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.
So is this what the Sweet Mother Tour is about?
Yes, the SMT is designed to use the power of popular culture - music, film, television, internet to challenge the perceptions of African peoples in the media, both on the continent and in the Diaspora. So typically you turn on CNN you see Africa, what is it? Death, destruction, warfare, HIV, incompetence, hopelessness. But when you go home to Ghana you see there's a lot more going on than that. Yes, there are serious issues but we have a beautiful, powerful, vibrant culture. So what's good? Why don't they ever represent that? People will talk about African development, they talk about social issues, economic issues, public health, they'll talk about good governance but what they will never discuss is the ideological component.
You can take all the development funding in the world and throw it into Kumasi or you can throw into Cairo or Nairobi or wherever and develop all these young people and give them opportunities to go to university at MIT and Harvard. And if they all go and settle in New York and London, what good was it? What was the point? What would make you lose the opportunity to be here, making money at Goldman-Sachs in Manhattan and go back to Lagos to start something fresh amidst all the chaos and trauma and difficulty? There has to be an idea, that I'm responsible to my home, and that is an opportunity for me back home. Potentially an opportunity that is better what's out here. It's that ideology, that understanding of what Africa is and what it means to us and what we mean to her, that's what the SMT addresses.
Some people would argue that, sure this is good and noble, but you and Soulfège and the SMT are in the US, how does that tie into what you're trying to achieve?
Absolutely. Because if you were to try to do what we've done starting out of Ghana, or starting out of Johannesburg, you're going to have a really hard time. That's just the basic fact. You know, our music has been heard in about 50 different countries at this point. It has been featured in the BBC world service radio, we have been top 5 in a couple of stations in the US, also in Ghana... There are some incredible artists in Ghana right now. How many people in Boston have heard of Reggie Rockstone? You see what I'm saying? And now we have this small group here that's doping but how many people outside of here have heard of 2Face Idiba? Our music is playing in Montenegro, playing in Yugoslavia. It's playing in Poland, as well as across Africa and elsewhere. We're not as established as Reggie or 2Face, right?
But because we're based out here, we've had the opportunity to benefit from the resources of America to put our sound and our image out there. Now, the question is not why is Soulfège based in the United States or you could argue that why are we based in the US. The question is will we continue to be based in the US. We've already got one of the Asafo members setting up an office in Bulawayo in Zimbabwe as we speak. We're partnering with a magazine in Johannesburg; I'm going to be there in January. This next week I'll be in the UK in Newcastle meeting with a record label with offices in London and Johannesburg. In 2007, we'll be opening an office in Accra, we've already started considering where we want to be situated, what sort of business model to work out at home. So our idea is not that no one should come and study or benefit from here but that you should take that stuff and go back home.
We recorded our album half in Boston, half in Accra. We released our record in Ghana before we released it in the United States. So when we say we're doing African music but with a Pan-African vision, we mean that in a very complete sense.
So you're involved in three things - Soulfège, the SMT and Asafo and you've talked about the first two. What is Asafo?
Asafo is the company that administers Soulfège and SMT. So eventually SMT will be a series of projects. I mean we're hosting a conference; we've done a few things. We started with the music, Soulfège came with the music. The reason we did that is because we're musicians. So someone will say, well are you a musician or an activist? I'm a musician and I come from Africa and I see that people do not understand nor respect my culture. And I see that my people, when I go home, don't have the same kind of opportunities that I've had, getting to come and school at Harvard and travel around the world and yada yada yada. So firstly as a musician, I do want to go and record my music at home, in my homeland with musicians from here that I work with and also from back there so that I'm putting money into my economy, and I'm also taking my culture outside. We started with the music because we're musicians but at the same time I can't afford to just play songs and then that's all when there's so much work to be done. I wanted to find a way, how do I take my talents, my God given gifts and use that towards the upliftment of my people.
That is where the birth of the SMT concept comes from. Using our tools as artists to shift the way we think of ourselves and thereby eventually how the world sees us as well. To shift not only the idea that thinking of Africans but also that by thinking also change your reality. How do we start to get our people to invest more in ourselves? Stop looking to the outside, to the West to save us. Development aid, cut the development aid: its illegitimate aid, the debt we're supposed to be giving back is illegitimate debt. Who took the money in the first place? Fine I'm not a politician, we don't have to fight that fight but what I do want is for us to understand what's happening. For us to understand before we go beg from Brussels, what is happening.
