The Swedish Rapper Silvana Imam (photo: Mikael Thor)

Silvana Imam: Change Is Now

Interview

Queer feminist Swedish rapper Silvana Imam questions privileges and fights for a global feminist movement. However, the interview shows that her protest is not made out of empty slogans, but out of strong beliefs. From the Norient book Seismographic Sounds (see and order here).

[Theresa Beyer]: What does desire mean to you?

[Silvana Imam]: Desire is everything. It’s a synonym for passion to me. Everything I do is sprung out of passion. I love my work, my art. Through that I have been given a platform to express myself, it’s a blessing to be able to do it. My emotions sometimes get the best of me, which is my gift and my curse.

[TB]: What was your idea behind the song «I•M•A•M»?

[SI]: When I wrote «I•M•A•M» my intention was to grow a seed in people, to have them question our society and make it cool to want to make a difference. I needed to introduce myself with powerful statements and namedrop some of my inspirations, such as Simone de Beauvoir. I also needed to speak to the 15-year-old me who couldn’t identify with her gender stereotype. I wanted to give that person the confidence and voice she never had.

[TB]: So the song has this introspective side, but at the same time you are stirring things up with a really big ladle addressing every woman…

[SI]: I do not only address women, the feminist revolution I’m calling for is about every fucking person living on this planet. Feminism is equality where you are not judged by the color of your skin, your social class, sexuality, age, religion, gender, or whether you have a disability or not. I’m speaking to the white privileged man to take a step back. I’m speaking to teachers to talk with boys and girls (and transgender kids) equally, to not make a difference between the genders and raise our kids equally. I’m trying to set us free from all stereotypes.

[TB]: So you believe you can change the world?

[SI]: Yes, my plan is to change culture from within and to change the habitual structures. Also, I want to recreate the way we view art in general and especially music. When I create, it’s all about energies and relations between people. My producer Nisj won’t send a beat for me to go home and write sixteen bars on it and then come to the studio and record – we create together. We live our lives in symbiosis and create topics together. Everything is about real issues, real lives, real emotions.

[TB]: How often do your identities as musician and political activist intertwine?

[SI]: First and foremost I’m an artist, I make art. I don’t do politics, I believe in people. Nina Simone said «You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.» I’m a conscious rapper with progressive beats.

[TB]: Is it a conflict for you being leftist and making a professional career (and money) in the music business? Often queer feminist and activist rappers lose their credibility as soon they enter a public mainstream – subcultural fans feel betrayed, accuse them of selling out and abandoning their ideals. Could this struggle of authenticity happen to you as well?

[SI]: I am the first artist who said «thank God I’m homo» on primetime TV. I am the first Swedish rapper to address certain issues and give people who feel the same way that I do a voice. This is not about «selling out», this is about revolution. I don’t give a fuck about what privileged people might think of me, all I care about is that fourteen-year-old girl who feels empowered when listening to my music. I want my music to be played on the radio so that more people get with the program. Of course I need to get paid, we live in a capitalist society in which money means freedom, but I’m going to use this society to bring real freedom. Soon there will be thousands of Silvana Imam’s all over the world. Hope you can handle it.

[TB]: What are your dreams for the future?

[SI]: My dreams for the future are simple, I don’t want people to be classified and put into boxes. I want each and every one of us to feel free. Question yourself and the way you talk to people: do you judge people by their gender roles or by their personality? Change is now and it starts with you.

This interview was conducted via email on 1.5.2015. The text was published first in the second Norient book «Seismographic Sounds».

Biography

Theresa Beyer gehört seit 2011 als Editorin, Kuratorin und Mitherausgeberin des Buches «Seismographic Sounds – Visions of a New World» zum Kernteam von Norient und beschäftigt sich mit Themen wie Queeren Musikkulturen, experimenteller Musik in Städten wie Belgrad oder Neu Delhi, und reflektiert in Vorträgen über die Chancen des multilokalen Kuratierens. Neben ihrer Norient-Identität ist sie Musikredaktorin bei Radio SRF 2 Kultur. Follow her on LinkedIn.

