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Mannywellz

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Oulala, It's Mannywellz: The Nigerian-Born Artist Talks New Music, Jesus And DACA

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Mannywellz talks to GRAMMY.com about his forthcoming new music, collaborating with fellow Nigerian artists like Wale and VanJess, the meaning behind "Oulala," and how he's holding up during the pandemic
Crystal Larsen
GRAMMYs
Aug 4, 2020 - 12:43 pm

Peace, hope and love. That might sound a bit cliché these days, but there’s arguably nothing more we all need these days than just that. And that’s what DMV-based artist/producer/musician Mannywellz (née Emmanuel Ajomale) brings to the creative table with his blend of R&B, hip-hop and West African influences — it’s music from the soul, as he calls it.

Born in Nigeria, Mannywellz came to the United States with his mom and siblings in 2003 at only nine years old. Several years later, in 2012 something happened that changed the course of his life and his rising music career — he became a recipient of the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects people brought to the U.S. as children but currently hold an unlawful presence, and allows them to legally work. In September 2017, the current administration tried to put an end to DACA and called on Congress to come up with another solution by March 5, 2018. On that day, thousands of Dreamers from across the country took over Capitol Hill to protest and lobby members of Congress to pass legislation that would protect them, and Mannywellz joined in, performing his song "American Dream" to kick off the march. That same year, a compilation album that Mannywellz was a part of with other DACA artists — American Dreamers: Voices of Hope, Music of Freedom — was released and won a GRAMMY Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album.

While the future for many DACA recipients is still uncertain, being that we're in an election year, Mannywellz hopes to see change, like a path to citizenship and a plan that "keeps us safe and makes us feel welcome in this country," he says. Although being a DACA recipient has played a huge role in Mannywellz's career and life, it's not the only thing that defines him.

"Being a DACA recipient is a part of my story," he says. "But at the same time, I'm not just a DACA recipient. I'm Black. I'm human. I love Jesus. I love people. So I always try to create a balance where people can just hear me for who I am through my art."

Before his new single "Floating" drops on July 31, Mannywellz took part in an interview with GRAMMY.com to discuss his forthcoming new music, collaborating with fellow Nigerian artists like Wale and VanJess, the meaning behind "Oulala," and how he's holding up during the pandemic.

So, things are a bit different for artists right now—actually, for everyone. How are you hanging in there with everything going on?

I'm doing well for the most part. I think the last month was the hardest month in this quarantine just being home all the time and everything that's going on in the media and what happened with George Floyd. So I actually didn’t create the whole of last month. I came out for the protests, and I’m just researching and trying to learn, and I guess yeah I couldn’t create, to be honest. But, this month has been good and the months before June were pretty good as well. Mentally, spiritually, physically, all that stuff. I feel good.

Do you feel like everything that's happening currently is spurring some new ideas in terms of music?

Musically, yes and no. I haven't really recorded anything, but I was just kind of like jotting down a few things and my thoughts and things like that. It motivated me, and made me realize that I have a bigger purpose.

I'd love to start by turning the clock back a bit and just asking how you got into music? What inspired you to start making music?

Everyone in my family pretty much does music. My dad's also a musician so I grew up watching him perform and then eventually performing with him at different events here and there. And I have a cousin in Nigeria who raps. My siblings are great vocalists. They don't necessarily want to pursue a music career, but we’re all musically inclined. Music is something that I grew up with. I was pretty much born into it.

Do you have any favorite artists?

My favorite artist is Asa. I believe she's based in France, but I don’t remember what year. I was a little younger and I heard just one song and I just teared up. And at that point I realized that music was so powerful. If a song or a melody can move you to tears, there has to be some kind of power behind it.

For sure, sometimes it's the lyrics or sometimes it's just their voice that moves you to tears. What would you say it is about Asa that drew you in?

It was a little bit of everything. Her voice, her tone, her words, her word choice, her lyrics, they're just very potent. A lot of her songs were pretty much similar to what I do — they speak on everything, how she’s feeling. From love to social injustice to, you know, relationships with parents or relationships with God and things like that. I think I was just really able to connect with her point of view because I feel like I have a similar point of view.

Speaking of your point of view, one song I’d love to touch on is "American Dream." One line that stuck out to me is: "If it’s my own way, I'll tell her no way." How did you feel when your mom told you you're moving to the United States?

So, we were trying to come to the States for a while before that. My dad was here, so we tried and got denied. So, after a while I really just got tired of trying, and I didn’t even care much because I was young and I just wanted to play. So, when she told me, deep down I was like, "Oh, cool, I don’t really care. I don’t even care to go anymore." So, that’s why I chose those words, if it was my own way, if I was given a choice, I probably would have just stayed. But I’m grateful for my journey in life.

From your perspective, how would you describe the American Dream before you got here, and what it means to you now?

Before I got here, we were being told that America was kind of perfect. A land full of milk and honey, which it kind of is, but unfortunately everyone isn't given the same opportunities based on your class and based on your race. I guess we face those things everywhere in the world, but that wasn’t in the package that was being sold to foreigners outside the United States.

Several years later, in 2003, you find out you were accepted as a DACA recipient. How has that changed your life?

