Throughout 2021, Resident Advisor will host a series of interviews in partnership with Black Minds Matter UK, an organisation whose mission is to connect Black individuals and families with free mental health services by professional Black therapists.

The interviews, which will be published as written features and audio RA Exchanges, focus on Black creatives working in electronic music at all levels. These conversations will touch on issues surrounding mental health, in keeping with Black Minds Matter UK's mission to "make mental health topics more relevant and accessible for all Black people in the UK, removing the stigma and remodelling the services to be relevant for the Black community."

On this edition, Andrew Mensah chats with Mike Calandra Achode, the man behind the Crudo Volta collective and record label Python Syndicate.

This is a full transcript of this week's edition of the RA Exchange, edited slightly for length and clarity.

I'm joined today by Mike Calandra Achode who is the founder of Crudo Volta, which is a platform, which was basically created to shine a light on contemporary African musical scenes and the way in which they connected the African diaspora. How are you today, Mike?

Yeah, I'm all right. All right. Good to see you. Good to hear you.

Where are you?

Yeah, I'm in my flat in Stratford, east London, E15 to the world.

Nice. How are you feeling today? How has your day been so far? What's the energy?

It's been relaxing. Like, it's been a sort of interesting year. It's been quite a busy year. And I'm relaxing for a couple of weeks, because we have some projects in the making, coming this autumn. So I'm just taking some time to recenter. It's been a very interesting year. I mean, in a positive framework. Yeah.

Good, good. Yeah, I think it's been, there have been many challenges. But I think actually, as the saying goes, through adversity comes opportunity. Do you know what I mean? There are definitely ways in which you find opportunities to sort of feed your way or navigate some sort of creative-like, project, or outlet essentially

Absolutely.

Okay, great. So could you tell us a bit about Crudo Volta, in your own words?

Well, I mean, just to be, I will say Crudo Volta is a community. It starts, as you say, as an intention to, I would say like frame, contemporary African culture as a sort of, like, in a most photographic aspect of the term of what's happening. And then, and then like year by year, it became a community. So I have collaborators, friends, music heads generally interested in what these scenes are about. I started not knowing, well I started knowing some of it, but not in depth. And now it's sort of like an object of, on one side of research, because we are researching from different angles, but also just sort of like territory that I'm engaging with as well, through video and photography and other mediums. Yeah.

Great. And how would you say the whole project came about, how would you say that Crudo Volta came about?

Okay, graduating from, I mean, I started as a graphic designer. So these are my early steps into Visual Media and, and I wasn't really happy in terms of working in an economy that don't consider mine. And I wanted to somehow contribute through my work to my African identity and be part of an African economy. And also my background is in music. So I knew well, let's say that I had a sort of, like, strong understanding of the segment that is usually recognised as urban music. So hip hop, dancehall and so on, R&B. But then I wanted something that was close to me in terms of my personal background and heritage. And, yeah, so I started like, why not engage with something that you genuinely love. It's not necessarily driven by professional ambition but more by an intention to nurture an economy that you retained to be yours, and not in this. That's how we started and to be very honest, I didn't know what I was doing. I knew what I didn't want to do. And that's always been clear from the start.

And what was that?

So first of all, graphic design, inevitably connected to the dynamics of industrialization, and specifically Western industrialization, and specifically to this sort of consumerist culture that we are entrenched with. Well, you also have the sort of, like, more, I mean, like, targeting more or less the cultural economy like sort of visual communication targeting the cultural economy, but it's very high-ended in terms of access. And there is a sort of like language to learn to access the territory and I've never been interested in both. And also I perceived to feel it to be very elitist because again, access to information, access to technology, that's a great deal. People don't really understand the field of graphic design, we end up being considered those that make websites, but we don't I mean, like, some of us do, most of us don't. And because there is a great deal of knowledge behind graphic design. It also depends what you want to do with graphic design, really. But there's a great deal of knowledge behind it in terms of planning, communications, intentions, knowledge of audiences, and so on, historical knowledge, philosophical knowledge, and so on. And I didn't want to end up in something that didn't really belong to me, because it's all the preparation that you need to become a decent graphic designer. And I ended up being. And that's the thing with graphic design that you are not really defined by the medium because you're open to all mediums. People have this very traditional understanding of graphic design, the graphic designer, the typography, branding, publishing, whatever, whatever. But graphic design is going more into stuff like filmmaking, augmented reality, virtual reality, these are regions, territories, territories, but also like infrastructures. Graphic design is really going towards the aspect of social design. And I ended up being into filmmaking. Because first of all of my audience. African audiences in the diaspora, they are heavy users of platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and so on, and so on. So as designers, these are the choices that you make, you don't really decide the medium, the medium is informed by your audience. And because our community is engaging mostly with these mediums, and me being interested, in like music, as an experience, and music is highly connected to filmmaking or to video making in general, I ended up being involved in that aspect. So it's about really like choices. Not this, maybe that, not this, maybe that. So yeah, crossing checks, and you ended up doing something that is like an algorithm responses to your intentions really.

