Issue 79 / July 2017

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PREVIEWS “How do you go home if you don’t feel 100% at home anywhere?” FESTIVAL ALSARAH & THE NUBATONES Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival @ Sefton Park Palm House – 16/07 Searching for a place to lay down your roots is a recurring theme in the work of the Sudaneseborn singer, songwriter and ethnomusicologist behind ALSARAH & THE NUBATONES. Born in Khartoum to human rights activist parents, Alsarah was forced to leave her birthplace at eight years of age, when she relocated to Yemen with her family. After civil war broke out in her new country, they moved to the United States where she has resided from the age of 12. Labelled the new princess of East African retro pop, Alsarah and her band The Nubatones have released two albums, Silt in 2014 and last year’s Manara. Both praised for their harmonies and rich pentatonic sounds and arrangements, the albums combine Nubian music from 1960s and 1970s with Eastern instrumentation. Alsarah speaks to Cath Bore about the sense of home in her music, from her home in New York. How did moving to America influence your music making, and did the place itself inspire you in musical terms? I wasn’t dealing well with regular school. Being an immigrant kid, being an African kid, there was a lot of harassment being a foreigner, having an accent and learning English. So, I ended up cutting classes a lot and ending up in the public library. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the public library I don’t even think I would speak English. I would spend all day reading, for free, because I couldn’t afford to buy books. And they had this huge enormous music listening section and I just spent my life there. I would browse through music from every part of the world. From there began a deep love affair with collecting. That library gave me such a massive amount of music, right in front of me. Around the corner from the library was a used record shop so I would go back and forth between them, looking up countries and songs and if I couldn’t buy something from the record shop I’d look for it in the library. I could dive into the idea of different cultures sounding differently and what that really looks like. Both of your albums with The Nubatones, Silt and Manara, carry themes of home, a sense of nostalgia for times and places in your past. And you’ve stated that returning to the East African sound is your way of going home, in a way. The entire birth of The Nubatones was inspired by the concept of the songs of return. I was coming back to those songs, I’d heard them growing up in Sudan and going to visit my family in Egypt and I hadn’t related to them on such an emotional level until living in the States as another form of immigrant. These songs were all about feeling like an immigrant in a strange land but you don’t know why you feel that way. You want to go to a home you can’t go to anymore and will never go to. I visit home a lot and each time I’m aware that I can’t live there anymore. And how do you go home if you don’t feel 100% at home anywhere? There’s a definite sense of loss in your albums, a sadness, but real optimism too, and a celebratory feel in many ways. I think people think of nostalgia only as a sad thing. Nostalgia is a complex set of emotions. My music doesn’t only live in nostalgia, it remembers things while looking forward. For example, Silt is about the mud we came from, and Manara is the road we’re trying to take. Being an immigrant is not a stand-still thing and I’m still wondering, is it a permanent or temporary condition? I know being a refugee is a temporary condition, although some places force people into situations where being a refugee can be almost become a permanent situation. It should be temporary so that all that’s left is living, living in a different way, putting down roots. That used to be a really common thing: they’d [immigrants] have songs about home, or whatever you can remember, some things to be sad over but be really excited about your future. And that’s the whole purpose of music! You’ve also said that The Nubatones grew out of a shared sense of being an immigrant. New York is a small scene for people who want to do music not in English. There’s this thing about the world music scene I’ve noticed globally, it’s beginning to shift now but any music that’s not in English has to spend much of its time proving to people that it’s not traditional, and it doesn’t want to be traditional. You’re just a singersongwriter like any other singer-songwriter, because no one who practices music comes out of a vacuum. You have to come out of a tradition of some kind. Rami [El-Aasser, percussionist] and I would have these supper clubs. I would go to his house and he would come to mine and we’d cook for each other these elaborate meals and we would play a ton of music and talk and dissect and talk and dissect. There’s so many sounds that were invented by immigrants that we think of today as tradition but that were not traditional, and, in fact, [were] invented by immigrants in a sense because they just wanted to visit home through the music. At the same time, it will always be different, because music is like a bowl of water: it will constantly shift to reflect what is around it. Even if you’re playing the same song on the same instrument – you put two different people behind it, and, even if they are reading the same notes, and it will sound different. That is the magical thing to me about living in New York. That being in the diaspora and being an immigrant is normal. Not just normal, but you can thrive in it. New York is a city of immigrants that have been there for multiple generations and are proud of that. And the richness of the city is because of that. How is your music received in the US, especially your live shows? It’s really interesting in America because I believe that the world music scene only lives on the coasts, the East Coast and the West Coast. It’s really difficult to do non-western music in the middle of the US. There was a reason Trump was elected: America is a conservative place! The coasts have always been incredibly diverse places because that’s the nature of ports. The term ‘world music’ is problematic, don’t you think? The way it lumps together all genres and musical styles, from contemporary pop to traditional, under one single, non-descript banner. It’s hugely problematic. It’s important to question it, to say it out loud so that we start to shift it. At its core, it’s inherently racist. It is based on exotification. It assumes there is normal music and that ‘the other’ is, world music. And it’s bizarrely inaccurate! Everything in the world is world music, unless Western musicians aren’t making world music and they are aliens from outer space and no one told us. What can we expect from your show in Liverpool at the Arabic Arts Festival? You can expect some storytelling on stage, you can expect to have a good old time, you can expect to dance, you can expect to learn a thing or two and not even notice that you’re learning. We’re making learning fun again! ! Words: Cath Bore / @cathbore alsarah.com Alsarah & The Nubatones play Sefton Park Palm House on 16th July as part of Liverpool Arab Arts Festival. Manara is out now on Wonderwheel Recordings. 30