Being accepted as a DACA recipient was great. It created a lot of opportunities for me, career-wise. It's created a lot of opportunities for other individuals who are working to get an education, to feel a little safer. But, on the flip side, there’s no path to citizenship. I feel like we're being bought out because each year, to renew your DACA status, the prices keep going up, and I also just heard that they reduced the renewal time to 12 months. Which is crazy, so every year you have to pay $600-plus to just stay in the country, which is unfair. Even though the Supreme Court ruled against Trump's plans, I heard the DHS is still declining new DACA applicants, which is just really crazy. I’m grateful for being a DACA recipient, but it’s a struggle within itself because we’re trying to get people that are DACA recipients situated, while trying to create a path to citizenship.

We're in an election year. What changes would you hope to see for immigrants, specifically for immigrant children?

A path to citizenship. A plan that includes undocumented immigrants, a plan that keeps us safe and makes us feel welcome in this country because, for a lot of us, this place is home. I came here when I was 9, and I'm 26 now, and I haven’t been back to Nigeria — though I am connected to my culture and I’m really proud to be Nigerian — I live here and this is where I've been for the last 17 to 18 years. I just pray that the next administration includes us in their plans.

You touched on being in touch with your Nigerian roots, and I hear that a lot in your music. You go from R&B to hip-hop and there’s West African influences, too. Is that intentional or does it happen naturally?

I want to say it’s both — sometimes it just happens naturally. Naturally, my tone and my vocals, I guess they sound African or Nigerian when I sing, and even sometimes when I speak my accent comes out. At first it was really intentional because I wanted to create a sound that was inclusive of both worlds, being that I am exposed to Afro music, or Nigerian-Afro music. But I’m also exposed to hip-hop, from Jay-Z to the big dogs like Beyoncé and 50 Cent. I always wondered what it would be like to create a sound that blends different genres, so a lot of genre-blending. Right now, we’re really big on the R&B, soul Afro combo, but as time goes I want to expand it to like possibly some funk or maybe some rock, some country and other things.

Your music also just feels really good.

Yeah, that’s very intentional. I’m also naturally just a feel-good, optimistic, sometimes silly person. So, I always want to make sure that the listeners get that vibe. When I’m sad, I also want them to grasp that feeling. However I’m feeling at that moment, I want them to feel it.

The 2018 EP you came out with, SoulFro, what’s the meaning behind the name of the EP?

SoulFro, so, "from the soul." That kind of like just flows through other genres — R&B, soul, hip-hop, a little bit of jazz in there, a little bit of rock and trap hip-hop. Just like music from the soul, with Afro elements that touches any genre.

You’ve got an upcoming album, Mirage. When does that come out and will we hear the same influences?

That comes out in September, but I think this project is more so just focused on the R&B, soul sound with Afro elements.

And you just filmed a music video for the single, "Floating."

Yeah, so we plan on rolling that out in the next two weeks. The single drops on Friday, [July] 31st. And then two weeks later we should be coming out with the music video for it.

What can we expect to hear on "Floating"?

Oh man, I think you should expect something groovy and something vibey, soulful, something that just moves you and makes you do like a little two-step. You don't have to do too much dancing, you don’t have to know how to dance to move to this song. It features VanJess — a Nigerian-born, American-based duo. They’re also just like the homies and they’re amazing.

You've also collaborated on the song "Love and Loyalty" with Wale. How do these collaborations come about?

So, Wale hit me on Instagram and said he was a fan of my stuff and wanted to work, so we just started texting. Sending ideas back and forth and I was like, "Yo, I’m coming out to L.A. next week," and we linked up in the studio and just made a bunch of songs after that. We’d come back to the DMV and link up. So whenever we’re in the same city we try and link up.

How involved were you with creating "Love and Loyalty"?

The producer’s name was Sango, so I didn’t produce this song. But outside of that I was involved in top to bottom from writing the hook and laying it down and doing my part, and just collaborating with Wale on how to make sure the hook really stands out. So, we came up with like one or two ideas and went back and forth and edited it. It was a really collaborative effort, and the beat was just really dope so we didn’t even touch or edit much with the beat.

Before COVID, you went on tour throughout the U.S. with Jidenna. Was that your first experience on a U.S. tour?

Yeah, for sure. Prior to that I did a really small college tour, but it wasn’t anything crazy. But that was my first, official tour. Earlier this year, before COVID, we did my own headline tour, which was also dope.

How do you like performing live? Your shows sound so energetic and like you've got a great connection with the audience. Did that come naturally?

I want to say it came naturally because I just grew up watching my dad and studying the greats perform. I wasn’t this good like five years ago, but with time I just got more comfortable with being onstage and I really enjoy it now.

I’ve heard that at your live shows, you sometimes have the crowd say "Oulala"? And you also have a clothing brand called Oulala. What’s the meaning behind that phrase?

Oulala is "happy to be alive" — that’s the meaning we gave it. And that just came about, I think this was pre-tour, when I started recording SoulFro in 2016. I was just talking to my younger brothers and I was like, "I think we need a tag," and we came up with Oulala. But I didn’t understand how big and how important Oulala would be to me, and what I see it being to people. It just kind of grew to where some people might not even remember my name but they’re like, "Yeah, Oulala!" I’ll take that any day, because at the end of the day, what I do is bigger than Mannywellz. It’s to contribute something to this world.

You've said that your mission in life is bigger than music, but music is the starting point. What is your mission in life?

Part of my mission, or my purpose, is to really do God’s work. To spread hope and have people know about Jesus. In whatever way that I can, directly or indirectly — creatively through music, through fashion, whatever it is that I want to step into. And just do my everyday life. That’s why I say it’s bigger than me, because whenever I’m not singing, I’m still a servant of the most high. I have to live my life according to what He has planned for me, what He wants me to do.

