Farida Amadou “The music shows the turmoil inside me”

Farida Amadou (Photo: Walter) 

Belgian-Nigerian bassist Farida Amadou has been reinventing the electric bass for over a decade. Her spectrum ranges from deep-listening ambient sounds to high-pressure noise and sound sculpture. Amadou is self-taught and very aware of her idiosyncratic relationship with her instrument. She has also just released with Cologne based imprint Week-End-Records, the album “When it rains it pours”.

Congratulations to your new album on Week-End records. Seeing you play so often during in recent years I already wondered when and in which context it will show up. Was it a difficult process for you to switch from performance mode to recording?

Farida Amadou: First, thanks for the greetings!
Actually, the album was composed while touring. It’s like the opposite process of a regular album making for me. You see, while touring solo for the last three years, I realised there were some patterns and sounds that were always coming back and as an improviser, what I wanted to do is improvise a new concert each time (oh, I was naive). So at first, I was pushing out the recurrents patterns but then I decided it was a part of my playing so I took it as a puzzle game construction. And tried to find matching pieces while touring to compose this. It’s only true for side B and A2). Side A2 was totally improvised in the studio.

As you have been a signature artist of the Monheim Triennale I had the chance to see you perform there a few times, but also at other occasions as you are very active and play many solo shows and festivals. I suppose to me, you are first and foremost a performing artist. Maybe you could talk a bit about the relationship between the stage musician Farida Amadou who is improvising solo and with other musicians and the songwriter Farida Amadou.

I really do think I am a performing artist. For me, the audience is a big part of what I do. It can be 20 or 1000 people, I feel their energy in the room and it helps me in my performance. A lot of people only understand what I am doing by seeing me performing. I rarely send links of my music to people who haven’t seen me perform at least once.

That being said, I am not comfortable recording music. To me it doesn’t make any sense being in a studio to record improvised music without an audience but that is very personal. Each time I have to do this, I try to think about my favorite performances of the year or my favorite collaborations to get in the recording mood if I record solo. I record with other people, it’s a bit different because I get the other musician’s vibes and I am more comfortable than recording solo.

I absolutely love improvising with other musicians, especially musicians I really know very well, who became friends over the years, like Julien Desprez and Lukas Koenig because it’s just very nice being surrounded by people you trust and love. I rarely improvise with musicians I don’t know now. Except if it’s an idea of composed music I had over years. That means, what I did with Came Ayewa at Monheim Triennale is kind of my last new collaboration since then!

The songwriter Farida is very quiet. I mostly compose on an electric guitar with clean sound, then I destroy the composition with my bass and effects and it becomes something close to the piece “The end Of” on my new album.

Photo: Laurent Orseau

Do you record most of your live shows – as this might lead to some ideas for songs later on? Or do you remember everything that happens on stage and can return to it afterwards?

I think this is part of the answer to this first question. I do not record my concerts (I haven’t for 6 or 7 years). Most of it is from memory.

How important is Belgium for you as an artist and also your music?

Belgium is the country where I was born so it’s important for me to try to connect with organisations and musicians here. As everyone knows it’s a small but very complicated country politically, so basically I try to turn everything that sounds negative into a source of inspiration. Like the story around the colonisation, as an example, which is going to be part of my projects to come. Brussels is especially interesting because it’s very multicultural and it’s a nest for dance performers, filmmakers, … I am trying to connect more with those than improv musicians.

Photo: Laurent Orseau

Have there been role models for you as an upcoming artist?

Not artist role models. My mother was always a role model to me, even if I am just realising now how much. The way she left her country family and friends to start over in a city where with my brother and sisters we were seen as strangers and fighting so we could have a decent life… I don’t even know where to start, but I guess you get my point!

And right now, do you still feel like you position yourself in the music world in relation to and with other musicians or does it feel you (completely) reached your own path?

Both, because one does not exclude the other. I feel like I am on my own path but still trying to create art with a community of improvisers/performers in Europe and all over (Chris Corsano, Moor Mother, Aquiles Navarro, Julien and Lukas). It’s just that my solo work is the one who’s the most important to me right now and I feel like I have more to say on this particular path.