Interesting. I mean, I was interested to see if there was, interested to know rather, if there was a particular sort of like, catalyst or inspiration, but it feels like from what you just said that actually it was something which is probably a bit more cumulative, rather than it being something specific, which actually then made you decide you wanted to do this thing. I mean, particularly, you said you didn't necessarily know what you're doing when you first started.

I will, I will say that possibly you have some most critical moments where I'm making these choices, and definitely getting closer to my identity. I mean, overall, not necessarily just my national identity, or my historical identity, me as a being, as a person, my personal journey, there's some critical moments that have informed me. First of all, I became a father, I think that really played a huge role in terms of understanding what sort of legacy I wanted to create, right? When I looked at my daughter, and I was really reflecting about Mike the individual and Mike the dad, and how these two elements can come together and what sort of legacy I wanted to leave behind. And so all these things were playing out. Then you have Mike, the Beninese immigrant that grew up in Rome, and then is suddenly in London. And so you have to negotiate the identity on different levels. So engaging, for example, with the African community in London, for me wasn't as straightforward as it could possibly be in the beginning. Because there is that sort of like, there's sort of like a level of distance or degree of distance that you need to overcome and find continuously and music became the catalyst. And this becomes sort of my recurring mantra, why music is so important as an agent of continuity between our communities. And possibly the internet, I mean, and also my background in music. I tend to play it down but I've been involved in music since I was 15 years old. So it really played a huge part in my life. But it's so much part of my life that then to consider as normal as possible. Like I've been collecting records since I was 15 years old. So I mean, it's really a huge part of my life, but I don't bring it too much to the forefront. So I've been like different moments now. It will be very long to like pinpoint all of them. There many moments that sort of remind you of possibly what can be your mission or intention on this planet, how my elements can interact with the world, how to insert myself in the world. And yeah, yeah, definitely that's how it played out.

Yeah, I love that. And I think, actually, I can definitely see that in the work. It's actually quite timely, because I was going to move on to some of the work from the documentaries that you made, particularly the Taxi documentary series. I found actually, just in general, watching at least the first two, I found that they were so well done. I had this sort of like overall feeling of a sense of connection. It wasn't necessarily about the music that I was learning about, I definitely learned things from it. But I think what my main takeaway was that I had this whole whole sense of connecting. And I'm not sure if that was what the intention was, but that's what I came away with.

Absolutely, I mean, this is something that we were discussing recently at a symposium and I'm really interested in the contextuality of music. For me, the technical aspects or the innovative aspect of this primitive aspect. Yes, I enjoy it. I like it. It's fundamental, I mean, in terms of deciding what is what and in terms of allocating, categorising music, but what I'm really interested about is what are the conditions that facilitate the proliferation of this genre? What are the conditions that generate this particular vernacular? Right? Why people start behaving in a certain way that is synchronous in a certain way. And also how does it feel to have that genre in that specific context? And I understood that doing the documentaries because I mean, one of the things of no narrative filmmaking is that most of most of the work is done in post production, in editing stages. So you really understand what you have worked with once you are in your editing station because during the documentary, you're just capturing stuff and you try to make sense of things. It's a very reactive, sort of like, practice. You just capture things, looking at what's interesting, who said what, you're looking all over the place so you don't have time to sit down and really reflect. I don't think there is any preparation they can really set you for the documentary, you have to be there to really understand what's happening and sit down with it to make sense of it. And in our own documentary, there was a taxi, which actually I mean is considered as the first one but actually it is the second one because we had a pilot in Morocco. Morocco was interested in music from the past. That's, for example, that's a critical point in developing Crudo Volta because there, I understood they're more interested in contemporary stuff because as Africans, we're always left to our glorious past or our imaginative future. I'm really interested about Africans in the present amongst us and Africans in their daily routines, Africans in the daily expression in their daily affirmation, and how that exudes from music, right? How can we see it, like, coming out of music? And we didn't really understand why the genre started that way and why it was such a departure for what we couldn't see the "African" music. It really made me question the African imagination.

I'm just gonna quickly stop you there. Sorry, I just realised that I didn't quite give much context of what we're speaking about. But could you just quickly, just for the listeners, explain the Taxi series for us?