What does your family think of your chosen career in music?

They love it. I think now they're appreciative, and I think me making that decision is also inspiring to them. Because ever since I was young, whenever I wanted to do something I would just find a way to do it, or get it done. I’m an inquisitive person. I like to ask questions. Even if I know something, I just want to be sure of it. So, they’re really supportive. They buy merch, they buy tickets to a show, they don’t ask for free handouts because they want to see this get to another level, so I’m just really appreciative. Whenever I have new music they’re the first to hear it and critique it.

You've also talked about challenging cultural norms through music. Can you talk about that?

This is a big topic, but I think toxic masculinity is really interesting to me. Men don't cry, men don't wear pink, men don’t do this, men don’t do that. Women don’t do this, women don’t do that, and it’s like, why? And I understand there are certain things that God just created that men or women are able to do more than the other, but there’s certain things that we both can do. Like the WNBA should not be getting paid less. They pretty much don’t even get paid. Things like that. I just always wonder why that exists. And I always want to break that, especially even being a Nigerian man. How to treat a woman, and how to respect your wife. I really want to follow what the Bible says because Jesus really broke all cultural norms, and all social constructs. If you really look into His life, that’s what he came to do. Whatever Jesus did is what I want to do.

I also want to touch on the album you were on, American Dreamers: Voices of Hope, Music of Freedom. What was it like finding out it was nominated for and won a GRAMMY?

That was amazing. I really did not expect anything from that project. Steven Weber reached out, told me who he was and what he was doing and they were working on a project that was going to be collaborative with DACA recipients, and I was automatically sold. So I presented it to my team and we got right to work laying down some vocals and some instrumentation. A year later, I hear that it’s about to be nominated and then I got to L.A. right around the GRAMMYs and I heard that it won, so I really didn’t expect anything out of it. That’s the beauty of life sometimes. We chase certain things, which is good, but there’s certain things that just happen when we’re doing the right thing. The right thing to me at that time was to just do the work and be obedient.

Lastly, I know you participated in the DACA march in 2018. How will activism continue to play a role in your music and your life in general?

I think it’s going to continue to play a big role because I don’t know how to shut up when things don’t look right. And I think that’s a good problem to have, so I think it’s always going to be a part of who I am, in the music space and outside of the creative world. If something’s wrong, I want to know why it’s wrong or why it’s happening. If I’m able to help fix it, I’m down for the cause. And if I’m not, I’m pretty sure I might know somebody that’s able to do something about it.

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Turning Jewels Into Water

 

Photo: Ed Marshall

 
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World Music Innovators Turning Jewels Into Water Fuse The Spiritual With Digital On Their New Album

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Genre pioneers Ravish Momin and Val Jeanty talk to GRAMMY.com about the making of their forthcoming work, 'Our Reflection Adorned by Newly Formed Stars'
Noah Berlatsky
GRAMMYs
Aug 8, 2020 - 7:00 am

"What is world music? What is global music? Do you have to show up in ethnic gear with a tabla and a sitar for you to consider me Indian?" drummer Ravish Momin says, with some exasperation. "Or what if I just showed up with an electronic drum pad? If you were a quote unquote, world promoter, you'd be like, 'No…that's not right.'"

Momin and Haitian-born drummer Val Jeanty's electronic music project Turning Jewels into Water draws on influences and collaborators from across the planet, but, as Momin says, their music isn't easily slotted into any one genre. On their new album from FPE Records, Our Reflection Adorned by Newly Formed Stars, laptops sound like traditional instruments and geeky experimentation is indistinguishable from spiritual yearning. It's music that pounds and shakes and shimmies so hard it lifts off from any one country, drumming in the stratosphere, and points higher up.

Momin's been difficult to pin down ever since he was a child. Though he was born in India, his father's job at an Australian bank kept the family on the move. "We lived in the Middle East for a minute. We lived in Australia for a minute. We lived in Hong Kong for a minute. We were just traveling around, and I was picking up music in all those places," Momin told me.

The family finally settled in New York in the late '80s when Momin was around 14. He was interested in jazz, and started taking drumming lessons. But he had trouble finding a teacher comfortable with his range of influences. "They'd be like, man, all that stuff you're doing, we've got to work on getting rid of all that and making you a real jazz drummer," Momin told me. "And I felt bad for a long time, like, oh shit, I'm doing something totally wrong here." It wasn't until after college when he studied with the great avante garde drummed Andrew Cyrille that he started to see his background as a resource rather than a hindrance. Cyrille, Momin says, "was the first drummer I'd gone to who listened to my audition and said, okay, cool, I see what you have. But I also see what you don't have. So let's find a way to make that work."

Momin went on to lead the global/jazz band Tarana for 14 years. He gradually became more and more interested in incorporating electronic percussion into his music. But, he says, "I immediately found out [I] was not accepted in the so-called jazz world at all. You can't be a legitimate jazz musician and have a laptop on stage. That was just heresy for a long time. It's still stuck, believe it or not, where Miles [Davis] left off. There are innovators, obviously, that have been pushing it, but it really hasn't kept up with electronic innovation happening elsewhere."

Looking for a new direction, Momin invited Val Jeanty to jam with him while he was in residency at Brooklyn's Pioneer Works. The two, who were already friends, clicked musically. Their first album as Turning Jewels Into Water, Map of Absences, was released in 2019.