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Seismographic Sounds: Visions of a New World

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The second Norient book «Seismographic Sounds: Visions of a New World» introduces you to a contemporary world of distinct music and music videos. Written by 250 scholars, journalists, bloggers and musicians from 50 countries.

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Published on April 07, 2016

Last updated on July 14, 2020

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Awesome Tapes from Bhutan

Interview

by Hannes Liechti

Bhutan is a tiny kingdom in the himalayas and not really known for experimental music. But due to Ed Linton and his net label «Avant-Garbe Records» there is a growing music scene with a love for weird sounds.

[Hannes Liechti]: Could you briefly describe yourself and your musical background?

[Ed Linton]: From my name you can tell I am not of Bhutan descent, my parents come from New Zealand and spent many years traveling. I was born originally in Bhutan but my father got a dairy farming contract in the Middle East and I lived there for three years before returning. Thebong, where I went to school, has no music stores. So we listened to a lot of foreign music we could get when one of us went to the city. I remember some of the inspirational music we heard. Of course we heard popular music like Queen and The Beatles but also older and stranger music, like «20 Jazz Funk Greats» by Throbbing Gristle and «Negrea Love Dub» by Linval Thompson or «Selected Ambient Works 85-92» by Aphex Twin, these are albums that we really enjoyed in school and ended up influencing our music.

[HL]: What is the idea behind your band The Columbine Shoots?

[EL]: The Columbine Shoots is a band that I started with friends after we finished school in 2013. We took the name from an online blog of a stupid foreigner we do not like. The album cover for our first EP «Haha Here We Are», is also from his blog. We are interested in vaporwave and irony. This is why many of our albums have whacky titles and pictures. The band doesn't have just a few members that always play together, instead many people can join or leave the band any time. In total there have been about different 70 people. On some albums there is only myself, on some there are dozens of players.

Haha Here We Are by The Columbine Shoots

[HL]: What are your musical influences?

[EL]: We don't want to sound like the traditional music of Bhutan, or the pop music of foreign countries, but more like the unusual albums we found. When we got Internet in Thebong a few years ago we spent a lot of time finding new whacky music online. It is very slow, only dial-up, but if you wait long enough you can listen to music on YouTube. We found music like Merzbow and Hanatarash and it was very inspiring.

[HL]: What is the idea behind your label «Avant-Garbe Records»?

[EL]: It is a label I chose to make because a family friend from New Zealand had made an album and we wanted to present his music. So I made the label and asked an artist from the US to create the title and background image. Since then we have had artists like Exabyte, Sheikh Areesh and Jason Akermanis on our label. Exabyte and Jason Akermanis are friends we have found online. They have also contributed to music in The Columbine Shoots.

Things Are Okay Here (Deluxe Edition) by Exabyte

[HL]: How is the situation in Bhutan for producing music?

[EL]: Making music in Bhutan is easy if you want to make traditional music. There are people that sell traditional instruments and you can buy them quite cheap. A lot of The Columbine Shoots music is made with computers, I think that if you have a computer you can make electronic music as easy in any country. We use Fruity Loops to arrange our music, although they are old versions as the new ones are too slow on our computers.

High On Life by Sheikh Areesh

[HL]: What are the challenges in releasing music these days?

[EL]: Putting the music online is not so easy because the internet is very slow, if you look on the old The Columbine Shoots website you can see the album «666 the number of the beast». This album we did not put on «Avant-Garbe Records» because there are songs that are over 20 minutes long and they took many many hours to upload. Since we live out in Thebong it is a hassle to put music on CD, but in Thimphu it is possible to get music on CD. But it is expensive and we have not bothered.

[HL]: Do you play live shows?

[EL]: We do casual live shows occasionally in Thebong and nearby towns in Mongar and we once played a live show in the Space 34 nightclub in Thimphu. It was a great time and we got to meet great local musicians.