The Taxi series is a documentary format, where we explore contemporary African genres, what are considered to be African genres through your experience of a taxi ride. And so basically, we choose a particular music genre or a city. And we explore the genre through pivotal artists or interesting artists within the scene or within the city. And we try to make sense of the genre, of the city, through interviews, but also exploring the cities, the architecture, the vibe, the music. The interesting thing about Taxi in my opinion, is a creative, deliberate choice is that it's a visual mixtape so the music never stops, it's mixed. So the intention, yeah, so the intention is to have a mix of 30 minutes, mixtapes and having people that actually explain to you what you are feeling. So it's sort of like in your subconscious, but it's also in your conscious. And I've chosen the taxi because it's a liminal space. You are in the city, but at the same time you are not in the city. So you're still through that distance. So it's a sort of conceptual decision. And so you have served the city through the window, the car window, that gives you the sense that yes, you are there but you also have the touristic approach to it. You know, but you don't really know what it's about. And everything makes sense with the memories just after a trip, you come back and you start thinking about it again. And that's what I want from my audience, but at the same time, my intention is to create a collective imagination. So what does it mean to be African and what does it mean to do African music? And that's something that I didn't mention, in the beginning, I was interested in. I consider myself a pan Africanist. And I consider myself as a sort of creative or thinker that comes from the hard work of the fathers of independence, in terms of conceptually, artistically and not necessarily just the politicians, also the artists. We're talking about Haile Gerima, Djibril [Diop] Mambéty or Ousmane Sembène, but also Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Thomas Sankara. These were thinkers and artists at the same time, Thomas Sankara was a musician himself, right? And then, but also like the person that betrayed him, his best friend, he was the leading singer in the same band. And so I tried to understand that identity through music and try to understand how does it work when you have multiple imaginations that define the identity? So what does it mean to be African? And how does it feel in Durban? How does it feel in Accra? in Lagos? How does it feel in Addis Ababa? They're all different, but for some reason, they think that they are doing the same thing. And if for some reason, they think that they have a continuity, and they imagine that continuity. For me, that's where it gets interesting. Because I want to explore that imagination. And I want to participate in the imagination as well. I want to enter it.

Yeah, and just to go back as well on where I cut you off, sorry, apologies. You were talking about the fact that it kind of came from this part that you had already recorded based on Morocco. And it was definitely something I noticed actually just reading and listening to, watching rather, the documentary. How you had deliberately taken this approach to looking at music, contemporary music, contemporary African music. And I noticed there wasn't too much of a nod or harking back to previous genres during the actual film themselves. And I thought that was actually very telling of like, the way that the music scenes in Africa actually work. They're very fast paced, they're moving all the time. They're constantly developing. And I do get that sense that this is kind of like what you're kind of like tapping into, the way that music works essentially. It's always changing. There's always like, I mean, gqom. Gqom is not gone. But it's something that came really quickly. And actually, there's something else, all these other genes are now kind of like, almost like taking it a step further and like elevating the status of African music in the global industry. These things become like a bit of a craze. And whilst obviously, they're not going away anytime too soon, they're very much still very big in the locales, in the international countries. It's very indicative of how the music, like the whole ecosystem, is working. And I really like that.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, one thing, one important element in these interactions between African music and global listenership is is the interfacing with the industry, and it's becoming more and more interesting, like, compensation on an economic level. Because I observe African music on a more creative and sort of like, ideological standpoint or metaphysical centre, but I also observe it from a very material standpoint in terms of understanding what is happening and how we are interacting with the structures of mass reproduction, and what impact does it have with our communities? What do we get out of it? And, it's not really explained clearly yet. So I mean, I, personally, I don't see any benefit at the moment, like clear material benefits to the communities, I don't see them. I see an access to African imaginations without precedents, and that's fine. In terms of exposing our communities to appreciation is definitely might be perceived as a sort of like a positive value. But I'm more interested in the use value of it. So why is it useful? Right, and this conversation doesn't really happen. For me, looking at it, listening to it carefully, talking about it, we can start thinking, okay, what's the use value of this relationship? One thing is interesting, when people think about African music is that African countries didn't go through an industrial revolution. So we don't exist under an industrial revolution. So we don't have a system of mass reproduction. So all the infrastructures that exists around our imaginations are Western, I mean, the infrastructures that we use, the financial services, they are all Western. So if today, someone decided, okay, let's cut off the internet, let's cut off the deals with the labels, let's cut off the deals with the brands, African music is back to rural and failed on infrastructures. And for me, that's very interesting, because it should inform the back end of the industries, what should be done and what choices should be made. There's a positive aspect to it that you mentioned. The sort of like, proliferation of genres that we have. And this is a conversation I was having with a friend recently. We always look at these diagrams of African production, black production in terms of music, and we say oh, Black people invented rock, soul, gospel techno, hip hop. Well, one thing that people forget, we haven't even mentioned what happened on the continent: Juju, Apala, Tchinkoumé, Makossa. I mean, it will be stupid even to make a diagram because there's more than 200 genres that have been created in the last 60 years. And that's because we don't have the concept of ownership and personal property yet. So you have the element of open framework and open sourcing where everybody can access genres and you participate through it, if you good. So if you're good, you have a shot. But the way it works with the systems of reproduction in the West. Yes, you good for it but also you have an exchange value system that creates a way to make a profit out of it. So it might be like deals with brands, it might be this, it might be that and that's what keeps the artists in contract. And so now, we are at an interesting, like historical point in African music, whether we want to decide if we want to retain our creativity or we want to use our music under the workmanship ideal in the sense that I made the work, I need some money out of it. If you want a bit of it, then copyrights come into play and this and that. To give a practical example, just observe what happened to hip hop in the last 60 years. Compared to genres that were created before. The turnaround between soul, funk, disco, techno happened like in, I don't know, 30 years. So you have genres that were proliferating in industrial America. At the speed of 5 to 10 years, we had hip hop around, that hasn't really changed in the last 60 years, people keep saying yes, hip hop moves to boom bap, to club, club music to hifi and to trap and drill but really the formula is still the same. You're gonna hear some stuff from Chicago, it sounds like stuff Afrika Bambaataa was doing in the late 70s. There is not much change, we're still using groovebox and samplers, and so on and so on. Because the industry has a formula, a formula of mass reproduction. And everybody's discussing it because we're discussing why techno comes from Detroit and lands in Berlin. Because when people are served gqom, yes, gqom is innovative. But gqom is just like another genre. It's just something else like it, we have Durban kwaito for a while. Why in a span of 15 years, and then we have something completely different. And then in the meantime, we have Afro house, we have deep house, South African I'm saying here, and then we have amapiano. And that's just in the turnaround of 20 years since apartheid. This is crazy. It's not normal. It's not normal. To create the Black imagination, the African imagination, especially when it comes to sonic communication, is incredible. And I'm worried that we don't really know what we want to do with it. So we might end up being in economic systems that don't really help us in terms of maintaining our creativity and our distinctiveness because that's what I'm more interested in. Because I mean the rest yes, okay, it's interesting but the distinctiveness for me is very important because I can look back and say oh wow, I feel in my elements or feel these sort of responses, spiritual interaction with the world, with nature. Okay, I'm feeling my element, I'm feeling this is Africa, this is Black, this is Beninese, this is Yoruba, this is Zulu. When the industry comes in, well, those other elements sort of disappear, and you have other stuff that comes in. I'm not sure whether they always bring healthy interaction with our humanity. It becomes wealthy definitely, you can make a ton of money out of it. And you can have the winner take it all, you have the African DJ that comes in and that's what interested me, for example, because we have this idea now of the big DJ of a particular city, the big singer from a particular city. People can say everything they want to say in terms of how Afrobeats is being represented but Afrobeats ten years ago was a community. It wasn't a particular singer or that particular singer. It was communities, right? We had parties, all parties, weddings, where this music circulates, markets, barber shops, it was a community conversation. You will have at that time 50 big songs, but now we have one or three big songs. And for me, that's that's very interesting, in terms of what we want to do with our creativity.

