiasco, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson. And as far as my generation, regional and local inspirations from DAM, Ramallah Underground, Autostrad, Abyusif, etc.
PAN M 360: Your Bandcamp page says that you are from Amman, Jordan. Do you go back to Palestine on a regular basis? Do you spend a lot of time in Europe and North America? Where are you based now? Tareq Abu Kwaik: I lived in the USA for five years in the early 2000s, and I have been based in London for the past six years. I am the product of my city, Amman, where I spent most of my life and the almost yearly visits to Jenin, Palestine. I am a Palestinian Jordanian with a Yellow Card… it’s not the worst… but let’s not get into the Palestinian identification and travel document colours and types, as that would be very long.
PAN M 360: Is there a Palestinian musical specificity in your craft? Traditional melodies? Traditional instruments? Some forms of shaabi? Tareq Abu Kwaik: In my group 47Soul, there certainly is. In my solo act, you’ll find that in some beat samples, or in the vocal style over the guitar sound.
PAN M 360: What were your inspiring sounds in the beatmaking? Hip hop? Trap? Drill? Electronic groove in general? Tareq Abu Kwaik: While I do produce some beats under Arab Drumz [“a music production and artist development company with focus on Arab experiences throughout the world”], it’s not my main work, I usually collaborate with producers for my rap tracks and many times we co-produce. Generally, I love it all. I like experimenting with the Shamstep vibe, similar to production work I do in 47Soul but with some trap and drill influence… speaking of which, while the instruments are a bit different, what we call Shamstep is not very different from a typical drill beat.
PAN M360: Lyrically, what are the main topics of your solo songs? Sorry for my ignorance of the Arabic language. Tareq Abu Kwaik: From love to individual and group search for control over one’s own destiny, to Arab hopes and Palestinian struggle, to politics and religion… Arab problems, mental health, struggles for enlightenment, world unity, the power of love and the spirit of unity…
PAN M 360 How do you see the tension between poetry and sociopolitical engagement in your writing approach?
Tareq Abu Kwaik: I’ll leave that to the listener to answer…
PAN M 360: What is your solo concert setup? Alone? With a band? What’s you gear? Tareq Abu Kwaik: It’s a singer/songwriter with a guitar that transforms into a hip-hop show with an MC and loud beats… Then goes back to do a guitar outro …
PAN M 360: What are your next projects in the near future? Your next dreams? Tareq Abu Kwaik: I am close to releasing my third acoustic album, which concludes a trilogy and finishes a story related to the meaning of El Far3i. Then, continuing to release music that combines my hip-hop with my songwriting, maybe in a form closer to pop. Something I started calling El Far3i Flux. I am also celebrating the tenth anniversary of my first two acoustic and rap albums, Soat Min Khashab and Far3 El Madakhil, in February 2022…
PAN M 360: Many thanks for your answers and welcome back to MTL!
Tareq Abu Kwaik: Thank you. Last time I was in Montreal with 47Soul, it was a great vibe! I am now truly looking forward to this full rap-and-guitar El Far3i solo show.
To use (and recycle) a cliché, Ahmed Moneka had to reinvent himself long before the pandemic. A well-known Iraqi actor and broadcaster, he had to migrate to Canada in 2015 to ensure his safety after receiving serious threats from intolerant militias for being involved in a Iraqi film about homosexuality in the Arabic world. In Toronto, he became a singer and de facto witness of an Afro-Raqi culture that is little known in the West. Nearly two million Iraqi citizens have African roots, the descendants of a trans-Saharan slave trade that took place in the ninth century, and whose bloody revolt left hundreds of thousands dead in those distant days. A millennium later, this African culture still exists in Iraq, and Moneka is a proud representative of it. Moreover, this Iraqi artist turned Canadian (and citizen of the world) is willing to merge his culture with those of his colleagues of Moneka Arabic Jazz, performing this Saturday, November 6 at the Festival du monde arabe. Hence this interview with PAN M 360.
PAN M 360: “A show devised as a self-portrait, like a mirror on his own life, is the artistic path that Ahmed Moneka decided to take with Moneka Arabic Jazz.” This is how your concert is described by the FMA. Can you comment on this self-portrait?
Ahmed Moneka: It’s the soundtrack of my life, the Iraqi maqam I grew up with in Baghdad and the warmth of the quartertones is in my veins, and also the African groove in my soul that came from my ancestors, the Moneka family, and the freedom of expression of jazz. That inspired me in my city, Toronto, the meeting place.
PAN M 360 : Under what circumstances did you leave Irak? What do you think about the situation in Irak today for artists? Where did you live after your departure? When did you settle in Canada?