And us to also recognize that we have in the United States, the highest educated immigrant population in the country. As far as the foreign population, African immigrants have PhDs twice the rate of European immigrants, 40% more college degrees than immigrants from Asia, and people are still asking if we live in trees. We are the doctors, we are the lawyers, we are the bankers, the executives, the teachers, all around the country but we're invisible, we have no voice. No! I want to start giving those people a thinking, an inkling of what it means to invest back home.
So what I mean is, we had to take something with the music and build it into something bigger. That is where the SMT comes in. Asafo is a team of people, from the US, from the Caribbean, from Africa who are working on this idea of using music and beyond to do other things; but we partner with other companies, other groups: Righteously Indignant Productions in films, taking it global into internet technology. In the spring of this year, April 7th through 9th, we'll host a conference called "Youth and the New Pan-African Renaissance" at Harvard. That will bring together not only the people who work on SMT, but a whole bunch of people who think about these issues to convene and think, how do we rebuild our continent for the 21st century? So Asafo is the administrator, Soulfège is our music and SMT is "all of we." And ultimately they will all spring into different entities, and doing slightly different things as we develop more people. But we started with the music.
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Can you tell me some of the things you've done, something we can point to?
We started with the first album, Heavy Structured, recorded in Ghana and the US. Then last year, we took a team of musicians, activists and educators, about 20 people, to Ghana, to the Kokrobite institute and we recorded a video for the remix of Sweet Mother, Sweet Remix. We released that last fall. It hit the top 4 in Ghana after Usher, Beyoncé and R. Kelly. Then it started airing on MNET Africa then it went to Jamaica RE TV then it went to Channel O and it's basically gone nation wide. We've been reviewed in the Jamaica Green and a variety of other organizations as well. We subsequently worked with Bounty Killer, Grammy winning artiste from Jamaica, another remix that you probably haven't heard called Sweet 3mix of the Sweet Mother thing. But the first one is we remade the original - love of my mom. Then the remix is love of my mother Africa and my mom. The third one is straight Mama Africa but we went and got a Caribbean artiste to be on it because we want to show that we are one Africa people. All of this started getting people to pay attention, to think abuot what we're doing, listen to us.
What we've subsequently done is built a team that can work on dealing with various issues towards convening this conference. So the conference deals with education, technology, image and identity, economic empowerment and public health in arts and culture. We're going to be raising funds during that event for three charities - Solular Sandlah AME village which is a village for AIDS orphans in Swaziland; The Liberty Hall, which is the former offices of Marcus Garvey located in one of the most depressed communities in Kingston, they provide technology services, afro-centric education for children who are largely ignored by the rest of the world. And we're also going to provide to the NAACP disaster relief fund for victims of Hurricane Katrina and things like that in the United States.
We're subsequently going to be building up a number of other projects. We've also done a book called "Music, Youth and the new Pan-African renaissance." We've got contributors from the US, Zambia, Burundi, Ghana, Sudan, Cuba, UK - all across the Diaspora, talking about what is it to be an African person in the 21st century. Not the voice of the pundits, experts, PhDs but the voice of the youth. And we've got some of the most articulate young people in the world writing in this book that we're going to be publishing and releasing at the conference. We've also shot a documentary looking at the influence of hip-hop on youth in Ghana from a critical perspective that will also be released at the conference.
What's in the future for the group? Collaborations with Ghanaian artistes?
We'll definitely do a collaboration with Reggie (Rockstone). Reggie is mad cool. I would have done something with him this year, but the stuff in Jamaica took so long that we couldn't go to Ghana again - because I already went twice. So we said that next year we'd probably do something with Reggie. We'd like to continue building relationships with other artists in Africa, in South Africa in particular. We're going to be doing a youth empowerment festival in Johannesburg in October 2006 and in 2007, we're going to take the show on the road, featuring some of the well established and hottest up and coming talents from Africa and the Diaspora and actually take the SMT on Tour across Africa - west, east, south, across the Caribbean, Europe and the united states.
Find out more at Soulfège