Interesting, I mean, in a way, has starting the label, Python Syndicate, which is obviously closely tied to Crudo Volta, was that kind of like a response to this sort of thinking?

Absolutely. So it responds definitely to this desire to experiment with alternative economies, alternative formats. We want to create a sustainable and profitable
infrastructures for musicians, but also for the community, how are we gonna do it? And it's really a trial and error practice in the sense that I don't know what I'm doing. And I guess I get this aspect from the graphic design background, because you're experimenting with the letter forms, colours, shapes, the proportion, composition, trying to see what's the result and based on the result, you create something else. So there is that element where I offer a different way to interact with it, in the construct that we have, the sort of deals that we have the approach that we have. And then you have the elements where I tried to be post-genre, because we have this almost militaristic approach to genres where you will have just this type of music on the label. And I'm inspired, actually not by African labels, I'm inspired by stuff like XL Records. I'm inspired by stuff like Warp Records, and especially early Warp & XL would really try to transcend the genre. So how does it feel to create that sort of ethos in an African context? So you have like, very pop, very famous artists, like Young John, for example, is one of the biggest producers in Afrobeats in Lagos. And then you have something very, I would say, almost obscure, like Ethiopian records on the same vinyl. And they are also like I would say, ideologically, very decent. Someone is really thinking about markets, selling, making catchy melodies, and so on, you have someone that is experimenting with Azmari or is trying the tradition from Ethiopia and I'm interested in that. And then there is also that sort of, I would say that relationship with Crudo Volta documentaries, in the sense that I really dislike that voyeuristic aspect of my practice. Where I go, it really reminds the sort of like colonial practices where the Explorer will go into the country, try to mingle, it doesn't matter if I'm from these communities, right? I come with information and technology, which is almost external to the context, I need to be aware of it. And I can't just create value, use value, which is offering documentaries to people and don't contribute to the scenes. I need to contribute to the scene. So this is my way to get into it, but also get busy with it. So it's like you remember, like when we used to go to our aunties and uncles places, yes, you ate. Now you have to wash the plates as well. It's not just you come to the party. You have fun and you leave, it doesn't work like that. You need to get involved. It's very rooted in that sort of culture.