Jeanty "was the first person that I met who was channeling electronics with this spiritual vibe," Momin says. "And I'd never really experienced that. I'd only heard experimental electronics like blips and screech, or very much four-on-the floor techno in New York. So it was incredible to hear this historical, organic rootedness, and have it still be all digital."

Jeanty started drumming with her family in Haiti during Vodou religious rituals. "You can think of it like church music, but in a different culture," she told me. "The drums are very important; it's like the heartbeat. Each rhythmic pattern is dedicated to a specific ritual."

For Jeanty, raised with drumming as part of religious festivals, all music is a spiritual practice. "In our culture, there's no separation between what we do and the music. It's all one. It's all a prayer. It feels for me like a spiritual practice, whether I'm listening to classical music, whether I'm listening to John Coltrane. It's the same thing."

Working with Momin has been exciting, Jeanty says, because "in the Indian culture, the music is very spiritual. So, we have that connection instantly. And he's also very progressive pushing it as far as using triggers, using Ableton Live. That's the stuff that I love. It's just great to have similar aspirations as far as keeping connected to the culture but working with electronic instruments."

One of the album's most ambitious mixtures of traditional and electronic music is "Crushed Petals and Stones Fall On My Drum." The track features South African percussionist and musician Mpho Molikeng, who plays a range of African instruments, including the lesiba (a mouth-resonated bow), and the mamokhorong (a kind of single-stringed violin). On the collaboration between Molikeng, Momin and Jeanty, electronics and indigenous instruments drone, thump and shake around each other as Molikeng chants, and it's virtually impossible to tell the analog from the digital. Here and there, meatspace and binary realm stomp and change places in a joyous dance or trance. And then they get up and do it again on a remix by Shanghai producer Laughing Ears, who ads a vivid club-ready techno sheen. From Haiti to India to South Africa to Shanghai, the petals fall everywhere, nowhere, and on all the spots in between.

"Swirl in the Waters," is another collaboration, this time with Washington, D.C.-based Iranian singer Kamyar Arsani, who plays the daf, a wide drum, and fronts the punk band Time is Fire. "I've been trying to get people involved in the project, who can again span different worlds and can do different things," Momin says, and, sure enough, on "Swirl in the Waters" Arsani moves seamlessly from spooky post-punk intonation to ululating Middle Eastern chant. "I used to be a goth when I was a high-school teen," Momin laughs, "and this track has that dark energy."

The album's title track, "Our Reflection Adorned by Newly Formed Stars" is a tribute to the Siddis, a group of Indians of East African origin who are believed to have come to India in the 600s AD. Momin says he was not aware of the Siddis while growing up. Their history is not commonly taught in much of India, a fact which Momin attributes to anti-Blackness. But, Momin says, "they have been here in India for a long time, and they came in not as slaves, which is really important to know. It's one of on the first instances of Africans ruling a non-African population."

The video for the song, designed by Art Jones, includes historical Siddi images, and a dancer rotoscoped in angular blocks of color, so they seem to pulse from future to past and back again. "It's capturing the spirit of the Siddis and the dancers and the movement. It's an imaginary timeline of what would have happened, if they had never lost their grandeur, and were still regal. It's creating awareness of the Siddis and their plight."

A track about the Siddis, and their mix of African and Indian culture and art, fits naturally on an album by a duo from the African and Indian diasporas, creating music steeped in where they're from, where they are and the journeying between the two. A tribute to the Siddi was initially Momin's idea, Jeanty says, but it made sense to her. "We're all connected. Especially right now with all this separation and division, I think it's important for us to know that we all belong to one thing, to one mother."

Work on the album began before the coronavirus made travel impossible, but the collaborators had to finish it in isolation, sending files back and forth. Jeanty acknowledged that the conditions were not ideal. "There's something spiritual about being in the same space at the same time," she said. "The virus is disconnecting us more, so it was a little bit more challenging than if we were together." The disconnection and the need to focus made the recording process "a little bit more intense. I do feel like there were some really potent moments that I couldn't get if this COVID thing wasn't happening," she laughed.

Our Reflection…is an album about bridging distances, that didn't seem bridgeable by music, boat or byte. "We want to just showcase the idea that, hey, look, we're still doing all this stuff, where we're bringing all these rhythmic and melodic and other practices from our folkloric traditions, but we're doing it in this new environment," Momin says. That new environment is the whole world, and some newly formed stars as well.

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Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: Antibalas

Antibalas

 

Photo: Celine Pinget

 
 
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Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: Antibalas Talk 'Fu Chronicles,' Kung Fu And Their Mission To Spread Afrobeat

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Antibalas members Martín Perna and Duke Amayo discuss their origin story, their decades-long rise as an outlier in Brooklyn and how their first-ever GRAMMY nomination for Best Global Music Album could help introduce new listeners to Afrobeat
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Feb 16, 2021 - 7:27 pm

Even somebody who barely listens to music could presumably name three artists in each of these spheres: rock, blues and jazz. Sure, Bob Marley may remain the embodiment of reggae, but chances are you've heard of Toots and the Maytals or Lee "Scratch" Perry at least once. What about Afrobeat, a West African amalgam of soul and funk with regional styles like Yoruba and highlife?

For many, the Afrobeat conversation begins and ends with the outrageous, incendiary, brilliant multi-instrumentalist and pioneer of the form, Fela Kuti. While the Brooklyn Afrobeat ensemble Antibalas, which ranges from 11 to 19 members, undoubtedly work from the template Kuti helped create, they argue the story of Afrobeat begins—not ends—with him.

