Giuliano was really keen to highlight the importance of cultural exchange and collaboration between musicians. “We also created a label next to the album and one of our plans is to keep alive this concept of learning and collaboration. One of the things that we really want to do is to create albums around singers. Radio International is almost a manifesto for us; it represents what the band is about. We affirmed the concepts of internationalism and having no borders in it. But now we want to go a little more in depth and work with one artist at time. When we worked with Elaha, it was such a great learning experience and we listened to so much Afghan music. We have to learn it and subscribe to it, to find ways to integrate our sound. Because we’re obviously not Afghan folk musicians, but we still want to keep part of the tradition intact. For this reason, you really need to rely on the artists you work with: they’re the ones who come from the tradition and provide you the understanding. For us, Kefaya is also a medium to learn music and meet musicians. That’s also why it’s such an inspiring project”.
We wondered if their London days are inspiring and moving the project forward and if the city itself is an important incentive for their multicultural credo. Al explained that “There’re always amazing things going on in London in terms of the different communities. In Leeds there were amazing musicians too, for example I was playing with some amazing West African musicians when I was there, but we had no gigs. While now, I’m working with West African musicians in London and there’s actually a West African community, so we can play a gig and people will come to listen to us. Or when we perform with Olcay, there’re many Turkish people coming to listen to her and they get where she’s coming from. So yes, that’s the exciting thing about London, there’re all these communities and people come out to concerts and understand what’s happening. While in Leeds this thing wasn’t really there. Anyway, it’s always like you get something and you lose something, because in Leeds you could easily find places where you have time, space and the facilities to practice and create new projects. Whilst London is a very careerist city and it’s very difficult to find a rehearsal space, if you add the fact that everybody is busy and poor you can easily ask yourself if this is really the best place to be if you want to create a new project”.
Giuliano piled it on “That happens also when you’re developing your sound. I used to do so much practice when I was living in Leeds… It was so easy: the rent was so cheap and you got huge houses for a few hundred pounds. For this reason, no one was going to a rehearsal space: they have enough space to practice at home. On the other side, if you want to meet, see and witness great music coming from different parts of the world, I think that London is the best place. Even if at times it’s quite hard to find out what’s going on, because things happen in communities and maybe you’re not too involved with them. Anyway, the options are countless in London”.
Next to being really active in London and the UK, Kefaya have also gained a consistent following in India where they have already played several gigs. We asked the musicians what it was like to perform there and how people reacted to their music. Al confirm the strong bond with the South Asian country saying “During the last two years, we played many times in India. We played during festivals and we also had a tour. India is quite an exciting place for music at the moment. There’s a growing scene and new festivals are starting every year. People understand our music because they fully understand our Indian classical side. They know exactly what we’re doing and understand when we play with the art form. While here people usually enjoy that, but don’t necessarily understand its details. I think that generally, in India, there’s a real cultural engagement with music”.
Giuliano easily agreed with Al, “People are really thirsty for new stuff. They travel a long way and make a lot of effort to see one concert. There’re things happening, but not that much and they only happen in some months of the year. So, when something’s happening, somehow people have to be there. We saw that in Kolkata we packed a place essentially with people who we know and they know, and we never played in Kolkata before! The funny thing is that 90% of the audience was composed of musicians. So yes, there’s this desire to learn and see new things. I found Indians really inspiring in this sense. People are really thirsty for culture and that’s why it is considered such as an important thing”.
Al made a quick comparison with what’s going on in London: “Actually, that’ one of the problems in London, because there’s so much going on that people take it for granted”.
Hopefully, no one will take for granted Kefaya’s music, starting from their debut album. Which, as Al affirmed, forms an important benchmark in their musical career. “We have finally got something out there that people can see and listen to. So we will see what is going to happen in the next few months. The band is ready; we have a great live band. This summer we have been to festivals with a 9-piece band (quartet plus two singers, a tabla player a drum player and our engineer, who’s also taking care of electronics) and we are going to have a big band for our album launch on the 25th [of November at Rich Mix]. There will be a few guests and we are going to have the all night for ourselves. So, we are really excited about that”.
When you chat with Giuliano and Al, it’s straightforward to understand the undefined nature of their project, so much so that you can present it as a cultural work in progress. Giuliano confirmed our thesis talking about the future of the band. “We are thinking about different solutions inside Kefaya. For example, we are thinking about another project to do an album in a trio which will sound more electronic. This is the thing with Kefaya: we want to do something that can give us the opportunity to be whatever we want to be, to change. Kefaya is more a collective, it’s not like you always have to have always those musicians… We have done gigs in so many different formations: duos, trios, quartets and so on”.
So, to wrap up our chat, we asked the musicians the canonical closing question, how would they introduce Kefaya? The answer that Al gave us was inevitably, an open-ended one…
“Kefaya is an internationalist collective and we really believe in the concept of internationalism. We are truly against these ideas of patriotism and small-money nationalism. We see ourselves as part of the human race and we don’t really subscribe to this idea of nationalism. We know that people are stronger from sharing what they have and working together and our band reflects that in some way. We talk about this idea of no borders and we think that it has to be musically as well. We just believe in sharing things and finding a common language in what we do”.
…and considering the strange days we’re experience, there wasn’t a more promising way to close an interview.
In collaboration with Rich Mix
