World Music Matters

Our guest on this week's edition of World Music Matters is British singer-songwriter and storyteller L.A. Salami. As he embarks on a European tour with his latest album The City of Bootmakers he talks to RFI about unpicking the "Isis crisis" and why Bob Dylan still rocks.

Our guest on this week's edition of World Music Matters is British singer-songwriter and storyteller L.A. Salami. As he embarks on a European tour with his latest album The City of Bootmakers he talks to RFI about unpicking the "Isis crisis" and why Bob Dylan still rocks.

London singer-songwriter Lookman Adekunle Salami is of Nigerian descent but his musical roots are firmly Anglophone and mainly from the 60s and 70s.

"For me it's the most ambitious period of music.. stuff in the charts the masses listened to and it was feeding your mind" he told RFI.

Neil Young, John Lennon... "George Harrison made the best solo album of [all the Beatles]: All things must pass".

But Bob Dylan remains the reference.

"[He] inspired me most to play music, otherwise I'd be fantasising about punk bands. Dylan was extremely powerful and the power came from the poetry. He combined [music and lyrics] seamlessly and effortlessly."

"Dylan was an artist, not just a musician... Whatever I'm doing, writing, painting, drawing, I'm interested in being an artist."

Dylan's influence was clearer on L.A. Salami's 2016 debut album Dancing with bad grammar. He occasionally picked up the harmonica as well as accoustic guitar. The City of Bootmakers, with his three-piece backing band, is a bigger sound. But the propensity to let his mind wander on some the day's big issues such as immigration, discrimination and gentrification is ever-present.

He unpicks radicalism on Terrorism - The Isis Crisis, Britain's ills (not least Brexit) on England is Unwell.

The energising Generation L(ost) explores how the generation born after the late 70s is both socially and mentally more fractured despite the connectedness offered by internet and social media.

"There's an abundance of satisfaction but we're more depressed than ever. We've sort of disemboweled the idea of God but haven't filled up the space with anything constructive, simple and universal," he says.

If it all sounds a bit glum, the listening experience is anything but. Salami sticks mainly to major keys, with defiantly jolly melodies and occasionally blasts us with a manic guitar riff lest we become a little too comfortable.

"If you’re gonnna talk about England is unwell - about quite a dark topic - it's like listening to a musical like Oliver," he explains, delivering a snippet of Fagin's 'you've got to pick a pocket or two' by way of illustration.

"It sounds nice to dance to, but it eases the listener in to listening. I personally don’t think everything has to sound moody. It depends on the song. If the song sounds jolly I guess then I didn’t think it needed to sound darker than it is."

L.A. Salami plays Point Ephemere, Paris, 2 May. Keep up with him on facebook.

Syrian-Palestinian pianist Aeham Ahmad became known after videos of him playing piano on the bombed out streets of his neighbourhood of Yarmouk near Damascus were posted on Youtube in 2013. Now a refugee in Germany he's released an album Keys to Friendship with German jazz pianist Edgar Knecht. He talks to RFI about how music became his passport to freedom.

Syrian-Palestinian pianist Aeham Ahmad became known after videos of him playing piano on the bombed out streets of his neighbourhood of Yarmouk near Damascus were posted on Youtube in 2013. Now a refugee in Germany he's released an album Keys to Friendship with German jazz pianist Edgar Knecht. He talks to RFI about how music became his passport to freedom.

Born in 1988 to Palestinian parents, Aeham Ahmed grew up in Yarmouk, a camp set up by the Syrian government in 1954 for Palestinian refugees expelled from Israel.

His Palestinian father, a blind violinist and instrument maker, pushed him to study classical music.

When Ahmed questioned the point of studying Mozart and Rachmaninov, his father reminded him that classical music would provide him with the passport he didn’t have as a Palestinian living in Syria.

“He saved my life to give me the key to being international, to be there on the radio to present the music," Ahmed told RFI on a recent trip to Paris to promote his autobiography Le Pianiste de Yarmouk (The Pianist of Damascus in English).

"He give me the international passport to be pianist because [if] I’m an oud player or tabla player, darbouka player, maybe it will not be international. But piano everybody know Mozart and Beethoven [from] Jaban until Europe until America.”

“My father saw the future,” he adds. And he knew that the future was not in Yarmouk.

Passport to Germany

Ahmed went on to graduate from the conservatorium in Damascus and Homs. He might have been a great pianist but in 2013, when the siege of Yarmouk was at its height, he was hit in the right hand by a piece of shrapnel.

“I’m only 10% of a pianist,” he says showing his gnarled hand. “I used to play Rachmaninov concerto n°3 in university but I can’t do it anymore. After one or two pages I have a lot of pain.”

The injury, however, didn’t stop him from fulfilling his father’s dream.

Thanks to his mother and a German journalist, he paid to get out of Yarmouk in August 2015 and reached Germany 45 days later. It was a time of open borders. He was already known to international media as the Pianist of Yarmouk after videos of him playing piano in the streets had been posted on Youtube. He was immediately provided with shelter and concerts.

“After 15 days I play with Herbert Grönemeyer, Sportfreunde Stiller [one of Germany’s most famous indie bands], Judith Holofernes [German folk musician] - the biggest stars in Germany,” he says excitedly. “And I sing with Judith Holofernes a German song with a Syrian song [in front of] 70,000 people.”