Brian Wilson GIG Brian Wilson Exhibition Centre – 28/07 There are few artists who can legitimately be spoken of in the same breath as giants like Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry and those lads from South Liverpool who everyone seems to like, but BRIAN WILSON doubtless has a place in such company. The Beach Boys founder member and driving force created some of the most mesmerising harmonies, pop hooks and timeless songs ever produced. His legacy will live on long after you and I have departed this mortal coil. It is with great anticipation, then, that Liverpool welcomes the Godlike Genius back this month. Wilson stops off at the Exhibition Centre to perform the seminal album Pet Sounds in full for one of the final times – if any gig deserves the adjective ‘unmissable’, it’s this one. “Well, yes, it’s sad. I’m very sentimental about that album. It’s so, so special,” Wilson told Bido Lito! ahead of his visit, about the prospect of finally drawing the curtain on this celebratory album tour after two years of emotional shows. The 75 year-old picked out the luscious God Only Knows as the track which is “for sure” the one he enjoys playing the most. As well as this, gig-goers can expect bone fide classics such as Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Sloop John B and the spine-tingling Good Vibrations, played by “a killer band [which includes Beach Boys co-founder Al Jardine], beautiful harmonies and a great show”, according to the ever-modest Wilson. “It’s one of the top five best albums ever made,” Wilson tells us, and it’s hard to argue. Pet Sounds has topped Best Albums Of All Time from the likes of NME, The Times and Mojo. Wilson’s restless studio work gave birth to many original techniques and cemented his reputation as a production innovator as well as gifted songwriter. Much has been made of the legend’s health issues, both mental and physical, but the leader’s statement that “music expresses my feeling and it makes people happy” feels true to The Beach Boys’ aesthetic – sounds which capture eternal youth, hopefulness and fun summer shenanigans. The show is part of the city’s 50 Summers Of Love programme and is set to be one that everyone there will cherish forever. Indika FESTIVAL Indika Capstone Theatre – 21/07-28/07 Liverpool’s burgeoning relationship with Indian music is no mere fad, as anyone who has been attending Milapfest’s stunning events for the past decade will attest to. Over the past seven years, the Indian Arts Development Trust have focused their efforts on INDIKA, a festival on Indian arts unlike any other. By bringing together a programme of innovative artists who create entirely new concepts of collaboration in music and dance, Indika has established itself as one of the leading festivals of its kind in Europe. The nine-day long tumultuous celebration, located at the Capstone Theatre, brings a range of fantastic art to new audiences each summer. Start your day with one of the Morning Raga sessions, and relax late into the night as evening showcases bring together delightful concerts of classic Indian music and dance. You can even immerse yourself in the culture that underpins it by ducking in at the inspirational lecture series on diverse subjects. If you want to delve further, Indika are offering two residential summer schools of music and dance with international tutors. Kicking off on Friday 21st July with a very special performance by the stylish British-based ensemble TARANG, the festival will also feature big names such as Carnatic vocal superstar ABHISHEK RAGHURAM, and Santoor legend PANDIT TARUN BHATTACHARYA. On 26th July, awardwinning composer, musician and producer Shri Sriram leads TRIKONA in one of the evening concerts. A dynamic new musical experience who combine Indian classical music with jazz, Trikona are a virtuosic new blend of melody, rhythm and energy inspired by the concepts and patterns that are familiar to both Indian classical music and jazz, liberally sprinkled with improvisation by a band of internationally-renowned musicians. Alongside the exhilarating music line-up, Indika will also present a series of visually stunning performances from the biggest names in Indian classical dance. Showcasing the beautiful yet diverse styles of Bharatanatyam, Kathak and Odissi, established artists RAMA VAIDYANATHAN and PANDIT RAJENDRA GANGANI will take to the same stage as the spectacular UK-based dance group ODISSI COLLECTIVE. Whether you’re an Indian music or dance aficionado or just eager to experience new art forms, Indika is a multi-arts festival packed full of exciting events that promise to light up your summer with some Indian flair. PREVIEWS 31
Page 1 and 2: ISSUE 79 / JULY 2017 NEW MUSIC + CR
Page 3 and 4: d j s e t Official After Party sat
Page 5 and 6: Pioneers of British Electronic Musi
Page 7 and 8: CONTENTS New Music + Creative Cultu
Page 9 and 10: EDITORIAL Photo by John Johnson Gri
Page 11 and 12: DANSETTE Ben Griffiths from ALPHA M
Page 13 and 14: a short tour in autumn. No festival
Page 15 and 16: E V E N T H I G H L I G H T S JOIN
Page 17 and 18: Kate Nash Fuse ODG D TIMES XAMVOLO,
Page 19 and 20: SOUNDTRACKING DAVID LYNCH The archi
Page 22 and 23: URBAN As the football season is in
Page 24 and 25: TAKE YOUR MUSIC PRODUCTION SKILLS t
Page 26 and 27: We believe passionately in Liverpoo
Page 28 and 29: SPOTLIGHT HANNAH’S LITTLE SISTER
Page 32 and 33: PREVIEWS GIG The Gories The Magnet
Page 34 and 35: WORKS SAVE UP TO 51% ON YOUR OFFICE
Page 36 and 37: REVIEWS Illumaphonium (Glyn Akroyd
Page 38 and 39: Kraftwerk 3-D (Keith Ainsworth / ar
Page 40 and 41: Turandot Opera North @ Philharmonic
Page 42 and 43: BOOK NOW: 0161 832 1111 MANchestera
Page 44 and 45: WEEKEND WARS SALT THE SNAIL THE DEB
Page 46: SAY THE FINAL Ahead of what organis

Issue 79 / July 2017

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