Ahmed Moneka: I came here to Canada, on September 10, 2015. I left Iraq for 10 days. I was invited to the Toronto International Film Festival to screen the movie that I co-wrote and that I starred in. The movie was about homosexual rights in Iraq, and there was a wave of events regarding the issue in 2011 in Baghdad. So when we screened the movie in 2015, I got threats from the militia there. I was forced to stay here in order to save my life. And you know, now, I’m happy. I think I am. The change was for the better. Baghdad is still beautiful. It’s an amazing city and there are lots of great artists creating and a really rich art scene there today, in a lot of different sectors like in TV, music, theatre, films and also visual artists. There is a crazy revolution happening there and it’s all about love, about having a good time. So, you know, where there is love there is happiness. There are people really working hard to fill the community with joy and to keep the city beautiful.
PAN M 360: What was your voice, music and artistic training in Iraq?
Ahmed Moneka: The first interaction with music for me was with my family. Singing and playing drums. I was five years old. When I was introduced to Afro-Sufi ceremonies in my family house. Also, I learned maqam music at school in the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad. And that was also part of my training as an actor.
PAN M 360: The instruments are diverse and not all Arabic. Can you describe it?
Ahmed Moneka: We have oud, which is Arabic, but also the guitar, the keyboard, the saxophone, kora, bass guitar, drums and violin are not. And so yeah, we are a very diverse group.
PAN M 360: Your music videos are groove-based, sort of a funk-jazz-reggae approach within which you inject Arabic melodies—can you explain more about it?
Ahmed Moneka: I live in Toronto, I’m Iraqi, Arabic. I am inspired by world music, especially here in Toronto, I got inspired by a lot of different backgrounds—Cuban, jazz, Balkan, African, Asian music, and I also like Canadian music. I thought I had something to share. To add to the dish. And it was my Iraqi-African heritage, and that is embodied in Moneka Arabic Jazz.
PAN M 360: From Baghdad to Toronto, your craft has probably changed even if you retain the roots of your Iraqi background. In what way has it changed since you came to Canada?
Ahmed Moneka: People know me in Baghdad as an actor who was trained in theatre school. I worked in theatre and in films, TV series, and I also hosted a TV show. But I never played in a band in Baghdad, nor in Iraq. I started playing here in Canada. Why? Because when I arrived here, I didn’t know how to speak English at that time, so music and singing in Arabic was something that made me feel like myself, and sharing my culture and my heritage also, starting with Mosquito Bar, the first band I played with in my life, as well as in Canada. And after that, I created Moneka Arabic Jazz, to represent me even more.
PAN M 360: In what way your North American musicians have been influenced by you and Iraqi culture in general? How did it change their playing and also improvisation?
Ahmed Moneka: The musicians I’m playing with are very professional, and I chose them because of that. There’s Demetri Petsalakis from Greece. We share maqam, and also the style of music that is alive in Greece. Demetri is the music director of Kuné – Canada’s Global Orchestra. He plays oud and is familiar with maqam and also plays guitar and is familiar with rock, jazz and different genres—he plays the keyboards as well. Same with Waleed, he’s originally from Sudan and he knows maqam but also, he teaches African music and samba at Humber College. As a bass player, he is also familiar with Western music. There is Fathi Najem, who is Algerian—he’s familiar with both Western and Eastern music and has an African side with Algerian Amazigh. Walid also has the African touch as well as experience in Eastern and Western music. Ernie Tollar plays the sax and the Ney—he’s extraordinary. He trained in India and played a lot of Arabic music because his wife is Egyptian, so he’s familiar with the Eastern world, and he’s an incredible jazz saxophone player. Last but not least, there is Max Sennitt, who played with a lot of different groups of people and has a lot of knowledge in world music. Through hard work, he learned a lot about Iraqi rhythm. All of them learned about particularities in Iraqi music. They are all amazing, we can say they are angels.
PAN M 360: You have been involved in other fields of Western music—Canadian Opera Company, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and the Royal Conservatory of Music. So you also have a conversation with classical music from West, don’t you?
Ahmed Moneka: I did work with all of these amazing people and institutions and organizations. And in all the places that I work, I worked my way, with my Arabic Iraqi way of being. For example, with the Canadian Opera Company, I worked with Wajdi Mouawad on the show, and I taught Arabic maqam like the call to prayer—I was staging, acting, and helping with the integration of the specific Arabic culture movement. I did poetry and a song with the Royal Conservatory, because I’m part of Kuné – Canada’s Global Orchestra, which presented a show at the Conservatory. So yes, I did collaborate with a lot of different projects and events with these institutions, and each time it was such a unique experience and an opportunity to share my Arabic heritage in all these places.
So yes, I did work in theater a lot. And yes, I am a musician. Sometimes I do collaborations with other artists, but as for Moneka Arabic Jazz: Waleed Abdulhamid plays bass, Demetri Petsalakis guitar and oud, Ernie Tollar plays Ney and saxophone, Fathi Najem the violin, Max Sennitt the drums. All the musicians are from Toronto. We met here in Canada and have been playing together since. And they are the core of this band.
PAN M 360: What can we expect in Montréal ?
Ahmed Moneka: Fun, energy, love and ecstasy to the fullest. Thanks so much to the Festival du Monde Arabe de Montréal for having us. And thank you again for this interview.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