Keys to Friendship

More recently Ahmad has worked with jazz pianist Edgar Knecht and together they’ve recorded Keys to Friendship: an exhalting album of Palestinian and Syrian folksongs.

On To those in the waves Ahmad's wailing is not just accompanied but somehow heard and carried on Knecht’s cascading arpeggios.

The song Green Peppermint (Tell me about Syria) is Ahmad’s personal recollection of his life before and during the war.

“Syria cries for its people to come home," he sings in Arabic. ..."waiting for the promise for relief. Remember the green peppermint waiting for you… to water it with your tears which are filled with sorrow and joy every day.”

The song was written by his friend Amer Helwani, “the man who asked me to taste the cat [with him]”, says Ahmad.

He tells the story of how, with little to eat but grass, Helwani had cooked an alley cat and invited Ahmed to share it.

Ahmed didn’t want to eat cat, he wanted his friend to write a song about being hungry which they could then film and post on social media to draw attention to their plight.

“You ask me to write a poem about being hungry,” retorts Helwani. “I don’t need to write poetry, look at what I eat!”

Ahmad remembers that despite his unhappiness, Helwani “had a lot of hope” so he wanted to keep the melody joyful, like a folkloric dance.

But “the double bass player played it sad,” he says, “and now when I play the song I miss everything [back home]”.

The list includes: his Ukrania piano, his teacher Fadi, playing in Yarmouk, Amar [with whom he went to fetch water every morning], his parents, his brother who disappeared, his singing partner Marwan who helped him push the piano into the streets every day.

Yarmouk misses you

Another song on the album is Yarmouk Misses You, a favourite of the children that used to come into the streets to sing with him.

“Oh my dear expelled people you’ve been away so long, come dear, come back! Miss you already much too long! You now live in Qudsayya? Yarmouk mises you, brother!”

It was written by Mahmoud Tamim, a Palestinian refugee who disappeared in March 2015.

“It’s also a song for Mahmoud Tamim, I don’t know if he’s still alive, and also my brother he’s been five years in prison," Ahmad explains, "and Niraz Saied the photographer [arrested in October 2015] who’s also in prison. A lot of prisoners in Syria, more than 60,000. We hope to have them out.”

“The song is not only about missing the Palestinian community, I miss also the Syrian community, my mother she is Syrian. It’s a kind of sweet dream, I mean 'let’s build together, let’s be together again'.”

World music thriving as Europe closes in on itself

Ahmad has been able to bring his wife and two children to Germany. They now live in Wiesbaden in the south. He gives music lessons and many, many concerts. In December 2015 he received the first International Beethoven Prize for Human Rights.

“It’s great how the Europeans react with the music. World music is going very well in Europe [but] in another way you see how the right is winning in Europe, with right politics."

In his autobiography Ahmad talks of the need to remain active all the time, the anguish of being in a quiet place where dark thoughts return to haunt him.

“Sometimes I feel full of joy, sometimes I hate myself for living such a wonderful life. I say to myself I’m sitting on a mountain of corpses” he writes.

But the book, the album and the concerts allow Ahmad to keep Yarmouk in people’s minds and give a face to the otherwise “grey silhouettes” of refugees in Europe.

As for his sons, Ahmed and Kinan, he says he might “teach them to build ouds” but, unlike his own father, won’t push them into music.

Back home in Yarmouk, Ahmad’s father made the right choice for his son. Now, thanks to him, his grandsons have the freedom to decide their own future.

South African singer-songwriter and actor Nakhane burst onto the European scene in December 2017 at the TransMusicales festival in the French town of Rennes where he was given carte blanche five nights in a row. The LGBTQ trailblazer with the heavenly voice seems set for stardom. He talks to RFI about starring in the award-winning but controversial film The Wound and "queering" religion on his new album You will not die.

Ivorian singer-songwriter, dancer and percussionist Dobet Gnahoré talks to RFI about her upcoming album Miziki. Sung mainly in her native Bété language she explores her vision of pan-Africanism with strong, rebellious women at its heart. Produced by Nicolas Repac, Gnahoré brings her love of electronic music to the fore.

Belgian rapper Baloji's fourth album 137 Avenue Kaniama references an address in Lubumbashi, DRC, close to where he was born nearly 40 years ago. He talks to RFI about exploring the A and B sides of his "Afropean" identity through a kaleidoscope of sounds from rap to electro, hip hop to opera and a host of African rhythms.

Ÿuma are an alternative folk duo from Tunisia. One of the rare bands to sing in Tunisian dialect, they've just released their second album Poussière d'Etoiles. They talk to RFI about breathing new life into a music scene dominated by rap and hip hop, and explain why their songs are so popular with a young generation in dire need of love and affection.

Bai Kamara Jr is a singer-songwriter from Sierra Leone. As his country peacefully goes to the polls, the Brussels-based musician, who's lent his voice to Amnesty International and Unicef, talks to RFI about reasons to feel proud of his homeland and why he chose a musical path rather than following his family into politics.

Nigerian singer and saxophonist Seun Kuti, the youngest son of the late Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, inherited both his father's band Egypt 80 and his political fight in support of the working class. With a new album Black Times out this week, he talks to RFI's Alison Hird about why he believes it's time to awaken black consciousness and build an African Dream based on community, not consumerism.