"I think that's one of the weirdest things, being in a genre of music that is so defined and predetermined by one person," Martín Perna, the multi-instrumentalist who first dreamed up Antibalas in 1998, tells GRAMMY.com. "Even reggae artists don't all get compared to Bob Marley. I don't think anybody in any other genre is in the shadow of one person like people who play this music." (For those who wish to dig deeper, Perna recommends Geraldo Pino, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou and the Funkees; his bandmate, Duke Amayo, name-drops Orlando Julius.)

"It's been a weird thing," Perna continues. "I would have thought after 22 years that it would have expanded a little bit more."

Antibalas | Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee

More than 20 years after Kuti's death in 1997, Afrobeat may soon expand radically in the public eye thanks to Antibalas. The group, who played their first gig half a year after Kuti's passing, has been nominated at the 2021 GRAMMYs Awards show in the newly renamed Best Global Music Album category for Fu Chronicles, which dropped last February on Daptone Records. Their first album to be solely written by lead singer and percussionist Amayo, its highlights, like "Lai Lai," "MTTT, Pt. 1 & 2" and "Fist of Flowers," partly derive their power from his other primary pursuit: kung fu.

A Nigerian-born multidisciplinarian who is a senior master at the Jow Ga Kung Fo School of martial arts, Amayo aims to find the nexus point between music, dance and martial arts. When he received the unexpected news that Antibalas had clinched their first-ever GRAMMY nomination after 20 years in the game, he launched into a dance of his own.

"I walked over to my girl and said, 'Check this out. Is this real?'" he recalls to GRAMMY.com with a laugh. "She Googled the GRAMMY nominations, and it was surreal. And then I did that usual thing where you shake your hips, violently doing the hip thrust back and forth. Then, I woke the whole house up screaming, as my daughter screamed with me for a minute or two."

GRAMMY.com spoke with Martín Perna and Duke Amayo about Antibalas' origin story, their decades-long rise as an outlier in Brooklyn and how their nomination could help introduce new listeners to Afrobeat.

These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

How would you explain the vocabulary of someone like Fela Kuti to a person who's unfamiliar?

Martín Perna: Afrobeat is like musical architecture. It's a set of ingredients and musical relationships between those ingredients. All the instruments are talking to each other. They're all in dialogue, and these dialogues create dynamic tension in the music. Some instruments create a rigid structure, and others—vocals included—have much more free reign to improvise or solo.

Duke Amayo: I would describe it as a tonal language of the common Nigerian—or African—singing truth to power from a marginalized place. That is the window from where Fela Kuti was operating. He drew from observations around him and expressed them truthfully throughout his music. He is like the Bob Marley and the James Brown of Nigeria rolled into one.

Perna: Whereas the guitar might be playing the same five-note pattern without stopping for 20 minutes, the singer or keyboardist gets to improvise. Or, when the horns aren't playing the melodies, they get solos. It's both very rigid and very free, but it's a dynamic tension between the two.

In a nutshell, describe how Antibalas came up in the Brooklyn scene.

Perna: I was 22 when I dreamed this up, and a lot of it was just trying to create a scene that I wanted to be part of. At the time, I played with Sharon Jones—rest in peace—Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. A bunch of the musicians were my colleagues in that band. The rest of the musicians came pretty much from the neighborhood—just people I knew who either had the chops or the interest to be in this band.

Amayo: I was living in Williamsburg, a neighborhood that embodied gentrification in record time. I was in the right place at the right time as I opened a clothing store/martial-arts dojo in my residence called the Afro-Spot. From here, I hosted many fashion shows, using Nigerian drummers to maintain an edge to my brand. This exposed me to musicians who wanted to make resistance music, if you will.

So that brought me in contact with Martín and [Daptone Records co-founder and former Antibalas guitarist] Gabe [Roth], who stopped in my store one day to hang. Eventually, they asked me to join the band. I started as a percussionist and then became the lead singer.

Perna: I wanted to make a band that was both a dance band and a protest band. Because you need so many people to make this music, it fulfilled that idea of being a band and a community. You need anywhere from 11 [musicians] on the small end; at our biggest shows, there have been 19 musicians on stage. So, already, you have a community of people.

Coming up in Brooklyn, did you have local peers in this style? Was there a scene?

Perna: No, there wasn't a scene. There were individuals—mostly West African guys a generation older than us—that had played with Fela or were part of some other African funk band in the '70s. But no, there weren't any peers at all.

Amayo: I would state that we were the scene.

How would you describe your vision for Fu Chronicles as opposed to past Antibalas albums?

Amayo: Fu Chronicles is a concept album written by only me. While the past albums have been written by different members employing the group dynamics of the time, my vision was to create a musical universe where African folklore and kung fu wisdom can coexist seamlessly, supporting each other in a harmonious flow.

The first song I composed [20 years ago], "MTTT," came from my intention to compose a timeless, logical song, expressing a new frontier in classical African music. I wanted to move the music forward by writing songs with two distinct-but-related bass and guitar lines and shape the grooves into a two-part form: yin and yang.

How did martial arts play into the album?

Amayo: I wanted to reimagine Afrobeat songs from a real kung fu practitioner's mindset. I'm a certified Jow Ga Kung Fu sifu, or master. I started studying kung fu in Nigeria as a young boy. The song "Fist of Flowers" describes the traditional form of Jow Ga Kung Fu that I teach. My rhythmic blocks are sometimes based on the shapes of my kung fu movements.

