Sampling Stories Vol. 2: Ibaaku

Interview

Although it has been labeled as an afro-futuristic project and also comes along as such through an eclectic and stylistically hyper diverse sound collage, photographs that evoke moonscapes, alien-like fashion and hairstyles, and music videos with an out-and-out futuristic aesthetic, the 2016 album Alien Cartoon by Senegalese producer Ibaaku (Akwaaba Music) is deeply rooted in current (and also past) places. Connections to Senegalese places such as Dakar or the Casamance can be heard throughout the album and become especially obvious when focusing on the samples used.

Ibaaku's music owes to Dakar’s buzzing and sprawling urbanism, home to his recording studio, as much as it does to Casamance’s green stretches and to Sardinia’s rugged landscapes, where he likes to retreat, getting lost to better find himself.

This is how a label-statement reads and how I got curious on how one actually can hear these places through the music. Via email and Skype I discussed these kinds of questions with Ibaaku.

[Hannes Liechti]: Your record studio is situated in the Senegalese capital Dakar. How can we hear the city in these tracks?

[Ibaaku]: Tracks such as «Discuting Food», «Ilwaa», «Yang Fogoye», «Djula Dance», and «Processhun», are clearly inspired in some ways by the noisiness of the place where I live in Dakar. There are loads of factories and auto mechanics around and there is a weekly market, which has its own inspiring soundscape. Everyday you can be sure to hear an army of sabar (a Senegalese percussion instrument) rehearsing or playing for a celebration. In «Muezzin» you can even hear my neighborhood in Dakar with a muezzin, who makes the call to prayer.

[HL]: How did putting this sample into the track come about?

[IB]: Muezzins are part of the soundscape in my country. In general, they use rather rudimentary equipment: megaphones, bad microphones, or very bad speakers. You can hear them blast from miles away. But I didn't have to enter a mosque, it came to me naturally because I live in front of a mosque. So I was deep in the creative process, experimenting, and it came by accident. The call slipped into the recording I was making at one point. I did not notice it at first. But when I heard it, I felt like I had to use it. I like accidents in music. It's my way of doing things. I love to let space for intuition.

[HL]: Does the muezzin sample carry a special meaning to you that goes beyond the circumstances of the production?

[IB]: At the end there is always a meaning to these kinds of accidents. The muezzin sample fits so well because it sparks the idea of a spiritual ritual, which is the intention behind some of my music.

[HL]: Can you tell me more about the way you sampled the muezzin? What were your strategies? Did you alter the sample, did you use any effects?

[IB]: I edited a part where he's calling the name of God. I didn't add a lot of effects. I kept it raw. A little reverb and a delay, and it was perfect.

[HL]: If we consider the label statement I quoted above, we can discover more places in Alien Cartoon. What about the Casamance for example? In contrast to the country in general, a very green, subtropical region in the South.

[IB]: When you listen to tracks like «Djula Dance» or «Processhun» the rhythm is clearly rooted in the Casamance. It is repetitive, raw, spiritual and transcendental. It is a rhythm played by the Jola (Diola) people [an ethnic group living in the Casamance; editor's note] on a percussion set called a Bougarabou. There's also another component to this rhythm that has influenced me – the clap part.

[HL]: The «rugged landscapes» of Sardinia» have also been mentioned. How can we hear this connection?

[IB]: Traveling is always an inspirational source for my art. I kind of absorb everything in Sardinia, the sea, the mountains, the people, the lights and colors, the silence, the food, everything! But to be honest, especially for this project, it wasn't a part of the mood. This is more about Africa.

[HL]: Can we hear more places in «Alien Cartoon»? If so, which ones?

[IB]: Yeah sure. I've sampled a lot of old Congolese celebration music mostly out of the 70’s, especially voices. All of them are taken from vinyl.

[HL]: In some reviews, these samples have been discussed as «Senegalese» samples, right?

[IB]: Yes, they are referring to the «Congolese» samples. Actually, I've only used one or two «Senegalese» samples on Alien Cartoon.

[HL]: What else can we hear?

[IB]: You can also hear some places that exist in my imagination, or places I knew when I was in other lives.

