Gilles Peterson. The man with “all the answers,” according to Raphael Saadiq. The man who was one of the first to give The Roots serious radio attention in Europe and a man who ?uestlove therefore always makes time for when he’s in the UK, just like Flying Lotus, Seun Kuti, Tony Allen, Erykah Badu and a long list of the good and the great of the musical world.
His radio show for the BBC is quite simply one of the best things on mainstream radio (even if it is hidden away at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday morning). Quite simply, when you listen to it, you learn. Look back at the tracklistings of the last couple of years and you’ll find a live session or an interview from pretty much all the artists you’ve ever loved (or should love) in hip hop, jazz, soul, electronica and, of course, African music. Because that’s what we’re here to talk to Gilles about today.
It’s something he’s long promoted in his search ‘to find the perfect beat,’ a quest he’s shared with us through an array of channels: his radio show, his Worldwide Festival, his Worldwide Awards and his record label, Brownswood. And it’s the latter’s newest release, the Owiny Sigoma Band, that he’s currently buzzing about. It’s a collaboration between a bunch of London musicians and a couple of Kenyan musicians they met while traveling. And if you think you’ve heard that story before, well, you haven’t. Just like their boss, the Owiny Sigoma Band approach music with a refreshingly open-minded and positive attitude.
The London-based part (Chris Morphitis, Jesse and Louis Hackett, Tom Skinner) is loosely based around the electronic soul/funk outfit Elmore Judd, while a couple of them have turned up on a few productions you might be more familiar with – Jesse plays keys with Gorillaz, and Tom is the drummer for the London production of Fela!. Their Kenyan counterparts are a drummer called Charles Owoko and a nyatiti (a Kenyan harp) legend by the name of Joseph Nyamungu, both of whom come from the village of Owiny Sigoma that gives the band its name. And the result of their recording sessions together in Nairobi is what Gilles feels is the best music he’s ever released on Brownswood (quite the compliment coming from the man who gave us José James and Ghostpoet). But let’s allow Gilles to pick up the story at its beginning. It starts, as many good stories do, in Africa.
“Jesse and Tom went over to Kenya with Damon Albarn when he was doing his Africa Express project and they ended up in Kenya. They met up with these guys, got on well, jammed and that was it. It’s a brilliant, organic combination of musicians from the UK who already had a sense of African music and were really into it, meeting African musicians who had their own sound that was different to the music from say Ghana, The Ivory Coast or other parts of Africa. There was no snobbery involved, they just did it because they enjoyed doing it. A lot of these projects can be a little bit too thought out or too much of an ‘us and them’ type of thing but with this lot, everybody’s getting a kick out of it.”
But what does it sound like? Well, it’s genuinely hard to say. As Gilles says, “you’ve got to hear it.” It’s a record dominated by the nyatiti, a harsh instrument played at breakneck speed that manages to provide the bass and the melody for each song at the same time. And while the nyatiti and cow horn take centre stage, the music is driven by the English part of the band who effectively act as Charles and Joshua’s rhythm section. It creates a distinctly African, or to be precise, Luo, record, that betrays an overtly foreign presence only on the softly sung English vocals to “Wires” and “Here On The Line” and the dub flavors of “Magaret Okudu.”
“For me it’s the best record I’ve put out on Brownswood. Definitely. It’s not condescending in any way, it’s a great, natural fusion of influences making a fresh sound together. I like the fact that there’s a couple of English vocal tracks on it, plus some stuff that’s really pure and raw and that you can tell that they’ve all listened to some good minimal krautrock and avant-disco!”