I guess, like, it'd be interesting to talk about the actual making of those documentaries as well, because you were speaking about early on about how there weren't, there wasn't necessarily a particular decision or a particular moment that contributed to you deciding to actually go ahead with the platform or the community rather. Did you find that actually making these documentaries were quite a big part in actually helping you challenge or make steps towards, I guess, like working out your identity or learning about your identity?

Absolutely. Okay, first of all, I, just as a disclaimer, I work with Tommaso Cassinis when it comes to documentaries. In the beginning, as I said, because of my graphic design background, I didn't know much about video making and filmmaking, so it was sort of like leading cinematography decisions And then Yenkyi Taxi becomes a documentary where I take the lead, I'm the director, I make decisions, plan and stuff. And for me, entering that position is also very difficult because as you say, I've also that sort of transcendental, cathartic experience where I'm not just observing and making, I'm also becoming what I see because it really resonates with the person I perceive myself to be. It really speaks to me. And it's not just a sort of imposed conversation, right? Because you can establish for yourself, well, this is who I am and that's what I want to do. And you can have this very structured relationship with yourself. It's a very responsive, sort of, like interaction, it's very carnal. It's very visceral. In five years, I've really struggled to recontextualize who I am and what I do in Europe. And despite growing up in Europe and being European, I mean to a certain extent, well, I was born in Africa, where I lived 10 years before moving to Europe. So I wasn't necessarily completely new, but I came back as an adult, and you a different way of reading things and understanding things. I don't even think I have the world to explain how deeply I've been affected by my practice, it really changed me. And it really also changed the way people that work with me understand what they are doing, because then as I say, I'm moving to sort of like a very tiny practice, just me and the cinematographer and collaborating now and then with artists, to a community where I have all the people working, proposing ideas and concepts and so on And the way we understand what we are doing is completely different. So I just give you a small example, when I was shooting Woza Taxi at some point, it was kind of late night and I went into a forgotten souls garden. This is the thing about a documentary because you capture a lot, you don't capture just with the camera, it's not just a device. It's also your consciousness, right. It's also your awareness of the situation, you have yourself within. What I felt in that moment, in terms of what I was doing, what was the reason of my practise. There are no words to explain it. It is very spiritual. And yes, I know this sounds very cheesy or heard before, but it is what it is, you will take one element. It's like you take a plant and you plant it in a specific soil, and you will see the plants start behaving differently, you will start seeing the plants growing differently. And like in different order, and so on. So that's exactly what happened to my practice, I've taken my ambition to be a visual communicator and I planted it in African soil. And well, it was just different and I've tried to understand it more lucidly now and then. It's just emotions, right? When we lead by emotions and passions, we just behave differently. It's just an organic relationship with your drive, with your will, it's just just different.

Yeah, I completely understand that. And I think actually it kind of resonates with what you mentioned particularly about learning from your practice, and it helping inform who you are and why you're doing things and other people, why they do what they do. I think it's definitely a lesson I think a lot of artists will go through because I don't know how you would respond to this, but sometimes people will try to separate themselves from what they create. Because what you create isn't necessarily who you are, but I feel like actually watching your films and watching documentaries kind of gave me an insight into your own journey as well. And for me, it felt like you were learning a lot from this experience. Because I think as you say, like a lot of it happens in the editing process and you kind of learn a lot about who a person is through the way they communicate, what they communicate, this content, essentially. And that's kind of what I got from it essentially.

Yeah, absolutely. And also like, one thing is seeing an object right. One thing is seeing like a materialised imagination. So I've created this. One thing is seeing the object of the experience in its context and when the person is talking about it, you really understand a lot of things. So this is the unspoken and I mean in my culture, they call it the voodoo. It's a spiritual thing, I mean the translation is the unnseen part of things. Now, the West has been translating voodoo or whatever, whatever. But there is this understanding that everything that we see in the material in the material world has a dualistic relationship with the unseen. What makes it be what it is. So, yeah, once you are there, you are engaging with the unseen aspects of the material. Well, you really understand what it resonates. Like, here, I get sonic in acceptation of the term, because there's a sort of vibration that isn't emanated from the other experience. And I have been a person that's done work that's detached from who I am. I've done it and so at some point, I became bored of it. There wasn't any particular connection to it or any meaning to, that's another word I'm, I'm looking for meaning, right, especially in the music. What does it mean? And so yeah, this is a very interesting element. I got lost a bit here. But yeah, I hope you got what I was trying to say.

Yeah, no worries. Yeah. And since this is a collaboration with Black Lives Matter, I would like to learn about how you keep good mental health. Do you practice good mental health? Is there anything you do in particular?