All Shit by The Columbine Shoots

[HL]: Are there any aspects, where you feel kind of loneliness while producing music?

[EL]: There is a bit of loneliness making music in Bhutan because we are far from the big cities even in the nearby countries. I have been into the big cities in China and it is amazing to see the amount of people and musicians that you can find in China. Although it is hard to move people in and out of Bhutan to make music it is a lot easier to move music through the Internet. This is why we have members contributing content from all across the world. Members of The Columbine Shoots come from places as far as Chile, America, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Germany.

This interview was conducted via email, 2.5.2015. A short quote from this interview has been published first in the second Norient book Seismographic Sounds.

Biography

Hannes Liechti lives in Bern, Switzerland, as a popular music scholar/lecturer, curator, cultural producer, and content editor. He is the head of KULT Student Agency at Bern Academy of the Arts HKB. Since 2021, he is part of the executive board of the concert organizer bee-flat and in 2024 he was elected as a member of the Cultural Commission of the City of Bern. Liechti teaches history of popular music at Paderborn University, Germany. From 2013–2024 he worked as a producing manager and as a curator/editor for Norient. He co-published «Seismographic Sounds: Visions of a New World» (2015) and co-curated the corresponding exhibition on global pop. He edited the digital publication «Sampling Politics Today» (2020) and published his PhD on the culture of sampling in experimental electronica with Norient Books (2022). Follow him on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Published on April 14, 2016

Last updated on August 24, 2020

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Shing02 & Salome MC: Studio mixing at Blue Planet Sounds, Honolulu, Hawaii/US (photo: Shaneika Aguilar)

Shing02: A Chameleon on the Go

by Jackie Perreira

Shing02 is known around the world as a multilingual rapper, but we found out that there’s much more than meets the eye when it comes to this mystic artist. A portrait on one of the artists who collaborated on the first season of 1+1, a worldwide recording project by Norient and Sound Development in Summer 2015. Together with Iranian rapper Salome MC – read portrait here – he produced the Track «Passenger». For more material (tracks, videos, articles, photos) on 1+1 check the project website here.

If Shingo Annen, known as Shing02, were an animal I’m convinced he would be a chameleon. As a multilingual rapper, producer, director, illustrator and activist, Annen thrives off of anything that gives him room to be creative and hands-on. His mind is always churning out ideas for himself or others and if he ever comes to you with a project, you should take it because he’s been in the game for over twenty years and is no stranger to putting in work.

Usually if someone excels in one area, by default we expect them to be weak in an opposite one, like how people say they’re bad at math but good at English. Likewise, a combination that never seemed likely to me is that of a rapper and college graduate, yet Annen is both.

This fact is of particular interest to me because I’m currently in college and contemplating how my English degree will translate into a career other than teaching. So when I see Annen, who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, I have to wonder how the hell that relates to becoming a rapper, if at all.

«I had to study a lot of different things that regular computer science majors don’t really need, so it exposed me to a lot of different subjects … I had to take a lot of humanity credits, too, so I did a lot of ancient Japanese literature. I started comparing hip hop to rapping and I would turn in essays about that … so in my head it was just like a whole mix of things», he said.

This wasn’t exactly the clear-cut parallel I was looking for, but then I realized that’s because there isn’t one. Annen dips his toes into whatever is pulling at him at the time, and it usually works in his favor and opens doors for even more diverse work.

Beginnings in the Bay Area

For example, one of his first relationships with the rap world had nothing to do with his musical abilities. It started with his penchant for drawing. He approached Del the Funky Homosapien, rapper and founder of the Hieroglyphics rap crew, at a record store with a portrait he drew of Del. He liked it, and it turned into a friendship that helped Annen realize that he wanted to pursue music more seriously.