“But I think this project is good because it was made in Kenya, not London. It was mixed in London and came from a London club culture experience (which is why it’s got the edge that we all love and need from it) but fundamentally it works because they made the effort to go over there several times to make that record.“
“One thing I think is really interesting about African music, particularly for okayplayer perhaps, is that it’s very cool for a lot of Americans to talk about Africanism, whether it’s Jay-Z or whoever, but none of them have actually gone out to Africa and done anything. When they get out there and do a project, I’ll be properly impressed. Because back in the day, whether it was Steve Reid, Don Cherry, Randy Weston or Roy Ayers, they were like ‘we’re going back!’ They’d just go to Africa and spend six months, a year there, whatever. The Lester Bowie story is incredible, he just got on a boat with a hundred dollars, and the next thing you know he’s rocking with Fela Kuti! I mean, it’s all very cool going to the Fela! show and stuff, and it’s good they’re doing that as it’s their heritage more than anyone’s, but I’d love to see the American hip hop lot go and do and what their predecessors did and see what they came up with, because that would be brilliant. I’d love to see ?uestlove in The Ivory Coast for three months, but these are guys are all too busy, they’re all doing big stuff. But if they do go, I’ll be very excited.”
And that’s the one thing you always take away from any Gilles Peterson experience, his overriding passion and excitement for music. Despite his status as someone to whom half the world turns to for the latest sounds, he remains one of us – someone who loves music and who’s always hankering after the next tune to fall for.
“As a digger, as a collector, I feel there’s a whole heap of music still to come from Africa. It’s hardly been tapped in the great scheme of things, as opposed to places like Brazil and South America, the States, Europe, where it’s rare that you’ll find an old soul track from the 70s that’s going to blow everybody away. To be fair labels like Numero are brilliant like that, but when it comes to African music, people like Analog Africa, Soundway, Sublime Frequencies, and Strut have educated us all, as well as World Circuit who have been doing it for quite a while in a more traditional sense.”
“I mean, Owiny Sigoma Band is very special, but people like David Byrne, Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel, they had a big part to play in their own ways back in the 80s. What Owiny Sigoma have done is to be the first post-club culture electronic band to come out of this scene with something that’s a very big musical statement.”
“For somebody like me who liked a bit of Manu Dibango and Fela Kuti, it was people like Letta Mbulu, Hugh Masekela, the artists who left Africa and made careers in the States, who opened the door for me. I regard myself, particularly when it comes to African music, as being on level two, not up there with your lecturers discussing it on BBC Radio 4, I’m simply a fan of the music. That’s the way it’s always been with me and what I do in music, I’m just there to open certain doors to people but I don’t regard myself as a super expert. I’m probably a super expert when it comes to Brit funk from the 80s, I could even go on Mastermind with that, but if you want to go deep on music from the Congo, I don’t go much deeper than Konono No. 1. It’s like wine, isn’t it? Some people see it as just red or white wine, some as wine from different countries, others start discussing the specific grape, the vintage, the Terroir and all that sort of stuff. Music’s the same; you can have a conversation on a basic level or you can get deep on it. It’s all good for me.”
“But as for African music today, I think the landscape is changing. Over the last few years, whether it’s because of DJ culture, or successful pop crossover groups like Vampire Weekend, people have become more used to hearing African sounds in their music, and that’s good, isn’t it? You’ve also got a bunch of good DJs who are also pushing out that world music: people not to be forgotten like Will Quantic or Jeremy Sole, Uproot Andy and the Sofrito guys. And they’re all bugging out on Owiny Sigoma Band, which is cool. Plus quite a lot of people on BBC Radio 1 have been playing it and that wouldn’t have happened two or three years ago, we wouldn’t have got that kind of support, so that tells you how much stuff has changed.”
“Or think about the people who will come to my festival this summer. Most of them would never go to Womad, and a lot of them will come for Derrick Carter or because they like a little bit of Flying Lotus or whatever, but they’ll also see Konono No. 1, and last year they heard Orchestre Poly-Rythmo. That’s the point for me, just throw it in the mix and people will naturally think that’s fucking great. That’s always been my theory, having all that music together, one nation under a groove.”
Amen to that.
- Will Georgi
The Owiny Sigoma Band album is out worldwide today from Brownswood. Check out the FULL ALBUM STREAM to whet your appetite before you buy.
Gilles Peterson’s BBC radio show is broadcast every Wednesday at 2 a.m. (GMT). You can listen to each show 7 days after transmission via BBC iPlayer here.