[HL]: Here we close the circle to the main subject of the album: Alien Cartoon as a futuristic manifesto.

[IB]: I blended all those sonic influences I told you about and put them into a futuristic perspective: an African city invaded by aliens. Dakar is a mutant city. So it was really interesting and challenging to imagine how music would be if extraterrestrials were among us.

The interview has been conducted via Skype, 27.6.2016. This article has been published in the context of the PhD research on sampling in experimental electronic music by Hannes Liechti. For more info click here.

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 January 31, 2017

Last updated on October 26, 2020

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Sampling Stories Vol. 3: Moro

Commentary

by Hannes Liechti

Howling sirens and sharp sound explosions: Listening to «Libres», the heavily sample-based opener of the EP San Benito (NON Worldwide) by Argentine producer Moro, one is easily getting the impression of sampled war sounds with virtual video game aesthetics (see how the sounds have been described elsewhere). Talking with Moro on Skype it became apparent that although there is a deeply political message behind the processed samples, the 2016 track «Libres» is neither about video games nor is he using any war samples. For this «Sampling Stories» sequel we picked out one of the crucial samples of the track to discuss in detail: the sound of chains.

From the Atlantic Slave Trade to the Current Refugee Crisis

What sounds like an explosion or a battleship at the beginning of the track is actually a sample of someone throwing himself into water, Moro tells me. These water samples are repeated all over the track in various edits and are combined with other sampled sounds. For example, listen to the only melodic element in the track, a line of four notes sounding far-off: a one note sample of a ship alarm, compressed and sequenced at different pitches. But let's shed light on another sound: sampled chains. Listen to the plain sample here:

The sound of chains can be heard throughout the whole track, but we will now focus on a certain edit: at 0.30-0.36 and between 1.14 and 2.46. The sound vibrates continuously, but sometimes barely hearable in the background:

MORO - SAN BENITO by MORO

When talking to Moro I recognized that this sample is not only crucial for the track, but for San Benito as a whole. He told me about the sample and the EP:

«‹Libres› means ‹free› and the whole EP San Benito is about slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. I was thinking about the actual refugee crisis as well: nowadays all around the world refugees are also using these kinds of ocean boats to move from continent to continent. They are all trying to be free from something by coming to another place but there they might not get the freedom they are looking for. That's what «Libres» is about. When starting to produce the track, I was picturing the two speakers and an image of falling chains came into my mind. I wanted people to look at falling chains when listening to the track. Chains, that represent people who fight for their freedom by putting off the chains they have been manacled with.»

Rhythm as the Track's DNA

Looking for a suitable sample, he was browsing the web and succeeded on a sound library webpage. In order to strengthen the meaning of the sample as an expression of freedom and resistance, Moro edited it and put it into a clave rhythm: «This rhythm has been historically used as a resistance expression, especially here in Argentina and Uruguay», he explained. He used a son clave pattern, the main pattern in Argentine and Uruguayan candombe music. There, it is called «madera».

Son clave pattern shown in simple meter (duple-pulse) and compound meter (triple-pulse) structures

In his tracks, Moro is consciously trying to avoid the feeling of a simple four-on-the-floor beat. Instead, his beats are fragmented, broken, and heavily syncopated. Rather than establish a steady beat, he lets certain rhythms become guiding elements for both the listener and the dancer. In «Libres», it's the clave rhythm lying behind the track, time and time again (but not predominantly) present through this sample. On a meta level, this strong emphasis on rhythm is linked with the EP's subject: «The slaves back then brought these riddims as their DNA with them. What I try to do is reclaiming these rhythms and making them important and visible again. So this five notes rhythm becomes the DNA of my music as well», Moro explains.

Sampling as a Weapon of Expanding a Message

By sampling a simple sound file, downloaded from a sound library, and transformed into a clave rhythm, Moro uses sampling as – in his own words – «a weapon of expanding or remembering a message». And here we are again using war terminology: although he is not using concrete war samples in «Libres», he is obviously using samples as «weapons». It is not violent but a politically engaged way to make a statement, to tell a story.

The interview has been conducted via Skype, 25.1.2017. This article has been published in the context of the PhD research on sampling in experimental electronic music by Hannes Liechti. For more info click here.