Shing02: Studio recordings at Blue Planet Sounds in Honolulu, Hawaii/US (photo: Shaneika Aguilar)

«Every time I went over to his place, I would learn something new and he would share a lot of his creative processes. Even himself, he started learning about music theory and started composing on his own … His progression inspired me a lot. Apart from the actual music, I was really getting into the DJ culture as well, because all my friends were scratching DJ’s», he explained.

Then he dropped his first cassette in 1995, entirely in Japanese. It marked the launch of his music career in Japan as he started to make more music and performing steadily. Around 2000 he met Japanese DJ and producer Nujabes, which later led to their most famous work together, a hexology entitled Luv (Sic). They also created the theme song to the popular show Samurai Champloo, which aired both in Japan and the U.S.

Track not available anymore.

«(Nujabes and I are) about the same age and we shared a similar passion for the sound we wanted. Even though we started working in 2000, we really grew up in the 90s sound of sample-heavy, drum break-heavy freestyle-type, freeflowing rhymes. It’s a big contrast to the clubby type music now», said Annen.

Nonstop Hustle

In 2000 he also performed in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country located in Southeastern Europe that was still reeling at the time from a war ranging from 1992 to 1995. This is when he opened himself up to the possibility of activism. Until visiting, Annen was low-key in the press, partly in an effort to remain an underground artist.

Shing02 at the studio of the alternative radio station KTUH in Honolulu, Hawaii/US (photo: Shaneika Aguilar)

«That really opened my eyes up because I went to a war zone … After talking to people my age that were in the war, I was just there to listen to their stories, I felt like whoa, maybe I can touch on these subjects and still play a role as an artist … I thought that I could achieve the balance of keeping that anonymity, while also reaching a wider audience. So I started putting more effort into writing songs in English», said Annen.

Since then he has taken a more active role in Japanese politics. The current issue is that the Japanese government wishes to rewrite the constitution written by the U.S. at the end of World War II so that it allows for Japanese troops to fight abroad. The change is greatly opposed in Japan and protesters have asked Annen to get involved and perform at rallies.

In addition, Annen has claim to a long list of multimedia projects. For one, he participates in POW!WOW! Hawaii, particularly its School of Music. There, he shares his knowledge of making music and his experience in the music business with youth as well as performing at POW!WOW! events and contributing various graphic design work. He also recently worked behind the scenes on a music video with Japanese artist Aoi as well as various projects with producers around the world, like in Spain and Shanghai.

All of these things could never have been foreseen or planned back in 1993 when he was living in the Bay Area as a college student. Annen himself didn’t even know where he’d go from there.

Shing02 at Kakaako district in Honolulu, Hawaii/US (photo: Shaneika Aguilar)

«I’ve never thought about pursuing anything, let alone a career. I just keep doing it because I like to do it. To be perfectly honest, when I started I knew that I had a lot of work cut out for myself. I wasn’t a refined anything. I wasn’t a refined performer or recording artist. I really had to work hard through trial and error to find my own voice», he expressed.

For people like me who have yet to really sink their teeth into anything, it’s easy to assume that those with careers have always had an innate sense of knowing that that’s what they want to do and have been steadfast in pursuing that one thing. Annen’s trajectory is a welcomed contradiction. He’s been led not by a sense of certainty, but just by his desire to remain creative.

«I always knew that I had a knack for coming up with ideas. That, I was super confident in. The execution, not so much. But I was very confident in the way that I can find ideas, provide humor to a situation, and find other talents as well. I was very confident as a fan.

As a testament, what I’m also very proud that 90% of people that I’ve worked with, ever, are still doing what they’re doing. I don’t work with people that are in it for the minute and just get out», he continued.

Annen is in the process of dropping a new album at the end of this year (2015), called Zone of Zen with Cradle Orchestra, a Japanese jazz and hip hop band. Zone of Zen will be Annen’s third album in English.

Biography

Jackie Perreira is a 21 year old English major at UH Manoa in Honolulu, Hawaii. When she’s not reading or writing papers, she’s writing stories.

Published on March 29, 2016

Last updated on October 20, 2020

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