In 2020, with Berlin’s cultural life paused, a loose crew of artists gathered on the cracked concrete of Tempelhofer Feld, the city’s disused airport. Their open-air jams quickly bloomed into Sonic Interventions, a fluid, self-organising collective now woven into the fabric of Berlin’s improvised scene. Among those shaped by the early sessions is vocalist Nane Kahle. We caught up with her at WOMEX 24 in Manchester, where she introduced us to her experience with Sonic Interventions – how it began as gatherings in public space and evolved into a fluid, self-organising way of making music.
Even in a brief exchange, it was clear this was more than a band – a fluid, improvisation-led ensemble grounded in collective authorship and diasporic musical traditions. A few weeks later, we followed up by phone, joined by saxophonist and co-founder Pachakuti, to trace the collective’s journey and explore the ideas behind their debut album, Do You Remember?, released last November on Agogo Records.
From the start, Sonic Interventions was multidisciplinary by nature. Musicians, dancers, poets, filmmakers, and engineers came not to perform but to participate – to share space, sound, and presence. The weekly sessions took on a ritual quality, building a sonic palette shaped by Afro-diasporic rhythms, free jazz, Gnawa, hip-hop, spiritual invocations, and improvisation. Always shifting, always porous, the collective became a vessel for something bigger than any single genre or identity.
“It started as a gathering,” Nane remembered. “Just a few people meeting in the park, sharing music, movement, art… and it just grew. From the very beginning, it already felt like a party.”
“We were all separated, isolated,” Pachakuti explained. “And there was this deep need to connect, to be in community. Not just to perform, but to be present with each other.”
Over time, those weekly sessions stretched outward — turning into something looser, deeper. A shift came when founding member Keshu arrived with a mobile studio setup. “Keshu literally brought a studio to the park,” Nane recalled. “Right from the start. So we have all these recordings – hours and hours of them.”
Between 2020 and 2023, the group captured hundreds of multitrack sessions. Do You Remember? draws straight from that archive. “The album is really just a first dive into all of that,” Pachakuti noted. “It’s our way of revisiting the history, but also sharing it.”
The nine-track LP distils snapshots of those early years — outdoor jams, guerrilla studio setups, full-blown concerts. No fixed line-up. No fixed shape. Each track locks into a different energy.
Form unravels by design. “Sometimes we’d play for five hours straight,” Pachakuti recalled. “One idea flows into the next. There’s no start or end, just transitions.”
Still, the album carries a sense of direction. “Sort of like a greatest hits,” Nane laughed, “but also just a first attempt at making something digestible from this giant body of sound.”
The collective resists definition. Membership shifts constantly, with artists from Colombia, Peru, Chile, Congo, Mali, Senegal, South Africa, China, Germany, Australia, Hungary, Morocco, Algeria, Brazil, Cuba, and beyond. Around 20 musicians appear on the album — though many more have passed through.
“We always say it’s better not to put a number on it,” Nane added. “It’s an open family.”
There’s a core to Sonic Interventions. Vocalists Dumama, Astan Ka, Nane Kahle, and Douniah lead the frontline. Instrumentalists like Ziggy Zeitgeist, Dylan Green, Aduni Guedes, Eric Owusu, Hal Strafe, Paul Rhythms, Simo, and Àbáse each bring a distinct sonic language — shaping the collective’s sound across continents and traditions.
“We cooked together. We healed together,” Nane reflects. “It became a ritual.”
Selecting what to include became its own part of the process. “The choice reflects who we are and how we want to speak right now,” Pachakuti explains. “There’s a lot more that could be made from that material, for sure.”
For Nane, the archive marks more than a record — it captures transformation. “When I joined, I was just filming, helping out. And then I merged into it. I ended up singing. It just happened, organically. And it became a blessing. It brought me to where I am now.”
At its heart, Sonic Interventions holds a deeper weight — a commitment to presence, memory, and mutual care. “It was beautiful to see everyone coming together,” Nane recalls. “Even in lockdown, when we weren’t allowed to be close to each other. We were still building community, growing through it.”
That spirit began outdoors at Tempelhofer Feld, but carried through even as the group moved indoors. “There were moments,” she remembers. “Police would come, tell us to separate. But we kept going. And when we walked into that old airport building for the first time — all of us carrying gear, moving together — it felt like exile, but in the most poetic sense.” She pauses. “It was epic.”
