Seyram Avle
6 January 2006
interview
Boston — "Afro diasporic groovilicious funkidociousness" is how they describe their music, "A movement" is what they call their activism - and it's all for the love of Sweet Mama Africa. The band of Harvard University graduates who revamped and revived Prince Nico Mbarga's 1976 hit "Sweet Mother" are not a just another "world music" group. These are motivated young people who are set on a Pan-African renaissance and are unashamed about roping your interest through their funky music. AllAfrica spoke with the leader of the group, Ghanaian-born Derrick Ashong about the group's quest to change the way the world - and Africans - view Africa.
Tell us, what is Soulfège?
Soulfège is a group that represents the sounds, the diverse sounds of the African Diaspora. We take elements of hip-hop, highlife, funk, and reggae, we fuse them with gospel/R&B, doo-wop influenced vocals and we have a very very groovy funky band at the core with gorgeous, sort of pretty vocals on top and that's kind of what makes it distinct.
So where is this mélange of sounds coming from? What are the band members bringing into the sound?
The band is mad diverse. I mean, you saw tonight- the singers, one is from Washington DC who's African American, one is of Trinidadian descent, the other is also of American descent and I'm from Ghana. The head of the horns section is Mexican, the lead guitarist is Haitian, that's Caribbean… one other horn player is from Lebanon - I mean we're from all over the place. I write most of the songs and I grew up across the globe - I was born in Ghana, raised in Brooklyn and Saudi Arabia and Qatar, up until I was 16 years of age, that's when I moved back to the United States. I'd grown up in so many different places and with so many languages, so for me writing music, I just draw on influences that I grew up with but also on the idea that one person can be multi-faceted culturally. So that's why we sound alike.
Who's your target audience then?
Excellent question. A couple of things - first I'll tell you who typically comes to our shows and then I'll tell you. If you come to a Soulfège show, you see people in their mid to late twenties; you see black people, white people, and Latino people. You'll see some fifty-year-old people and if it's an all ages show, folks have brought their ten-year-old children. Our pull is really broad.
But typically we target African communities and Caribbean communities and also college students and young professionals. People will ask us: "Ok, well you play African music but it's not what we expected, you know it's not a typical African band." That's absolutely true and absolutely intentional and essential. You know, African music is beautiful but to a large degree we are basically relegated to our position on the continent and that's it.
Now if you go back to Africa, you hear a lot of kids making music that is fusing all kinds of different sounds: they take elements of hip-hop and ragga and this and that and they put highlife in it, and they put soukous in it - all kinds of traditional things. But then when you come to hear who an African artist is - the same people, who are dope - it's going to be Youssou N'Dour, Salif Keita, maybe Angelique Kidjo or Raia Touré, you know what I'm saying? And you see with someone like Angelique, she's really fusing different things. But for us, we go to the youth music - so our music is not hip-life but we're doing the same thing that the hip-life guys are doing - we're just taking in more Caribbean and American influences.
You were nominated for "Best World Music Act for 2005" in the Boston Music Awards....
We were nominated. So people typically consider what we do world music
But do you consider it "world"?
No. Because when people say world, they put anything in there. If your music is not from the US or not from Europe, it's world music, or Western Europe to be specific. So when they say world music, it could be Turkish dervish dancing, right? It could be a traditional Indian tubla playing or it could be mbalax, you know what I'm saying? Or it could be reggae. I mean what is world music?
And not that it's a bad thing to have your music take in influences of the world but the definition typically means that "we don't know what to say with this." It's not white people music, it's not African-American so it's world. We call our music "afro diasporic groovilicious funkidociousness". Why? Because that's how we see it. And the people who come to our shows may not typically be at a world music show. We play it in Boston particularly because it's got that much of a sense for this type of music. We play a lot of shows with rock musicians - we've had Head Bangers jamming at our shows - how many "world music acts", quote unquote, can swing that?
So how did this nomination as "Best World Act" go with you?
For us that doesn't matter. People can call it whatever they want. Right? You typically play a show and you have someone say, man that's like African influences, another's like man, there's some Trinidadian influences. Someone else will go like man, that's got like mad funk influences. People hear what they are accustomed to and what they want. Our goal is not necessarily to make you decide "oh I define it this way". Our goal is to give you something that is going to be meaningful and moving to you. That you will have fun and you will feel uplifted when you leave the show. When we do that, you call it what you like. But we don't call it "world." I mean sometimes for the purposes of marketing if we send to a world music magazine, we're like "oh hot world music". That's strategy - that's not what's in our hearts.
You mentioned hip-life in Ghana - there's so much going on there. What are your thoughts on that?
My thing with hip-life is that I think it's a great movement - it's good that it's happening. And the reason it's good that it's happening is because it's a line for a bridge whereby we are also putting our voices together with the voices of the Diaspora. The problem is the way in which we're doing it. Some of us are strictly copying what's happening from the West. It may be the good things or it may be the bad things. One of the reasons why my parents don't like some of the hip-life is because the artists are crass. Our culture is not disrespectful to women; it doesn't just talk about you like you're a piece of meat. You know what I'm saying? But in the American music today, that's what they do.
One of the things that artists and fans in the United States don't realize is that the hip-hop industry in particular is not run by black people. You have a couple of Blacks who are in the public eye - you can talk about Diddy, Jay-Z, Russell Simmons. None of those guys owns the record label; they are all subsidiaries of major labels that are owned by primarily whites. And it's not to say that white people cannot be happy producing good black music but it is to say that some of them do not have an interest necessarily in the positive or accurate representation of our culture. So they put out what sells and what sells? Sex and violence. Meanwhile then here comes some kid in Brooklyn, he swears this is the most authentic thing ever. It's the blackest, blackest, blackest - when the guy who owns the company lives in France. Then you have some kid in Accra who says "oh, it's the blackest blackest black - that's what we're gonna do." So they talk about a black woman like she's nothing. They talk about themselves like their lives are worth naught.
Look in the music industry, see what group of people it is legitimate to put on the radio - music about blasting them down, killing them in cold blood, other than Blacks. Right? This is one of the problems with hip-life - the artists are lacking perspective. So they're putting on music that is emulating the worst of what is killing the kids in the United States and what we need to do as African musicians is to take the best of the world. We have historically had influence from everywhere.
People talk about highlife - highlife is African music. Is it? Highlife is taking elements of kpanlogo and adowa and all of these things, and it's also fused with calypso and jazz, blues and that's what gives birth to this fusion, this hybrid rumba and all of this other stuff to give you highlife. So we've historically done it but we weren't talking down to each other and ourselves. That's the issue with hip-life. Is it gonna be music that uplifts Africans or is it gonna be another music that degrades us? And when I say Africans I mean all of us who are descended from Africa whether they want to admit it or not, whether you're from Bukom or Brooklyn.
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