All right, that's, that actually sort of like connects to what we're discussing before. For me the continuity with a practice that is a result or a sort of a nurturing aspect of who I am, is a very important. I've learned especially through these pandemic, how much of our, I wouldn't call it necessarily mental stability in my eyes, honestly, but sort of like mental balance, there you go, that's the word I'm looking for, is really determined by how we interact with everything that exists outside of us. And timing can play such a major role into this, especially when I was working, let's say in real life, sort of, like a classroom environment. Also just commuting. So what commuting can do to me, in terms of informing the way I will engage with the next activity. And so by commuting, I don't mean just taking the tube and going to work, I mean, moving from context to context, in spaces that I don't belong to or moving in spaces where I don't feel necessarily comfortable. And that can be sort of like mirrored also in my work, because we commute in our work as well. So doing one gig, or one collaboration, one specific thing, it means commuting from where you are in your practice to the next level of your practice, right. It's just like taking a taxi from where you are at the moment, in your professional career to the next step of your professional career. I'm really careful about that. First of all, the pace of the of that transportation is fast, If I really need to take the route, maybe I need to walk right, maybe I need to get a fresh air, maybe I don't even need to go out today, you know, maybe I don't, I don't really have to do that. So really negotiating my space and really negotiating my interaction with spaces that are outside of me, and that gives me time to have exploration within and for me, that's something that I really value at the moment. I started walking again, at least four hour per day alone. At some point, your thoughts, they start flourishing, especially if you do it, like at the end of the day. It's so important. It's important on a physical level because you have the oxygen that gets in, your blood gets circulating in a particular way, circadian rhythms and so on and so on. But what is very important, what's really important that happens is that you have this sort of like, release of subconsciousness so you have some random thoughts. It's the same kind of thoughts you have in your bed, before going to bed, right? Yeah, but at the same time you are walking and that sense of moving, that dynamism, helps you to engage in a particular way with your thoughts. And that really helps me first of all, to engage meaningfully with discipline, which I think is so important in any practice, but particularly in my practice, any creative practice actually, is very important, because we are very instinctive. And we tend to have many ideas and many desires. And we are, we are quite pleasure seeking as people, we are always looking something that gonna make us finally find happiness, even if happiness endures just like few minutes. And we are always in that constant search of strong emotions. So thinking about things helped me a lot, like walking, I think, because of course, the breathing, the solitude and so on, and so on, helped me a lot. And it also helps me to have a sort of control of time. I was just looking at Olympics, right now I was looking at the 10,000 metre race, and the way they manage their breath, right, and the way that they strategically use the breath to finish the race first, and also engage with the challenges and obstacles, all the runners and stuff, right and the way that and it seems so natural, what they are doing, but they train for years, and years. And when you start observing the way they engage with it, there is that sense of control, discipline but at the same time, it's also like engagement with the pace, time, calmness and stillness. So these are elements that I am using also, because, again, I spend a lot of time alone. I tend to be a loner, even if I'm a very party person. I mean, you can see this in the documentaries as well, I'm always in parties with the camera, and so on and so on. But that's just one side of me. The other side of it, which might be the 80% of my life, is solitude. I really, really enjoy solitude, we might be in the same places, sorry, but I will definitely not be in the space, I will be just in my thing. And it's for me so valuable. Because again, reflective practice is so important for me, I need to think about things to understand why I'm what I'm doing and so on in order to do something meaningful. I mean, that's again, that's the same thing, I'm trying to find meaning, right?

Yeah I totally completely agree with what you were talking about with the sense of movement and allowing you to. There was something I seem to remember hearing or reading something about movement and this idea of moving forward being something really important. But your particular comment on walking, talking about the 10,000 metre race in running, it's certainly something that I have, personally really benefited from, like, being able to like practice running, and definitely gaining discipline and gaining a lot more control and a lot more sort of like connection to my body and how it's feeling, being able to like manage my pace, being able to control my breathing when I when I know that it might be hard, but actually, in the long run, it actually is much better for you particularly beginning when you first start when your body is not used to something it's like all things that can be translated into your day to day. Yeah, so thank you for that. That's absolutely very eloquently put.

I run as well so thank you for mentioning that. Because again, running is also very important. Also, like water running does, it prepares you for endurance because some aspect of your daily routine is also based n on endurance. So you have always the sort of sense that you need to finish your things, right. And you actually need to step back and manage your endurance and understand and it's based on process because running is a process. It's not really about finishing the running race or the running or the cardio, it's really managing the process of running. And it's an awareness of how your body is running. So how you breathe, how fast you're going, the pace and so on and so on. Actually, are you holding your arms, you know, all these elements that come into play. And yeah, absolutely. And thank you for mentioning reading as well. Reading for me is so important. I've always been a reader. And I don't really enjoy fiction. No narrative says a lot about actually, it's interesting because I'm moving towards a narrative now. I'm writing for narrative filmmaking. But yes, I read a lot of like, factual stuff. I'm really into politics. I read a lot of books, like sort of, political developments, especially on our continent, and I'm a big fan and creative stuff as well. But for me, well, everything is political. Yes, everything is really political.

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. I mean, actually that kind of led me on to what I wanted to ask you anyway. Because you mentioned before about how you're teaching, you're a lecturer at St. Maarten, is that correct?