Gilles Peterson & The Owiny Sigoma Band
Gilles Peterson. The man with “all the answers,” according to Raphael Saadiq. The man who was one of the first to give The Roots serious radio attention in Europe and a man who ?uestlove therefore always makes time for when he’s in the UK, just like Flying Lotus, Seun Kuti, Tony Allen, Erykah Badu and a long list of the good and the great of the musical world.
His radio show for the BBC is quite simply one of the best things on mainstream radio (even if it is hidden away at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday morning). Quite simply, when you listen to it, you learn. Look back at the tracklistings of the last couple of years and you’ll find a live session or an interview from pretty much all the artists you’ve ever loved (or should love) in hip hop, jazz, soul, electronica and, of course, African music. Because that’s what we’re here to talk to Gilles about today.
It’s something he’s long promoted in his search ‘to find the perfect beat,’ a quest he’s shared with us through an array of channels: his radio show, his Worldwide Festival, his Worldwide Awards and his record label, Brownswood. And it’s the latter’s newest release, the Owiny Sigoma Band, that he’s currently buzzing about. It’s a collaboration between a bunch of London musicians and a couple of Kenyan musicians they met while traveling. And if you think you’ve heard that story before, well, you haven’t. Just like their boss, the Owiny Sigoma Band approach music with a refreshingly open-minded and positive attitude.
The London-based part (Chris Morphitis, Jesse and Louis Hackett, Tom Skinner) is loosely based around the electronic soul/funk outfit Elmore Judd, while a couple of them have turned up on a few productions you might be more familiar with – Jesse plays keys with Gorillaz, and Tom is the drummer for the London production of Fela!. Their Kenyan counterparts are a drummer called Charles Owoko and a nyatiti (a Kenyan harp) legend by the name of Joseph Nyamungu, both of whom come from the village of Owiny Sigoma that gives the band its name. And the result of their recording sessions together in Nairobi is what Gilles feels is the best music he’s ever released on Brownswood (quite the compliment coming from the man who gave us José James and Ghostpoet). But let’s allow Gilles to pick up the story at its beginning. It starts, as many good stories do, in Africa.
“Jesse and Tom went over to Kenya with Damon Albarn when he was doing his Africa Express project and they ended up in Kenya. They met up with these guys, got on well, jammed and that was it. It’s a brilliant, organic combination of musicians from the UK who already had a sense of African music and were really into it, meeting African musicians who had their own sound that was different to the music from say Ghana, The Ivory Coast or other parts of Africa. There was no snobbery involved, they just did it because they enjoyed doing it. A lot of these projects can be a little bit too thought out or too much of an ‘us and them’ type of thing but with this lot, everybody’s getting a kick out of it.”
But what does it sound like? Well, it’s genuinely hard to say. As Gilles says, “you’ve got to hear it.” It’s a record dominated by the nyatiti, a harsh instrument played at breakneck speed that manages to provide the bass and the melody for each song at the same time. And while the nyatiti and cow horn take centre stage, the music is driven by the English part of the band who effectively act as Charles and Joshua’s rhythm section. It creates a distinctly African, or to be precise, Luo, record, that betrays an overtly foreign presence only on the softly sung English vocals to “Wires” and “Here On The Line” and the dub flavors of “Magaret Okudu.”
“For me it’s the best record I’ve put out on Brownswood. Definitely. It’s not condescending in any way, it’s a great, natural fusion of influences making a fresh sound together. I like the fact that there’s a couple of English vocal tracks on it, plus some stuff that’s really pure and raw and that you can tell that they’ve all listened to some good minimal krautrock and avant-disco!”