How did you learn about your GRAMMY nomination for Best Global Music Album?

Amayo: The first person who texted me was Kyle Eustice, [who interviewed me in 2020] for High Times. I didn't react at first. I walked over to my girl and said, "Check this out. Is this real?" She Googled the GRAMMY nominations, and it was surreal.

I did that usual thing where you shake your hips, violently doing the hip thrust back and forth, and quickly calmed down. Then I woke the whole house up screaming as my daughter screamed with me for a minute or two.

Perna: On my fridge, last year, when I set my goals and intentions, one of the five things [I wrote] was to win a GRAMMY. This year has been such a disappointment in so many ways, so it's exciting that at least we got, so far, the nomination.

This nomination serves as a punctuation mark on Antibalas's 20-plus-year career. How do you see the next 20 years?

Perna: Oh, gosh. I hope it provides some wind in our sails to continue to record and tour and grow our audience. It could be either a nice end to a beautiful history of the band, or something like I said: wind in our sails.

Amayo: I see the next 20 years of Antibalas as a flower in full growth, writing music to push the genre forward while maintaining excellence in the trade. We began as a bunch of guys in Brooklyn who wanted to make a change, make some noise, and be part of the revival of activist music.

And it's still as relevant as ever, demanding for justice movements like Black Lives Matter, Indigenous peoples' plight, and a more comprehensive education system based on truth ...

Perna: … To get this recommendation and this nod from the GRAMMYs, it's like, "Hey, everybody! Pay attention to this band! They made this amazing record, and you should listen to it!" That's something that propels us out of the world of just musicians listening to us. It feels good to get a little bit of wider recognition.

Amayo: I've been praising my wife ever since [the nomination]: "This is all mostly you." Because if she hadn't put a fire in me, I wouldn't have been able to make the right moves. It takes something to light it up for you, to believe you can get there.

Thus, my song, "Fight Am Finish," with the lyrics, "Never, ever let go of your dreams." I'm going to keep running. I'm going to keep my feet moving until I cross the finish line, you know what I mean?

Travel Around The World With The Best Global Music Album Nominees | 2021 GRAMMYs

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Sun Ra Arkestra

Photo by Alexis Maryon

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Sun Ra Arkestra's Knoel Scott On New Album 'Swirling,' Sun Ra's Legacy & Music As A Healing Force

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The Sun Ra Arkestra saxophonist discusses the evolution and enduring sound of Sun Ra’s music, and why younger generations are more receptive to his more far-out experiments
Jeff Terich
GRAMMYs
Oct 9, 2020 - 10:32 am

Sun Ra's music transcends genre and generation, time and space. The Alabama-born jazz legend, musical chameleon and Afrofuturist icon—who would have turned 106 in May—began performing in the swing and big band era and kept up a career for five decades, traveling the spaceways through cosmic ambient jazz, intense bursts of free jazz in the ‘60s, disco in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and various genre-agnostic experiments in the spaces in between. Sun Ra’s music was as boundless as the interstellar universe he considered himself a part of, and his sonic innovations continue to echo throughout music nearly three decades after his death.

His band, the Sun Ra Arkestra, is a significant element in keeping that music alive. They’ve continued to tour as an ensemble since the ‘90s, and on Oct. 30, will release their first new album in over two decades, Swirling. It’s as much a tribute to the legacy of Sun Ra as it is a continuation of the ideas and sounds he pioneered in his lifetime, featuring modern reinterpretations of classic Sun Ra compositions such as "Rocket No. 9" and "Angels and Demons at Play," as well as lesser-known tracks, and even the first recording of "Darkness," composed by Arkestra bandleader Marshall Allen. Though the arrival of Swirling comes during a time of fear and uncertainty, with no live music on the horizon for the foreseeable future, longtime Arkestra saxophonist Knoel Scott says that it’s even more important for them to be giving joyful, celebratory music back to the world.

"Music is a healing force," he says. "Our intention was for the music to be healing. For something to give happiness. When people live for a long time, and they’re asked what’s responsible for that, they say they laughed. So mirth and enjoyment and contentment, those things come from music."

GRAMMY.com caught up with Scott to discuss the new permutations of Sun Ra’s music on Swirling, finding hope in troubled times, and traveling in your mind through music.

So, Swirling is the first new recording from the Sun Ra Arkestra in over 20 years…

The first successful attempt. We tried once or twice, but the conditions weren’t conducive.

Right. Is it a matter of logistics—having everyone be able to contribute at the same time?

Yeah, the crucial part of the band’s ritual is rehearsal. And there are some logistical difficulties. Being in New York, professional musicians, they have to work, and that work is primary, so they don’t always have time to come out. But Swirling was recorded off of a tour, so the band was pretty hot at the time. A lot of the compositions were played off of our book that we were playing off the last tour that we did. We were playing "Darkness" a lot. "Seductive Fantasy," we were playing that a lot. All the songs were part of the regular band book. That book, which Marshall arranged, I guess we were playing it for around a year. Every nine months we change it. We keep certain standards, but to keep everyone interested and keep it fresh, we bring new songs in.

Aside from most of them being part of the Arkestra's last tour, is there something that connects all of these songs?

I guess the intent. Everybody wanted to play the music well and represent Sun Ra well, and give homage to Sonny and create a product that Sonny would be proud of. So, that unified us.