Yes.

Can you tell us a bit about what it is you lecture and if you could, as well maybe, like, tell us a bit about how it might inform your creative practice as well.

Alright. So I teach audio visual practice and filmmaking, incentives and marketing for the graphing communication design course. I teach second years and third years. Okay, me moving into teaching was very random, I have to be very honest. I've been suggested I will be good at teaching. So that's really how we started, it wasn't really my intention to go into teaching. It was so early. Because I've been told often that it is very lecturing posture when I speak, right? Do you have to know this? You have to know that kind of thing. So yeah, possibly, it's also part of my character kind of thing. But what I find interesting is that once I engage with the teaching bit, what I find interesting is first of all, the importance of conversation and conversations on a theoretical and experimental level. We've, firstly, all practitioners, there are people that do what you do, but also they are people that have not done yet what you are doing so my relationship with my students is very important. So that's one aspect of it. So I'm really interested in conversation with students, what they think the practice is, and what I would like them to understand in terms of what the practice can do, and what they represent to the practice. So that's really, my story. When I graduated, I was like oh graphic design can be anything really. So I'm gonna make it the way I understand it.
Then for me, I have two opportunities. The first opportunity that is presented to me is that I'm a black body in a very white space. And that comes with all the conversations that we know. And if someone doesn't know, they should know by now. So there is a baggage that comes with it. And I am not a big fan of the responsibility because I don't think that a Black or African individual should be given responsibilities that they don't necessarily have. But I'm aware that there is a necessity to engage with, with the baggage that comes with it. There's political, historical, philosophical, and yeah, yeah, and cultural baggage that comes with it, which is important. So you have the aspects, the Black lecturer, my colleagues know that I'm a Black lecturer, my students know that I'm a Black lecturer also. I declare my work by being an African so I enter the space mainly as an African not necessarily as a Black person, but mainly as an African, this is a conversation for another day, but there are many nuances into it. And so, when I present my work, the references, I start mentioning Malick Sidibé, for example, Ousmane Sembène or Gen Kyrou or Ayla Garimah, so on and so on. So the students, they're really brought into this space as completely new for them. And also observing this conversation in an academic framework is very interesting. And then we move to the third, which is connected to academic framework, because I'm interested in African contemporary culture, which is really framed as a pop culture. So what happens when we interface academic language, academic vernacular, academic jargon, academic method, scientific method and popular culture? Well, people have created critical theory, yes, very important. But there are also many other things that happen. So for me, it's an occasion to bring our contemporary culture through an academic threshold, right? So, and it's very important and that's where my practice becomes important into it as a filmmaker, because I take not the culture that is sort of like, imposed top down for the superstructure, like, let's say, like, upper middle class Africans, so to impose in conversation what the Black epistemology is, but coming down from the lower classes when you have gqom, Afrobeats or kudoro or whatever, fishermen in Jamestown, creating a culture and when we started sort of like engaging critically and theoretically, with these imaginations, we transform them the same way that early Europeans, thinkers, intellectual and writers of the 17th, 18th and 19th century, they were sort of like theorising the formation of a new Europe through the Enlightenment, right. And they were taking from the lower classes, and they're transforming it into a new idea of Europe. So for me, it's very important to bring
our communities from the viscerality of this expression, to the level of academia, and I'm presented with this totally invaluable, I think also pretty unprecedented, sort of occasion. In my space, I don't see many African or Black teachers engaged with these aspects you will hear like, people mention Derrick Bell, critical, critical race theory, Maya Angelou, but I wouldn't hear people say, okay, let's discuss about the bounty killer in a particular way, let's discuss about particular aspects of kingston, let's discuss about Chicago, southside Chicago what happened after the 90s. Okay. Once they have stopped the proliferation of the gangs and disciplines in Chicago. Or let's go to the township, what has been produced straight after apartheid, what happened to the coloured and what happened to the Zulus, what happened in that particular townships. And then we have a framework where we have all the African intellectuals sit down and discuss the aspects. That for me becomes very, very interesting, because we create new conversations, basically. Well, we don't create this conversation, we just bring this conversation to a platform where everybody can participate because this conversation has already been created. And that's the problem we are facing, how can we
create the platform for our intellectuals, they are not necessarily in big and shiny rooms, they might be like in some shack, you know, in the mainland in Lagos. But they are really theorising in new African imagination, new African economy, they don't use these words, we have learned these words through the academic jargon but they are doing it so for them it's a practice, it's not really a theory, we just provide the language to offer these conversations to open on a sort of high hand, whatever, whatever, whatever. And unfortunately, we still have to go through the sort of validation to be accepted as intellectuals as anybody else. And don't be just a spectacle. For me, that's sometimes another aspect in the music I'm interested in. I'm not interested in music as an African spectacle. You know, I don't want to have another Josephine Baker, or even Josephine Baker was really fine in our thinking. So I don't, I'm not really necessarily making a connection there. But for the viewers, she was a spectacle. So for me, it's very important when the people see somebody, I would say like a Burna Boy or DJ Lag, or somebody like Kwesi Arthur or whatever. They don't see a spectacle, they see an intellectual and imaginative production. And we just put down a taxonomy and language where they can interact with it and interact respectfully with it. And we can create a sort of continuity. So how, where do we go from here? What do we make with it? Then again, that's where you have the use value of it and teaching has offered me that possibility. And yeah.