Photo: Bozar

Being an artist these days can be fraught. The audience watches and listens carefully to everything artists say, especially politics. Is simply focusing on music still possible?

I think everything is political whether you want it to be or not. We, as artists, were already born with differences (gender, sexual orientation, money, skin color). I want everyone to remember this because most programmers and journalists I have met seem to forget and put all artists on the same line, which is not true.
They are artists who are struggling to eat at the end of the month and they are others who have their houses and cars paid for by their relatives… It’s already something. So, I am not sure of what you want me to say but I am not the kind of artist who’s going to keep her mouth shut when a festival clearly demands we not talk about war, genocide and famine. About producing music, if you make the music it’s already produced. I had the chance to meet Jan Lankish for Week-End records who believes in me and my music but for years before that my music was just self produced.
What does it even mean today ” I produced this”?

I mentioned your crazy high touring schedule. Do you still enjoy being on the road so much or is it also sometimes a burden you have to take on as you need the money?

Touring is always a pleasure for me. When it becomes a burden, maybe I’ll become a studio musician.

Photo: Bozar

The album comes by the title “When It Rains It Pours“ – what led to that idea?

The album title is connected to a childhood trauma and how as an adult when you are experiencing any kind of trauma as a child, it stays in your body and you experience what is called a complex PTSD which I have and inspired me for that album.

How do you feel about the tensions between improvisation, song writing and being a sound sculptor? How do they intersect for you?

To me, they are all related. When I compose a piece, I improvise and when I improvise I sculpt the sound. As an evening sculpting sound can end up being a composed piece.

Photo: Niclas Weber

You never formally learned your instrument, a fact that I totally love as it goes against the traditional hierarchies and institutions – all that focus on who you studied under, rather than what you have to say. That said, I can imagine you sometimes get pushback from those who went the traditional route. How has being self-taught played a role in your musical journey?

It took some time. The first five years I started playing the bass, I was practicing five hours a day to be as good as the people who studied in music schools. As I grew old, I didn’t care anymore and tried to accept that it’s just the way it is for me. I guess the public/audience/fans gave me a lot to be confident about in the last five years.

Your music feels constantly in movement. Even though often you repeat fragments or melodic passages, it does not really linger in the moment. Does that make sense?

Yes, I agree with you. I can play repetitive patterns or textures that are constantly in the movement as the time passes. Like the Earth is in movement too. Isn’t everything in this life a movement?

As a person you always seem kind of calm and present in a harmonious way. So I wondered if this is just your public personality (as we all learn not to show everything to everybody as we get older) and the music reveals all the turmoil inside?

You got me! I actually don’t really have a public personality. In my personal life, I am as you see me on stage or in interviews. Exactly like you are saying. Very calm. I am a very patient, calm, introverted even person and the music shows the turmoil inside me. All the issues I have about the wars in the world, about Belgium not doing anything with our refugees, about how the world can be so unfair. I have a lot of empathy, and I am very sensitive so you can imagine life is not always easy for me. If I see someone struggling I want to help them, that is how I was raised. But still, I am calm on the outside.

What is it you search for (and find) in music?

I search for connections to other people and other musicians and I find it. But I also find relief in all the emotions I can feel. When I am playing, I don’t feel anything but calm, positive vibes. It’s my way to meditate.

Is there a specific song by someone else that is your happy place? One you always return to?

Yes. This year, I got addicted to two artists. Myriam Gendron and Kara Jackson.
“Waly Waly” from Myriam and “Brain” from Kara are on repeat in my ears.

I absolutely love singer-songwriter songs, and it’s inspiring me as much as a piece from Alice Coltrane or Peter Brötzmann.

How do you perceive yourself within the roster of Week-End-Records?

Very good question! Only as an artist with its own way of creating sound. The thing I love with Week-End Records is that Jan & Martin are just so passionate about music in general and they do not put musicians in boxes or limit themselves to a genre, so I guess that is why we are working together! In one label finding reggae music, Brazilian music, Fred Frith and me… It should be like this more often in the music industry.

What´s up for the months ahead?

Trying to focus on voice, samples, guitar and music from Niger (my roots)…
Let’s see !