Sun Ra had such a long and prolific career, and this album pulls from various moments throughout that career. Was there an effort to try to represent as broad a selection of his music as possible?

Well, his music was so varied. He played so many different styles, from R&B to so-called Afrobeat to futuristic sounds to swing to avant garde. So yes, we tried to do a variety which reflected the pantheon that Sun Ra created. So therefore, there is a lot of variety on the album. That’s how Sun Ra was, he had so much variety. We never knew what he was going to do, but all of it was within the African-American tradition.

Are the Arkestra's compositions all, in some way, living and evolving creations?

Yes. The nature of music is you never play it the same way twice. Something is always different. Something is always added. A new nuance created every time we play a composition. It gave us a chance to focus a little more, because the gigs are a show. The focus, to a degree, is on entertainment and presentation. But in the studio, the concentration is all on putting the visual into the music, while in a live show, the visual is there as an accent. But on the recording that all has to be in the music. So we’re trying to create a visual in the listener’s mind.

Likewise, are you always continuing to evolve as musicians?

We have to. Sun Ra says the world’s moving fast, you have to adjust yourself. And Marshall says, "It’s the spirit of the day." Tomorrow you feel a little bit different than you did today. Your interpretation of the music is going to be a little different. So it becomes a living entity, because we put our spirit into it, and it changes from day to day and moment to moment.

Sun Ra's music spans many decades and generations, and this too will likely introduce his and your music to a new generation. What is it that makes his music endure?

The fact that it was from the future. That’s why his sounds are more accessible to the audience's ear now. But in the ‘50s and ’60s, it was radical. They would just be like, "What is he doing?" He was always talking about the future and the new millennium. But the future is now, and so the time for the music is now. He designed it that way, so the millennial generation is able to relate to it, because he wrote the music for them. The music for tomorrow’s world. People have changed. People’s ears have developed. The computer age has come, and electronics are a standard part of their listening, and Sun Ra pioneered these things, so just in terms of what people listen to now, this music that people call new age and Afrobeat, techno, all these things are devices Sun Ra used in his music in the ’60s and ’70s. As soon as a new sound came out, Sun Ra was on top of it. So now, people are used to these things. Going back to Star Trek, you hear the sounds that Sun Ra was playing in the ‘60s. Those sounds are now part of the standard media presentation of music.

It’s funny you mention that—I was watching some early episodes of Star Trek and a lot of the music reminded me of Sun Ra.

Yeah. [Laughs.] The theme song is a variation on a standard called "Out of Nowhere." But especially from Slugs’ [Saloon in Manhattan], that was the type of place that the hip people went, and Sun Ra was an underground figure for years. But he was also in California for years, and there’s been a cross pollination of Sun Ra’s music into Hollywood and TV, et cetera.

It’s an odd time to be releasing music right now. How do you feel about putting something out right now, especially something based so heavily on the Arkestra’s live performances, without being able to be onstage to play them?

That’s very important, because people are hungry for music. They’re not able to go out, so they’re on YouTube and Spotify, they’re listening to records. We stay at home, so music is a very important thing. I think it’s really perfect for the album to come out when people are spending more time at home and are looking for some kind of sound that will inspire them or give them hope or some kind of relief from this terrible time that we’re going through, because it’s stressful for everyone. You can’t go out, but you can put on an album and travel in your mind.

Is there a message or a feeling that you would hope listeners take away from hearing Swirling?

That there’s hope. No matter how bleak or troublesome or turbulent the times are, as long as people have love in their hearts, if they want a better world, there can be a better world. And the unification of the musicians from different areas of the United states and as far as Brazil, we all have different perspectives but come together of one accord, so the Arkestra’s contribution is a testimony that we can come of one accord. We may not always agree, but we can come together for a positive outlook and a positive goal. And that comes down to intent, for people with love in their hearts and joy in their spirits and enlightenment in their minds. Our job is to heal the planet.

Diamond Platnumz Talks Growing Up In Tanzania & Breaking Into American Popular Music

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Beverly Glenn-Copeland

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On 'Transmissions,' Beverly Glenn-Copeland Looks Back On A Long And Varied Musical Life

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The longtime genre experimentalist has spent decades dabbling in folk, electronica, jazz, New Age, world music—and now it's all on display via a new career-spanning mixtape
Noah Berlatsky
GRAMMYs
Sep 21, 2020 - 11:01 am

Beverly Glenn-Copeland's new album, Transmissions, released on the artist's new Transgressive label, is a collection of recordings from a stunning, expansive and largely unknown five decade career in folk, electronica, jazz, New Age, world music and genres of his own invention.

Born in Philadelphia to musical parents, Glenn-Copeland entered McGill as one of the school's first Black music students. He was also one of its only out lesbians—a fact which almost got him ejected from the school. (Glenn-Copeland eventually came out as a trans man in 2002.) After college, he recorded a couple of folk albums before starting a two-decade career as a regular songwriter and performer on the Canadian children's show Mr. Dressup.

Glenn-Copeland was still writing his own music, though, including the stunning, forward-looking electronica New Age album Keyboard Fantasies. Released in 1986 to virtually no notice, the album was rediscovered in 2015 by Japanese collector and music store owner Ryota Masuko. Masuko had links to adventurous music communities worldwide, and suddently, people knew about Glenn-Copeland's music, and wanted to hear more. He toured Europe in 2018 to enthusiastic audiences. And he was able to start rereleasing old albums—including Keyboard Fantasies. He's also planning to release new recordings.