Yeah I mean, whoever said, whoever told you to go into teaching, I think they hit the nail on the money. I think I find listening to you - I don't know if you do quite a lot of this free teaching but yeah, just to sit and listen to you speak, you have a very good manner, very natural manner about you when it comes to like informing others.

Thank you.

I mean, it doesn't come across as preachy or like you have to know this kind of thing.

I'm still learning.

But I mean, I completely got a lot of what you were saying from just thinking about the way in which you communicate through your website through the projects that you've done with Python Syndicate, with Crudo Volta. I can hear all of this type of thinking and where it's coming from, like through this, this has given all of that language a lot of context in the way that the way you've actually communicated it. So yeah, it's great. And thank you so much. I continue. I just wanted to ask as well, because I think we're going to bring this to a close shortly. But what is next for Crudo Volta? And Python Syndicate? Obviously, things have been a little bit quieter over the last year or so. I mean, you did obviously bring out the Free Borga release but I imagine you've been quite busy, or potentially not, over the last year or so.What's next?

So yeah, it's been a very busy year. There are many, well not many, but there are some important projects that we are working on. We have Chris Adofo, who is a cultural producer, and creative producer in Crudo Volta, who is about to release his book on Afrobeats with an all Black publishing company, which is more important to say. A Quick Ting On is a publishing sort of house that's sort of channelling Black writers in the UK. And you will have different books covering different aspects of our communities, it might be food, it might be business, or it might be fashion. Or it might be music, as in Chris's case. He'll be focusing on Afrobeats and it's interesting, because I haven't seen a book on Afrobeats yet. So possibly it will be like the first book to focus on the subject. Which will be very interesting, because we need the exigencies, we need to sit down and read stuff critically, review it, and inform ourselves so we can push into conversations. And on my end, well, I just came back from Ghana, so expect something from Ghana, despite the quarantine. I've been travelling every year in Ghana, you know, in Ghana, to make a project in the city. So the pandemic just stopped that and, but yeah, I've managed this year to sort of like, I found the channel, I found a way and expect something from us, we hope that you're gonna like it, we put a lot of effort into it. And it's an interesting project, because for the first time, I wasn't working creatively on my own. So you have a pool of Black and African creatives, they might be stylists, photographers, or filmmakers, cinematographers from Ghana, but also from the UK, from London. So it's a very diasporic conversation and I'm really proud of it. And boy, yeah, let's put it there. We're cominh in with something very important from Ghana.

Amazing. And will there potentially be something linked musically?

Absolutely so on the label, we have a release coming in January 2021. We actually were supposed to release earlier but we say, well, we see that everybody's getting busy. So I'll say okay, let's everybody do what they have to do. Again, the pace, the time. You know, there's no rush. There's no need to rush, you know, no one is running behind us. So we're just taking our time in doing things and make things right. So we can just talk about it. And so yeah, we're taking our time and saying, let's relax. Let's make some good work. And that's it.

Perfect. Thank you so much for talking to me today.

No, thank you so much. It was so nice. I was very honoured to be on the podcast. So I'm always honoured to represent Crudo Volta, because that's the thing about Crudo Volta, I don't know how much of me is in it, it's really about our communities, right? So Crudo Volta exists because our communities have been so creative in the last 20-25 years, and I've just been given a tool, which is visual communication to frame it. So I'm just someone that make frames and I just hang stuff on the wall, so people can watch it and say, look, this happened, and so I'm very honoured to be yet to be brought in this conversation, to be also sort of a simulator and have been brought close to this stuff, you know. And that's the amazing thing about the documentary, because some of these artists, they become a friend, I'm like, I'm honoured. I'm like, oh, wow, you know, it's, it's incredible. I'm very good friends with some gqom originators, or early creators, I'm like, wow, and they might be asking me, you know, to work on the covers and stuff like, wow, you know, it for me feels like a big deal. You know, because these things will be more appreciated in the future. And now people will look at this stuff in a very different manner. In 50 years, you know, now people don't really understand what's happening. There's some crazy stuff happening right now.

Yeah. Well, I would also like to return that and that I've been very honoured to speak to you as well. Yeah, I'm a big fan of your work. And I think what you've done with Crudo Volta, with Python syndicate, and also all of your lecturing is great and long may it continue. So we look forward to what's next to come from the platform, from the community. And, yeah, we'll keep tabs for sure.

Andrew, you thank you so much. I'm honoured. I've said it already yeah, it's really felt. So thank you.