'The Essence Of The Political Struggle Is Inherent In The Music': Sinkane Talks 'Life & Livin' It'
Tuesday, 07 February 2017
Written by Jacob Brookman
“When I heard it, I was completely blown away. It was a distinctive African music that wore these American influences in this really earnest, honest, excited and beautiful way. You could hear James Brown, Funkadelic and Sly Stone. Synthesisers, drum machines and weird cyclical grooves that were kind of like Afrobeat. They had this Caribbean feel - very tropical.”
Ahmed Gallab sits forward in his whitewashed Brooklyn apartment and adds enthusiastically: “You could dance to it, you could hang out, you could smoke weed, you could play it at a party. You could play it anywhere.”
We are talking about the funk pioneer William Onyeabor, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 70. Relatively unknown outside of his native Nigeria, Onyeabor's work was the subject of a stage celebration several years ago featuring luminaries such as Damon Albarn, Kele Okereke and David Byrne. Gallab, who performs and releases music with his band as Sinkane, was at its heart.
He worked as Musical Director on the project, which was titled ‘Atomic Bomb: Who is William Onyeabor?’. It debuted at London’s Barbican in the spring of 2014 and has since been performed around the world, taking Onyeabor's work into the live arena for the first time.
Gallab continues: “He had this amazing message that no-one was really saying...it wasn’t militant, it was just saying: ‘You know what, shit sucks! You think that you own everything but you don’t and we’ve gotta come together. We’re a family.’”
Family and togetherness are themes used by both composers. Gallab moved to the USA in early childhood following the 1989 military coup in Sudan, which made his parents political exiles. They settled first in Utah, while Gallab later spent time in Ohio during college. His was an occasionally complex upbringing when it came to understanding his own ethnicity and he cites Onyeabor’s music as being critical in finding a path.
“I had all this shit that I had to deal with - an identity crisis,” he says. “I didn’t know who I was. I was just starting Sinkane and he just said this amazing thing. I became obsessed with his music and I’d scour the internet trying to find out more about him.”
Listening to the two bandleaders’ work side by side, there is a clear musical lineage. Sinkane’s new album, ‘Life & Livin’ It’ is a terse, joyous and grooving curiosity, in many ways a natural evolution of Onyeabor's sound. It channels reggae, krautrock, indie and Afrobeat effortlessly, with Gallab’s unfettered falsetto providing a friendly guide through the bouncing beats.
Like Onyeabor’s music, the rhythm often feels like the foundation of a song. It’s a compositional approach Gallab suggests comes from his first love: playing the drums.
“It’s a huge part of my process,” he says. “When I hear [a song] in its beginning, I’ll hum the melody on my phone and record it, then I’ll go to my studio and the first thing that I do is program and play the drums. I need to have that as the bedrock of the music before I start doing anything else.
“If I get the groove down then I’ll know if I’m working with something special - I’ll add the bass and a very solid rhythm section and then I’ll move on to everything else. Guitars and keyboard are an accoutrement to the music. If you listen to Sinkane music, then the guitar accents the rhythm and the bass, and keyboard is like candy above everything else.”
This approach appears to be working. ‘Life & Livin’ It’ is Sinkane’s strongest album to date. It is also a record that shows increased social focus when compared with 2012’s breakthrough release, ‘Mars’, which was a more ephemeral, occasionally abstruse record whose politics were described by Pitchfork as “as abstract as the cover photo”. I raise this observation with Gallab in relation to the European migrant crisis, something which he, as the son of asylum seekers, may relate to.
“I think the essence of the political struggle [of migrant families] is inherent in the music that I write,” he says. “For me it’s about understanding identity and my place in the world, and that’s really what I think the issue is. I like to respond by telling my own story and hoping that it’ll draw people like me to me, and in turn will bring a lot of people who are similar together so we can create a community, and understand that we’re not alone.”
This approach to community dialogue will be displayed on February 24 at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, where Gallab will preface a Sinkane set with a youth workshop on art and identity.
“We’ll have an open discussion about identity and religion and children of the second generation diaspora like myself, and give people who are like that a place to come and speak,” he says. “But also give people who aren’t like that a place to come and really understand from people who have been dealing with this kind of thing.”
Dialogue is going to be very important going forwards. In an increasingly toxic American political environment, Gallab - a muslim - is only too aware of the challenges faced not only by people of his faith, but of the wider non-white, non-male population. Still, he doubles down on citing each Sinkane show as a political refuge - a place for people of every persuasion to come and get loose.
“I want to create a safe place for people who are like me,” he says. “They can come to a Sinkane show and feel safe, and feel like they’re at an environment that doesn't punish them and doesn’t criticise them for who they are, or for believing in what they believe in. But also I want to amplify that energy and that image for everybody. Just because someone voted for Donald Trump doesn’t mean that they’re an evil person. It’s a complicated issue.
“There are people who yield to what he’s saying for reasons that we can’t really understand, but unless they say that they hate me because I’m muslim or because I’m black, then I don’t know. They might have some other issues that they’re dealing with. […] I think it’s important for me to create a positive image because not a lot of people in the arts are creating that image - there are a lot of people who are fighting militantly. It’s OK for them to do that but there’s an alternative.”
‘Life & Livin’ It’ is out February 10 through City Slang.
Sinkane Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu March 23 2017 - BIRMINGHAM Hare And Hounds
Fri March 24 2017 - LEEDS Headrow House
Mon March 27 2017 - MANCHESTER Soup Kitchen
Wed March 29 2017 - LONDON Dome
Click here to compare & buy Sinkane Tickets at Stereoboard.com.
We don't run any advertising! Our editorial content is solely funded by lovely people like yourself using Stereoboard's listings when buying tickets for live events. To keep supporting us, next time you're looking for concert, festival, sport or theatre tickets, please search for "Stereoboard". It costs you nothing, you may find a better price than the usual outlets, and save yourself from waiting in an endless queue on Friday mornings as we list ALL available sellers!
