Sampled Lebenswelt

The singer and musician Joy Frempong is currently working under the pseudonym Oy. She associates lively Avant-pop, odd electronica, abstract hip-hop, futuristic soul, Dadaistic world music and Debussy-esque classical music. She works with piano, synthesizer, accordion, xylophone, samplers and loop-machines. Accompanied by her singing.

In the Norient podcast she talks about how she works. What kind of samples does she use, and how exactly? What noises and sounds does she like especially and which ones does she discard?

Joy Frempong was born 1978 in Ghana. Her father is from Ghana, her mother from Switzerland. She grew up in Dietlikon, near Zurich, passed her A-levels in 1998 and signed up for Bern Jazz-School two years later. Even though this education helped her to develop today’s vocal flexibility, she states in an interview with music critic Nick Joyce, it was never her aim to be the perfect jazz-singer, able to warble all jazz-standards. Fairly long, Joy Frempong was a member of the Zurich experimental formation Lauschangriff and has worked with the improvisation trio Hans Koch, Martin Schütz und Fredy Studer. Together with Fredy Studer she also works with the band Hans Koch, Martin Schütz und Fredy Studer.

She often travels back to Ghana, Joy tells us in the podcast. She is very interested in the local music scene (check out the norient article on Hiplife: Zwischen Hiplife und Afrofunk), though she has not been able to make many contacts so far. With Bern duo Filewile, Joy Frempong toured 2009 through South Africa.

Her first solo album under the pseudonym OY or Oy Rempong is called First Box Then Walk (Creaked/Namskeio).

«First Box Then Walk»

Norient spoke to Joy Frempong in the context of the project Sonic Traces: From Switzerland.

Biography

Dr. Thomas Burkhalter is an anthropologist/ethnomusicologist, AV-artist, and writer from Bern (Switzerland). He is the founder and director of Norient and the Norient Festival (NF), co-directed AV-performances and documentary films (e.g. «Contradict», Berner Filmpreis 2020 + Al-Jazeera Witness), and is the author and co-editor of several books (e.g., «Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut», Routledge, «The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East», Wesleyan University Press). He teaches regularly at universities, and runs workshops for arts institutions. Since 2022 he produces the Norient Mixtape for Swiss National Radio SRF3. Currently, he is working on his new music duo «Melodies In My Head», and on the podcast series «Long Take: Life as an Artist». Follow him on Instagram, Research Gate, Academia.edu, Bandcamp, Spotify, or Meta.

Biography

Simon Grab, the co-founder of ganzerplatz soundstudios has been an active musician and producer in a wide range of musical contexts. As a composer and sound artist he produces music & sounddesign for feature films, documentaries, theatre and radio. In live performances and installations he uses the venue as an acoustic playground. He likes exploring new grounds by negating existing borders. Follow him on Youtube, Instagram, or BandCamp.

Published on January 20, 2012

Last updated on August 12, 2020

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Sampling
Soundscape
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