Do You Remember? captures that feeling. It’s not just a collection of tracks, it’s the first shape carved from a vast, shifting archive. Between 2020 and 2023, the group recorded roughly 300 sessions, from park jams to living room takes. Only nine made it onto the record.
“This is just the beginning,” Pachakuti notes. “We’re sitting on hundreds of jams. This is a selection — our favourites. But there’s a lot more that could be made from this material.”
The filtering was both instinctive and pragmatic. “We used a basic rating system,” he continues. “How much we liked it, and how complete the recording was. Sometimes parts were missing — the horns weren’t mic’d, or something dropped out.”
Once they had a shortlist, the focus shifted to structure and range. “It wasn’t just about strong moments,” he adds. “It was about contrast. We wanted to represent different moods, different line-ups, different energies.”
Afrobeat, free jazz, hip-hop, house, Gnawa, Latin — it’s all there, striking a balance of flow and depth. “And it had to fit on a 40-minute vinyl,” he adds, grinning.
The first single from Do You Remember? was “Twasa”, released in September. “It’s based on a folktale from Southern Africa,” Nane explains. “Dumama sings in Xhosa. It’s about the path to becoming a healer — using images of dying animals to talk about death and transformation, and how you learn to turn that into life.”
That thread of transformation — personal, collective, spiritual — runs through the group’s evolution too. Keeping Sonic Interventions together, across continents and commitments, has never been simple. But the challenge is also what gives the project its gravity.
“It was organic,” says Nane. “We supported each other, meditated together, shared food, talked openly about what we were going through. Corona meant we were fully present. We didn’t have anywhere else to be.”
That pace has shifted. “Everyone’s busy now,” she continues. “Touring, working on other things. It’s harder to meet. But we still make space when something needs to be addressed. We listen. We try to hold space for each other. It’s really about love and understanding — as much as we can manage.”
Pachakuti echoes that sense of intention. “There’s always this call to remember — why we started, what this is really for. Healing, unity, beauty. That’s what keeps us here.”
The collective’s diversity brings both friction and depth. “It’s like a condensed version of the world,” Nane reflects. “Different languages, cultures, ways of thinking. But we’re willing to do the work.”
And Do You Remember? documents that work — not just the music they made, but the way they held space, stayed in dialogue, and kept returning to the core.
The second single, “Ma Qeti Pa Haru”, arrived in October. “It starts with a prayer in Hekau,” says Nane. “That’s an ancient Egyptian language. I’m a Kemetic yoga instructor — that’s where this comes from.”
For her, the track speaks to both connection and inner reckoning. “It’s about remembering that we are all connected. That we are all divine, all from the same source. And it’s also about dealing with the demons we all carry — jealousy, fear, judgement. The inner work we need to do to survive in this world.”
Musically, the track flows through Gnawa rhythms, afrobeat, and hip-hop, underpinned by layered horns and a feature from Astan Ka. “It’s a full, layered experience,” Nane says. “Multidimensional. It’s about connecting to a higher realm.”
Improvisation drives much of Sonic Interventions’ sound, but “Ma Qeti Pa Haru” moves with a distinct clarity. “You have to listen to it,” she adds. “To really feel what it’s about.”
Collaboration has always sat at the heart of Sonic Interventions — both in how they work together and how they connect beyond the group. Their link with Agogo Records came about in exactly that spirit.
“Agogo is one of the key labels in Germany for groove and global sounds,” Pachakuti notes. “They’re based in Hannover. The connection came through our friends in Jembaa Groove. I did a remix for them — and from there, we stayed in touch.”
They crossed paths again at XJazz Festival. That’s when the conversation opened up. “The album was taking shape, and we felt ready to present it. They were super positive and welcoming.”
So much so, in fact, that a remix album may be on the way. “That’s still a bit of a secret,” Pachakuti grins, “but yes, a remix version of Do You Remember? is being discussed.”
Still, Sonic Interventions have never just been about recorded output. The next step is live. “We’re working on an international tour,” he shares. “It’s a challenge — especially financially, with such a large group — but it’s what we’re working toward.”
Another release is already lined up — this one recorded live in Frankfurt, through Jazz Montez. “That’s a special one,” says Nane.
Summer 2025 will mark a new chapter, as the collective prepares to take its layered, border-crossing sound to stages across Europe.
However, even as their music edges outward, Sonic Interventions remains firmly anchored in Berlin’s local undercurrents.“It’s mostly an electronic city,” Nane admits. “But the live music scene feels like a family. We all know each other.”