“But I think this project is good because it was made in Kenya, not London. It was mixed in London and came from a London club culture experience (which is why it’s got the edge that we all love and need from it) but fundamentally it works because they made the effort to go over there several times to make that record.“
“One thing I think is really interesting about African music, particularly for okayplayer perhaps, is that it’s very cool for a lot of Americans to talk about Africanism, whether it’s Jay-Z or whoever, but none of them have actually gone out to Africa and done anything. When they get out there and do a project, I’ll be properly impressed. Because back in the day, whether it was Steve Reid, Don Cherry, Randy Weston or Roy Ayers, they were like ‘we’re going back!’ They’d just go to Africa and spend six months, a year there, whatever. The Lester Bowie story is incredible, he just got on a boat with a hundred dollars, and the next thing you know he’s rocking with Fela Kuti! I mean, it’s all very cool going to the Fela! show and stuff, and it’s good they’re doing that as it’s their heritage more than anyone’s, but I’d love to see the American hip hop lot go and do and what their predecessors did and see what they came up with, because that would be brilliant. I’d love to see ?uestlove in The Ivory Coast for three months, but these are guys are all too busy, they’re all doing big stuff. But if they do go, I’ll be very excited.”
And that’s the one thing you always take away from any Gilles Peterson experience, his overriding passion and excitement for music. Despite his status as someone to whom half the world turns to for the latest sounds, he remains one of us – someone who loves music and who’s always hankering after the next tune to fall for.
“As a digger, as a collector, I feel there’s a whole heap of music still to come from Africa. It’s hardly been tapped in the great scheme of things, as opposed to places like Brazil and South America, the States, Europe, where it’s rare that you’ll find an old soul track from the 70s that’s going to blow everybody away. To be fair labels like Numero are brilliant like that, but when it comes to African music, people like Analog Africa, Soundway, Sublime Frequencies, and Strut have educated us all, as well as World Circuit who have been doing it for quite a while in a more traditional sense.”
“I mean, Owiny Sigoma Band is very special, but people like David Byrne, Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel, they had a big part to play in their own ways back in the 80s. What Owiny Sigoma have done is to be the first post-club culture electronic band to come out of this scene with something that’s a very big musical statement.”
“For somebody like me who liked a bit of Manu Dibango and Fela Kuti, it was people like Letta Mbulu, Hugh Masekela, the artists who left Africa and made careers in the States, who opened the door for me. I regard myself, particularly when it comes to African music, as being on level two, not up there with your lecturers discussing it on BBC Radio 4, I’m simply a fan of the music. That’s the way it’s always been with me and what I do in music, I’m just there to open certain doors to people but I don’t regard myself as a super expert. I’m probably a super expert when it comes to Brit funk from the 80s, I could even go on Mastermind with that, but if you want to go deep on music from the Congo, I don’t go much deeper than Konono No. 1. It’s like wine, isn’t it? Some people see it as just red or white wine, some as wine from different countries, others start discussing the specific grape, the vintage, the Terroir and all that sort of stuff. Music’s the same; you can have a conversation on a basic level or you can get deep on it. It’s all good for me.”
“But as for African music today, I think the landscape is changing. Over the last few years, whether it’s because of DJ culture, or successful pop crossover groups like Vampire Weekend, people have become more used to hearing African sounds in their music, and that’s good, isn’t it? You’ve also got a bunch of good DJs who are also pushing out that world music: people not to be forgotten like Will Quantic or Jeremy Sole, Uproot Andy and the Sofrito guys. And they’re all bugging out on Owiny Sigoma Band, which is cool. Plus quite a lot of people on BBC Radio 1 have been playing it and that wouldn’t have happened two or three years ago, we wouldn’t have got that kind of support, so that tells you how much stuff has changed.”
“Or think about the people who will come to my festival this summer. Most of them would never go to Womad, and a lot of them will come for Derrick Carter or because they like a little bit of Flying Lotus or whatever, but they’ll also see Konono No. 1, and last year they heard Orchestre Poly-Rythmo. That’s the point for me, just throw it in the mix and people will naturally think that’s fucking great. That’s always been my theory, having all that music together, one nation under a groove.”
Amen to that.
- Will Georgi
The Owiny Sigoma Band album is out worldwide today from Brownswood. Check out the FULL ALBUM STREAM to whet your appetite before you buy.
Gilles Peterson’s BBC radio show is broadcast every Wednesday at 2 a.m. (GMT). You can listen to each show 7 days after transmission via BBC iPlayer here.
Check out The Owiny Sigoma Band, below: