f44 Sudancing Queen
London-based Sudanese singer Amira Kheir has made a great leap forward, reckons Jamie Renton
2014’s Alsahraa. They were already start- ing to perform new material which would ultimately end up on Mystic Dance. “It just happened quite organically,” she tells me. “That’s how it works. We’ll be performing and then I’ll just feel like, ‘OK, there’s a body of work which I feel is coherent. There’s music here that makes sense together, that could make up an album’. That’s when we start to fine-tune things. But the main body just gets road tested through playing live.”
Not that she doesn’t push and develop things once in the studio. Working with a fixed ensemble of musicians is a great asset, especially as, according to Amira, “They’re a band of perfectionists.” For her, the recording process is all about captur- ing things when they’ve got the right com- bination of technical musicianship and warmth. “I just know when it feels right.”
I
sn’t it great when a promising artist makes that leap up onto the next artistic level? When someone whose music you’ve liked very much for a good few years sudden- ly delivers the album where it all comes together? So it is with Amira Kheir and her recently released third album Mystic Dance (Sterns). The London-based Sudanese singer has been developing her distinctive craft since 2011. I wrote about her as part of a feature on North African music in the UK (fR350) but this new release just blows everything wide open. It’s spacey, intimate, full of insinuating melodies, with just the right mix of deep roots and daring.
I meet Amira in the tiny basement bar
of Camden Town’s peerless Green Note venue. She’s friendly and thoughtful, with a nice line in self-deprecating humour. Having interviewed her before and seen her around since, it feels a bit like catching up with an old friend. We did the life story last time round, so our conversation cen- tres on the new album, taking in music, culture and philosophy along the way.
The roots of the album can be found in the gigs Amira and her band played fol- lowing the release of its predecessor,
Her band features Chilean drummer Leanadro Mancini, who knows his jazz and Latin American styles, but can move into all kinds of genres. “He has his own signa- ture way of playing. But he can, so smoothly, go from one thing to another.” Bassist Michele Montole is a definite jazzer but open with it and a key player in the arrangements. Guitarist Tal Janes, “He’s a musician who struck me because he can just let go so easily. If he has to improvise, he’ll go for it and there’s no holding back. He brought in a vibe and an energy that was really spacey, which is just what I was looking for.”
“I wanted to take my arrangements of the traditional repertoire into a place where everyone could go in and just sit and listen to it. Like an atmospheric big open space. The north of Sudan, where I come from, it’s desert music, desert peo- ple. I wanted something very widescreen, very atmospheric, kind of cosmic. All the way open wide. And I felt that Tal’s play- ing really just nailed it. Also, it was the first time that we plugged everything in. The majority of the album is electric.”
Unlike many plugged in, cosmic, spacey-sounding albums, this one is strong on melodies. “In the end,” says Amira, “We plug into all this and it just takes us back to the roots. That’s the joy and fun of it.”
Central to the project is oud player
Nadir Ramzy, who also sings and plays per- cussion. He’s the musician Amira has been working with the longest (all the way back to the first album, 2011’s A View From Nowhere). “The oud isn’t even his first instrument. He’s actually a guitarist. But ever since we first started playing togeth- er, I really wanted him to play the oud. Because I was very nostalgic for that sound. I encouraged him to sing too. Because there’s just something amazing about his voice. It’s really raw, earthy and spiritual. Just very beautiful.”
Guests on the album include Idris Rah- man (of Soothsayers fame) who added tenor sax and clarinet to some tracks. Marimba player Hal Hutchinson features on just one, Nasaim Allel. “The funny thing with that song is that we had never rehearsed it all together before recording it. I had rehearsed with Hal separately. I passed what we’d played to my bassist and then we just did a couple of takes live and that was how we recorded it.” The other guest on that track is South African spoken word artist Leeto Thale, whom Amira first heard perform many years ago and came into her head when she was writing Nasaim Allel.
The album’s opener Amwaj was actu- ally the very last song Amira wrote. “The lyrics were in my mind for a long time. I’d write little bits and pieces for a while, but I was focusing more on the songs we were already performing live. However, when the time came, I just put it down, the melody was there and when I took it to the guys, it just came to life. It was a magi- cal moment. And ironically, it’s probably the most played song on the album. ”The song’s title translates as ‘waves’. When I was writing it, I was thinking about the cyclicality of life. The way some things come back and history repeats itself. But then with every repetition, there’s an opportunity for us to change and deter- mine the course of where we want to go. Amwaj is about looking at our role in the world as humanity. Who do we want to be? What kind of legacy do we want to leave behind? It became about going back to look into our roots to find the answers that we need to face today’s challenges.”
Photo: © Judith Burrows
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