Your roots are clearly important in your music – could you say something of your particular mix of Scottish and Zambian roots?My mother is Ila-Lenje from the central province of Zambia, and my father is Scottish of Glaswegian parents. His parents moved to Malawi when he and his siblings were still children, and my parents eventually met much further down the line when they were both teaching at the University of Zambia.
Although we moved a fair bit as I was growing up, we always went back to Zambia every year; it has been an anchor in my life, one of the few constants, and feels more like 'home' than any of the other homes I've had. So it's perhaps natural that it would become a big part of my artistic journey, my creative exploration, and my expression as a singer and a songwriter. But, being a child of the diaspora, I've also imbibed from many creative wells, expanding my curiosities, and the ways in which I want – and feel able to – express myself as an artist.
London and its cosmopolitan influences are also clearly a big part of your music – your music is also described as Afro-folk – how does that get reflected in your music?I've now had an on-off, love-hate relationship with London for 14 years. A big part of the love side of the affair has been what it has to offer creatively. The city has allowed me to explore and delve into different, exciting sonic worlds, from Afro-Cuban, to jazz, to Brazilian. It's allowed me to meet, share with, and learn from incredibly talented musicians. It's allowed me – as a child of the diaspora – to voice myself using different colours, all of which have been part of my growth as an individual and an artist. My love of jazz, of folk, of African music, all gets reflected in my writing and my sound. The fact that I can pick up the phone and call a marimba player, or a kora player, or a jazz saxophonist, or a Ghanaian guitar maestro, and get them into the studio to record on an album is an incredibly special thing, and offers an amazing amount of creative freedom to explore and work with. Some of the edginess of London, its uncertainty, its flux, its grit, is also within the album. At the same time there's the softer, more soulful, more lyrical side of folk music also within my music, the side that's interested in recounting stories, and at the moment these are largely African stories.
You’re a photographer and involved with film too. Does this feed back into your music?My love of photography definitely impacts the way I write, which is often very visual. Before embarking on my singing career full steam, I first worked as a photographer, and it taught me invaluable lessons: attention to the detail of a moment, editing the unnecessary fearlessly so that you expose the core of what you are trying to show to the world, speaking my truth and how I see the world, using fragments and captured moments and shaping them into a story.
My relationship to film is slightly different, in that I worked in a curatorial capacity rather than being involved in the creative process, but again the strength and power of imagery, of the story, that is central to film, is essentially what songwriting is also about. Actually, one of my favourite songs on the album, Maweo, was inspired by a film that I watched during the selection process of the film festival I co-founded and ran for a few years, so in that sense yes, it has fed back very directly into my music! Essentially, we are all telling stories, and trying to pull people into the emotion of the stories we are trying to tell.
The politics of immigration is all around us – your music is inclusive in its influences – can music be a healing force?Music has the ability to touch the very core, the very essence of us as human beings. In so doing, it offers us a space in which we can shed the weight of preconception, of prejudice, of difference, and be reminded of our essential humanity, and, by extension, our essential commonality. Be reminded that we all feel – be it joy, sorrow, fear, uncertainty, love, hopefulness; that we all weep and laugh and muddle our way through this life as best we can. In this way, it expands our capacity to love. As clichéd as it might sound, we are all immigrants, and we are all temporary visitors on this earth; the borders that we attach so much importance to and the flags that we swear allegiance to are man-made and upheld by man-made laws; music, art, in its ability to hold so many different cultures and worlds within itself, in its ability to speak to the heart of another, has the capacity to allow us to lay aside, to forget, those walls that we build and those differences that we construct. It offers us a space of contemplation of the things that make us human; a space of conversation: what would I do? How would I react? How do I feel? - it allows us to dance the dance of the present, and feel the extraordinarily simple beauty of a shared moment of togetherness.
Your debut album Shiwezwa came out last year - can you say something about how it came about.I'd spent six months in Zambia back in 2012, healing from a broken heart, and with the vague thought that I'd devote some time to learning traditional music. In so many ways, the album was born then. I spent time with an aunt, Maureen Lilanda, who is a local singing legend, and who became a musical and personal mentor and gave me the courage to explore my Zambian roots as part of my creative process. That was a big turning point for me as a songwriter, and in my identity as an artist. I also had the time to reflect on and witness life (in a way that the hectic pace of London often-times does not allow); I wrote a lot, and started recording what I intended to be an EP. When I got back to London, Liran Donin, the bass player who is also a wonderful and sensitive producer and who produced Shiwezwa, encouraged me to record a full album. I think of Shiwezwa as a homecoming of sorts, a homage to the places I am from (emotionally and creatively), and an attempt to forge a closer link with my mother's culture.
Perhaps you can introduce the musicians in your band and discuss their contribution to the music?I'm surrounded and supported by an incredible group of musicians – my band of brothers as I like to call them! Their fantastic musicianship, their sensitivity to the music, helps carry each song to another plane. They've each added their own spice to the mix, and as we've toured, the arrangements have shifted and taken on new colours, making the live show an incredibly dynamic experience. There's a lot of room for improvisation in the show within the arrangements, which is exciting and makes it a lot of fun. Liran Donin (mentioned above), fierce yet tender bassist, and as m.d. and producer of the album has played a huge role in shaping the music and the arrangements; Chris Williams, probably one of the best young saxophonists on the circuit, brings a palette of colours that transports - both are Mercury-nominated musicians; Mamadou Sarr, master Senegalese percussionist (he also tours with international star Baaba Maal amongst many), creates fire and magic; Jack Ross, guitarist of grace and incredible virtuosity; and Yuval Wetzler, one of the most sensitive drummers I have ever had the pleasure of working with. I should also pay tribute to Ghanaian guitar maestro Alfred 'Kari' Bannerman, who isn't part of the live band, but was central to the album.
Could you describe Lusaka – your Zambian home town?I was born in Livingstone, a small town that borders the famous Mosi-oa-Tunya (the Victoria Falls), a small sleepy town that hasn't changed too much over the decades. But I now spend almost all my time when I'm back in Zambia in the capital city Lusaka, because of friends, family and music. When I last left it, at the end of August, the jacaranda trees lining the streets were beginning to throw out their purple haze of flowers, softening the stark bright red petals of the flame trees. It's a pretty relaxed, often dusty city. The city centre itself, with the usual hustle and bustle of traders, street vendors and bus touts, is small and architecturally uninspiring – it was built as an administrative capital by the British colonialists. Most people live and work in the sprawl of the suburbs, which is where you'd also find most of the restaurants and social life. The traffic is atrocious, churches are on every other street, the middle class is re-emerging en force, big money is pouring into the city - though only for some, and the poor stay heartbreakingly poor. The young are pushing change, creating new spaces of artistic dialogue and expression; the young diaspora is starting to come back, realising that there is more space to create a good life for yourself in Lusaka than in, say, London. It's nowhere near the artistic explosion that Nairobi or Accra have seen in the past few years, but it is a time of change. And this includes the music industry, which – though there is still much to do - is seeing a new lease of life, propelled by amazing talents like Mumba Yachi and James Sakala.
Where do you find inspiration for your songs?All around me. In stories that I hear, events that I witness, frustrations, sadnesses and joys that I feel. I've written songs based on parables, songs about migration, street children, African identity, songs that speak to our current condition as human beings, songs about love or loss, songs inspired by the flight of birds! I've found inspiration in the worlds of jazz, African music, rock, folk, Brazilian... so broad and deep each of these worlds are! And so much life to sing about! At the heart of it all, though, it simply has to be something that moves me, enough to feel that I must speak to it and try to find expression for it in the truest way that I am able.