She points to the pockets where that energy thrives. “Once you start moving around a bit, you find spaces like Taiga and Cassette Head — events run by Hal Strafe, who’s also on the album — where nu-soul, new wave jazz, spoken word, and global beats are really starting to emerge.”
“It’s a strange place to do this kind of music,” Pachakuti adds. “Berlin is very predominantly electronic, technoid. It’s famous for that in the world, but at the same time, there’s an emerging jazz scene, and a lot of people from all around the world live in and around Berlin. That makes it a place full of life, with all kinds of genres and grooves. That’s the movement we’re part of.”
He sees Sonic Interventions as part of a broader cultural shift. “It’s very exciting to be close to so many people — some of them our idols — who paved the way for us, who made it possible for us to even do this kind of music nowadays. There are constant meetings, collaborations, ideas being exchanged. Hopefully, it builds into something that extends beyond Berlin — something that can influence other musical and cultural spaces to be more open, more collaborative.”
That sense of rootedness plays against the city’s faster currents. In a place where club culture often leads and connection can feel transient, Sonic Interventions foregrounds process and presence — linking local collaboration to something wider.
Their creative ties run deep. From Move78 to Batila & The Dream Bus, the web of connections runs wide. They mention La Cura, a cumbia-rooted group, and Aradjue, a Latin American alt-groove project. There’s Paul Rhythms (aka Paul Osco), with his Peruvian singer-songwriter lean, and artists like Douniah, Dumama, Karim, Aduni, and Astan Ka, each pushing their own lanes.
“We’re also part of The New Love Experience,” Nane adds, “a Berlin–Hildesheim collective that blends Brazilian hip-hop and afrobeat. It’s all interconnected.”
When the subject turns to influences, the list stretches across timelines and continents. “Sun Ra, obviously,” Nane begins. “Improvisation, Afrofuturism. Also a friend of a really dear friend of mine — Arnaud Tignon, an amazing jazz pianist.”
She pauses before diving deeper. “I knew about Funkadelic and all that before, but I hadn’t really gone deep on George Clinton — or understood just how much he’s done over the years. That all those bands are part of the same extended world.”
There’s a clear parallel in her mind. “It reminds me a bit of Sonic Interventions in some ways — that idea of a huge collective, dancing, moving, merging. An entity with so many layers. There’s George Clinton, but also all the traditional elements we carry.”
Roots run wide and deep. “People come from Colombia, Peru, Chile, Congo, Mali, Senegal, South Africa, United States… even China ancestry,” she continues. “All those roots are in our bodies. In our music — from traditional Brazilian Candomblé to Colombian sounds from the Pacific coast, Caribbean grooves, music from Senegal and Ivory Coast, and more contemporary styles too like hip-hop.”
Across the Zoom window, Pachakuti nods. “Shabaka Hutchings has been a huge influence. His work across Sons of Kemet and The Comet is Coming. Also Makaya McCraven — that blend of jazz, hip hop, broken beat.”
The UK jazz continuum also gets a nod — Blue Lab Beats, Balimaya Project — alongside Fela Kuti. “Fela brought groove and politics together,” he says. “That’s a huge part of our DNA too.”
But Sonic Interventions aren’t chasing a sound. They’re building a space — one you enter. So how do they define what they’ve made?
“Ancient Future Groove,” Nane offers, without missing a beat. “That’s what it is.”
She goes further. “Sonic Interventions is an entity. It’s an experience that merges ancestry, Afrofuturism, activism — and love. We talk about heavy things, but not to divide. We’re here to heal.”
Across the conversation, Pachakuti threads it all together: “There’s no single definition. It’s a band. A family. A collective. A ritual. A party. A prayer. A transformation. It’s always different.”
At its core, the project makes an offering — to each other, to whoever’s listening, to the moment itself. “Especially now,” he reflects, “when unity, healing, and memory are so urgently needed.”
Do You Remember? doesn’t just deliver tracks. It opens questions. “Questions we asked each other,” Pachakuti continues, “and now we ask the listener. We hope it sparks something — reflection, conversation, maybe change.”
They leave one more offering: ‘Can’t Uproot Me,’ from XJazz Berlin’s Entangled Grounds, released May 2024 — their quiet tribute to a city still in motion.
“It’s our humble contribution to a brilliant collection of music from Berlin’s jazz scene,” Pachakuti says with a quiet smile.
Grab your copy of Do You Remember?, the debut LP from Sonic Interventions, out on Agogo Records HERE
Follow the collective and stay updated on upcoming European tour dates HERE