f26 Return To The Source
Afro Celt Sound System have been reborn with a fresh vision. Elizabeth Kinder talks with the key mover-shakers, and Judith Burrows took photos.
liant new release – a quick Q&A is required. T
What do you suppose is the actual per- centage of immigrants in the UK popula- tion? Oh. A zillion. Have they rushed over here to just a) steal our jobs, or b) claim ben- efits? Neither. Really? Yep. The answer is c) Both. They are falling over themselves to get to Dover and launch into startling barefaced benefit fraud. How many of these are Muslims (aka terrorists)? Oh God, that’s easy, the answer is a trillion. No, wait, a million trillion percent. At least! No won- der the welfare state is collapsing and the churches are empty.
Actually the total percentage of immi- grants in the UK population is, according to the latest census thirteen percent – but we believe it’s 24.4 percent. The total amount of benefit fraud is 0.7 percent (and obvious- ly not confined to the immigrant popula- tion) – we believe it’s 27.7 percent. The actu- al percentage of Muslims in the UK is five percent: we believe it’s 21 percent. Why?
Government manoeuvring through a
Tory-dominated press, that’s why. OK, I’m biased. I don’t hang around with people who think that Cameron and his dark assis- tant Osborne have any deeply connected relationship with truth or reality as I see or experience it. Their weird, tiny, excluding Bullingdon Club world view is trumpeted throughout the media via mouthpieces (such as the marvellously sane and balanced Katie Hopkins) who present this peculiarly warped vision of a perfect society as both rational and desirable. Statistics are ignored: rather an extreme example of the horror du jour is posited as typical. So an atypical tale becomes the tip of the iceberg, the frothing atop the tsunami. These stories always pack an emotional punch. They work at instilling fear and division and insecurity so we cannot feel safe in our beds at night, not whilst the immigrants are stubbing their fags out and spilling vodka and borscht on our doorstep prior to breaking in. We haven’t got time to look at the facts. We’re too busy rigging up alarm systems to pro- tect the widescreen telly.
What’s this got to do with the Afro Celts? In their very existence the Afro Celts are the fresh springwater running through
o dive into the nitty-gritty of the absolute brilliance of Afro Celt Sound System in one of their lat- est incarnations, and of The Source – their absolutely bril-
the mire. Promoting harmony, literally and figuratively, in their inspiring new album, they are the source of positive alternative narratives that play to and suggest the best in people rather than inflaming the worst. This does not happen in a dodgy-hippy floaty-peace-and-love kind of way, it’s sim- ply intrinsic to the music and the make-up of the band.
Ironically, its latest iteration – compris- ing Simon Emmerson (guitars, cittern, bass programming electronica), Johnny Kalsi (dhol drums, percussion, beats and pro- gramming), N’Faly Kouyaté (kora, balafon, percussion, calabash and kirin) Griogair Labhruidh (simply known as Griogair – vocals, rap, highland pipes and whistles, electric guitar), Mass (keyboards, beats and electronica), Jamie Reid (artwork and visu- als) and Moussa Sissokho (talking drum, djembe and calabash) as the band’s core members – did not come about in an intrin- sically peace and love kind of way. Emmer- son, who started the band with Jamie Reid in 1995, opening out the collective to include contractually amongst others Mar- tin Russell and James McNally in 1997, is not keen to discuss why neither Russell nor McNally are part of this line up. Not because he’s hiding anything but because they are not here having lunch with us in my kitchen, to put their side of the story.
S
o Emmerson stays schtum on the subject, saying it’s unfair to men- tion it. But he talks passionately about the importance of the griot and the impact of the griot influ-
ence in the band through Kouyaté and Sis- sokho and how one of their fundamental roles is that of mediation through which he wants very much to resolve the issue. So I’m saying then that at least part of the reason for Russell and McNally’s absence is down to the age-old tradition of musicians in successful bands falling out over busi- ness arrangements. No one cares who’s got what share of the publishing royalties if only seven albums have been – or are likely to be – shifted. But Afro Celt Sound Sys- tem’s record sales on Real World are only outstripped by Peter Gabriel’s. When com- bined sales are into the millions, and each album into the hundreds of thousands, then there’s a stake in the argument.
It’s fair to say that Kalsi and Kouyaté in
particular, who’ve performed and/or recorded with the Afro Celts after Volume 1: Sound Magic (1996), joining for Volume
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