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root salad
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Soznak
This big band are the ever evolving sound of modern
multicultural Newcastle. Jamie Renton likes.
S
oznak are the sound of modern how also smilingly sarcastic take on life,” he explains, “so, although my back-
multicultural Newcastle. The city’s he recalls. This can be best heard on ground is flamenco, I just absorb whatev-
not all brown ale and likely lads you Weekily, surely the first hi-life style song er comes to me.” Dear Dad Tango was his
know, it’s a destination for both to namecheck all of the major UK super- first time handling English lyrics.
refugees and foreign students, a place market chains (heard on this issue’s fRoots
“This is one of the things I love
with a well established global and roots 33 CD). Exiled in north-east England,
doing,” confides Paul. “Even though I’m
music scene, from which Soznak have
Beriso yearned for home and the family
not remotely Anglophile, I do like the chal-
emerged in all their rootin’ tootin’ glory.
he’d left behind, so Paul and the band
lenge of say Uli or Beriso singing in
The founder of this 12-piece big band is organised benefit gigs on his behalf, only English. The result is unique, because Uli
trumpeter Paul Miskin, a man with a long- to become victims of their own success, for example, creates a flamenco English
standing involvement in circus and musical when they raised enough money to singing style, to the point where you think
street theatre. He currently leads the very enable him to return to Angola and in so ‘Is this English?’. It’s like having one of
wonderful Ant Orkezdra, which features doing, lost a key Soznak player. those Babel Fish [from Hitchhiker’s Guide
lots of people on stilts, dressed as insects,
But band members come and go and
To The Galaxy] in your ear.”
blowing brass and bashing percussion. And
there is a big enough pool of musicians
something of that surreal humour has
(and easy access to replacements on the
spilled over into Soznak, a kaleidoscope of
Newcastle scene) for the odd absentee
a group with musicians and influences from
not to matter too much. The most recent P
aul’s dad Lionel, was the inspiration
for the album. Miskin Senior was a
painter, potter and author, whose
grandparents hailed from
southern and central Africa, the Middle
recruits are Congolese singer and gui- Argentina. “He created an imagined
East, the Med and the UK.
tarist Dems Ndume and15-year-old local Argentina,” Paul tells me. “He’d never
“When I started the band,” explains
girl vocalist Georgia Turnbull. “She’s got actually been there, but his Argentina of
Paul, in his affable West Country burr
a voice like dark chocolate,” explains the mind was very real. He was a fantastic
(he’s originally from Cornwall, but has
Paul, who likes to compare singers to illustrator and letter writer who produced
lived in Newcastle for many decades), “I
comestibles. “Then we have Mr Rioja sit- these amazing booklets which he would
didn’t know what I was going to get. I
ting here,” he continues, introducing Uli
send to all his friends.” Some of his
wanted an ever-evolving sound, other-
into the conversation. Uli grew up
artwork adorns the album’s sleeve and his
wise where’s the surprise? The essence of
around music in Spain and studied at
open-minded love of art and music, was
art is discovery. It almost seems not to
SOAS when he came to the UK. At one
clearly the driving force behind this band,
come out of your own mind, but from out
stage he lived in Newcastle, where Paul
who have a regular gig performing just
there, the great group subconscious and
sat in with the flamenco/ Latin party
outside Marks & Spencer on Newcastle’s
if you let it happen, you make more
band he was playing in at the time and
bustling Northumberland Street. “We’re
progress than if you have a very strong
(even though he’s now moved down to
not just a band,” Paul explains, “we’re an
idea and just go with it.”
London), Uli has stayed a member of Soz-
M&S band!”
Paul maintains that this openness is
nak. “I live in a very multicultural city,”
www.myspace.com/soznak17 F
not borne out of generosity of spirit, but
rather a desire to claim as his own all the
talent with which he surrounds himself
(but I’m not really sure I believe him). He’s
been lucky enough to find the kind of tal-
ent he needs. There’s flamenco vocalist Uli
Diaz, who sings on Dear Dad Tango – the
album’s title track, dedicated to Paul’s late
artist father – and also on The Moroccan,
the one non-original piece, an adaptation
of the flamenco standard Vengeo Del
Moro refitted with new lyrics telling of a
Moroccan exile in Spain. “He’s yearning
for the smell of cumin and marijuana,
while stuck with the smell of Spanish olive
oil and sewers,” as Paul puts it. This theme
of cultural displacement runs through the
album. “It’s almost become the main-
stream,” Paul reckons. “Most people feel,
if there was such a word, ‘transculturalat-
ed’ or slightly outside of whatever it was
that they came from.”
Angolan singer and guitarist Beriso
Latonda was another early Soznaker and
takes the lead on three of the album’s
finest moments. Paul first heard Beriso at
a refugee festival in Sunderland and was
immediately reminded of the Mighty
Sparrow records that his dad played to
him as a child. “It was his sweet, but some-
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