Transmissions only scratches the surface of Glenn-Copeland's vast back catalog. It includes a couple of tracks from Keyboard Fantasies ("Ever New" and "Sunset Village"), but also many tracks that have been unavailable to most fans. GRAMMY.com talked to Glenn-Copeland about the creation of the album and some of the highlights from his long and varied musical life. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Transmissions is a collection of tracks from your 50-year music career. How did you pick the tracks?

Well, let me put it this way. I didn't have anything to do with this album. Except that I had the say "yes" or "no" about each track.

My publishing house, my record company and my management company, friends for many years, all three of them, they got together and started brainstorming stuff. And the head of my publishing company had come with my manager to my wife's and my house back in December, before things closed down. So he showed up and they poured through everything I've ever written for 55 years. In every format, you can imagine. And they took them away as though they just found all kinds of diamonds or something.

Wow. How much music was that they looked through? I mean, it must have been hundreds of hours of music.

More than hundreds of hours! More like thousands of hours of music!

I mean, literally, they took out boxes of stuff. It was like a treasure hunt. I've been writing music and I had all kinds of formats, everything from cassettes to things that no longer even exist in terms of machines even to translate it, to big reels, to old fashioned floppy discs that you stuck into the computers.

Oh my god, they had a blast. They went berserk. They were just so happy. They were like kids that had found Christmas early.

So they poured through that stuff, month after month in great detail and then they got together to brainstorm.

I was going to be recording with my with band Indigo Rising, but that was canceled because of COVID.

So they came up with this release instead. And they also released a live album in August from a show at Le Guess Who in the Netherlands.

There's a track on Transmissions from that session, right? The song "Deep River." When did you record that concert?

I think it was the first one we did, which would have been fall of '18.

Was it a good experience? The track sounds really fun. You got the audience to yodel with you.

Oh my god. Noah.

I mean, I was still at the point of—I'm still at that point, if people show up for concerts, I'm thrilled. When I walked into that concert hall, there were 3000 people in there! For me?! They actually have a recording of me walking in and going, "Oh, my goodness, there's so many people."

There's some people who will have 50,000 a concert. But I'm not among those. My concerts normally had 200 people if I was doing really well, and that was back in 1902. [Laughs.] It was a stunning experience for us all. They were singing along. It was wonderful. It was wonderful.

When is the song "Deep River" from originally? How did you write that?

I had put out an album that I published in 1999 purely from my own studio and sent to a very few people. It was called Crossing Over. And the whole album was a retake and an Africanization of Negro spirituals.

Instead of singing them the way they were sung in the United States, I sang them the way they might have been in Africa. I put the drums back in, because the drums were forbidden to slaves in the United States. So I put drums back in and I put all kinds of sounds in it that might sound more like what I imagined you would hear in various villages.

I began playing this piece live but instead of Africanizing it in the way in which I had on this album I came up with other sounds that people could sing.

So I know you didn't pick the songs on the album, but I'm curious if there's a track on the album that you were particularly excited to see made available.

There is one piece that I'm that I'm excited about. And that's "River Dreams." Because that was something that was written just a year ago. That has never been on any album at all. I just recorded it at home for fun.

And they listened to it and went, "Nevermind, it's good enough! We're putting it on."

It was one of the things that I had hoped to be able to with Indigo Rising.

Who is Indigo Rising?

They're the band I've been touring with. [Nick Dourado – piano; Jeremy Costello - voice, keyboards, electric bass; Kurt Inder - guitar, keyboards; Carlie Howell - acoustic bass, clarinet, percussion; Bianca Palmer - kit drum and percussion.]

I initially found the members separately, I thought. They played with me for six months and then they told me after six months that they'd been playing together for years. I just flipped out. What a joke! That was their little personal joke on me that they kept secret.

The last song on the album, "Erzili," is from one of your earliest albums, right?

Oh yeah. That was the 1970 recording "Beverly Glenn-Copeland" on the GRT label. The song was an exploration of my African roots. And I was exploring it with four of the finest jazz players the world had ever seen— unbeknownst to me! I had no idea how famous these guys were. Lenny Breau, one of the finest guitar players that has ever lived, was on that album.

They all got in the studio and they were so kind, they were so loving. And they said, "Well, would you like to just play the song for us." And I'd play a song for them. They'd go, "Oh, lovely." And then the producer would hit record. And all of the songs were taken live off the floor, first take.

So "Erzili" was live off the floor, first take, and they'd only heard it five minutes before they played it.

That's pretty impressive. Because it's like 10 minutes long.

Yep. I let them hear the basics of it and then we just cut loose.

It wasn't like it was going to be exactly 10 minutes. We just played it the way you play a jazz piece. You play it until you finish with it.

It was absolutely a stunning experience for me. I mean, I was like a little kid from lollipop land, landing in the midst of, you know, French cuisine.

There's an audience for your music now that there hasn't been through much of your career. Do you have a sense of why that is?

You know, young people these days are world citizens and they're connected with each other all over the world, and know what's going on all over the world. And their tastes are very catholic, small c.

They listen to all kinds of music and the average young person these days will listen to everything from ambient to rock to classical to you name it.

So that being true, they've been able to identify with the different music landscapes that I've traversed over the years and they enjoy all of the different styles. All my mixtures of this and that.

Lang Lang On The Inspiration Behind His Latest Album & Why Aspiring Concert Pianists Should Never Give Up

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