Namvula is a singer and songwriter whose artistic journey is an exploration of cultural intersections and heartfelt storytelling. Her music reflects the nuances and complexities of her mixed Zambian and Scottish heritage, and a restlessness born of her diasporic upbringing.
Namvula will be coming to Suffolk in June to play for Sonic Wave, a series of music nights championing grassroots music crossing over folk, world, jazz, electronic and contemporary genres. I had the opportunity to interview Namvula.
HC: Your music is a delightful fusion of genres, how would you describe it in a sentence?
Namvula: I’d describe it as an extension of my world, of all the sounds, people and ideas that have populated it.
HC: Could you delve into your process of weaving it together and what draws you to this fusion?
Namvula: I don’t have a conscious process for choosing the sounds that I use for any particular song or album. Certain songs call for certain sounds, and that’s the way it’s always been. I lean into the worlds that I am inspired by, sound-worlds that I grew up within, sound-worlds that I have since fallen in love with. When I worked on my first album, you can probably hear all the various influences as clearer strands, but there’s been a natural evolution in my sound over time, as I matured as a musician, as my interests shifted, and as I became more comfortable in my own skin as an artist. Also, I’m blessed to work with incredible musicians, some since the beginning of my career, who all bring their own soundscapes into my music, and help shape the sound.
HC: Many musicians point to a formative experience that ignited their passion. Was there a specific moment that set you on your musical path?
Namvula: I started playing music quite young, but was always quite self-conscious and so it took me a long time (into my 20s) to actively consider becoming a “real musician”. It was spending time with a Zambian aunt, Maureen Lilanda, who is a renowned singer-songwriter in Zambia, that finally gave me the courage to consider writing and releasing my first album.
HC: What role does improvisation or experimentation play in your song writing or performance process? Can you share an instance where an unexpected musical moment led to something significant?
Namvula: I believe that every honest creation, in whichever art form, starts from a place of improvisation, of experimentation. You start from a place of nothing, you have to open yourself to the unknown, lean into trust, and then catch the thread of something floating by you. In my process, what comes after that point is the crafting, the mining and refining, the pulling apart and reshaping. My latest project Chasing Shadows leans more into the improvisational, with currents of improvisation flowing in between islands of songs.
Collaborative vocal improvisation is a big love of my creative life, and there are other projects that I’m involved in, such as PASCOL, which are fully improvisational, but they are their own distinct things.
HC: How would you describe the evolution of your sound from your first album ‘Shiwezwa’ in 2014 to now, with your current EP ‘All Shades of the Sun’?
Namvula: In Shiwezwa, I feel that I was exploring all the different elements that made up my musical landscape. I felt a real need to connect with my Zambian heritage, and so a lot of my songs were written in my mother’s tongue, Lenje. The second album, Quiet Revolutions, was a transition album musically: I felt more able to move freely within and between sonic worlds. By the time of All Shades of the Sun, I was actively trying to shed the “world music’ label that I had found myself placed within, as I found it creatively limiting. I wanted to be able to explore and express freely, and traverse sounds as I felt interesting and inspiring, and which served the song rather than any particular pre-determined sound. Perhaps becoming a mother also made me more self-assured, less concerned about fitting into a specific sonic world.
HC: What is the influence/back story to ‘All Shades of the Sun’, and what were you feeling when you wrote it?
Namvula: I was thinking about the shattered state of our world, and bringing my two boys into this uncertain time, a time that feels fractured and fraught and violent on so many different levels. I was thinking about the increasingly urgent need for collective love, collective courage in the face of what can at times feel like overwhelming and insurmountable global problems, about the need for collective re\humanising, and how, in the face of everything, we need to find a way for our hearts to keep breaking, to remain soft, to remain vulnerable, to remain strong and courageous. And how our capacity for this, for love, is one of the most important lessons that I can offer my boys. As I wrote ‘All Shades’, I felt such a huge, wide variety of emotions : sometimes despair and anger, sometimes hopefulness and softness. Perhaps all of those things all the time, maybe just in different hues and intensity.
HC: What feelings or ideas do you hope to communicate to your audience?
Namvula: My biggest hope is always that listeners are moved in some way, that they feel a connection to the essence, the heartbeat of the music even if they may not understand the words. That they feel they’ve been on some sort of journey with us, across landscapes and soundscapes and feeling-scapes. And that all of our hearts are collectively a little more open, and a little more tender, and a little more emboldened.
HC: How do you navigate the balance between personal expression and the potential interpretation of your music by your audience? Is listener reception something you actively consider?
Namvula: When I write, I try my utmost to remain writing in honour of the song, of the story or the person that I am trying to tell. The moment I start to think about the listener at this stage, I lose my way and begin to feel profoundly disconnected to the music. When that has happened I’ve often had to pull myself right back to the source. When I do actively consider the listener is once that writing work is done, which is when I start to think about the shape of the offering – where songs fit within an album, the arc of a show, and what journey I want to take the listener on.
HC: In a world filled with music, what do you believe is the unique power or responsibility of a musician?
Namvula: I believe that art, in any form, but particularly music, has the potency to move us beyond ourselves, and in so doing it reminds us of the smallness and fragility of our existence, the largeness of our spirits, and the commonality of our humanness. You do not need to understand my words, or the story I am sharing, or the moments where there are no words, for you to be moved to dance, or to stillness, or to tears, or to open porousness. There is such power in that – and that can be used both for the good, or the opposite.
HC: Could you offer insight into your song writing process? Where do your ideas typically originate, and how do they develop into finished pieces?
Namvula: The vast majority of my songs are rooted in the lives or experiences of people I know, or have met, or have heard about. I have bursts where I will write a whole lot of terrible songs, and of those there will be a handful that have a golden heart. Some will take form, and some remain as unshaped nuggets – either not yet ready to become a song yet, or they just never were meant to be. A few songs have come almost fully formed, but most I have to sit with, edit, re-edit lyric and melody. My writing has become increasingly collaborative, which has felt very musically satisfying for me, so in my latest project Chasing Shadows, the musicians were offered starting prompts for mood and soundscape, but a lot of freedom from that point onwards, which I think (hope!) has led to a very rich and beautiful body of work.
HC: What challenges have you encountered in your musical career, and what strategies have you developed to overcome them?
Namvula: I’ve had so many no’s (or no’s through silence), that I’ve lost count: no’s to funding, or to gigs or festivals. I’m a DIY musician, and I’ve made it work without label, management or agents for years, which can be tough when I believe my music can hold its space but you keep having to knock on doors that don’t seem to open. Financially, it can also be really challenging trying to make the tour books balance, particularly post-Brexit/Covid where the landscape has shifted so far. And it’s also been hard spinning around being a mama to little ones, and trying to keep my career going. But there are certain things that I do, or believe, or that I’m learning:
*send the festival / funding proposal / whatever, and then forget about it, I’ve done my bit. But I send it, I have a something percent chance if I do, a zero percent chance if I don’t.
*there are no deadlines to being creative / making your art / releasing a project. Take the time it needs, there’s a whole heap of life still to be lived around it
*stay off social media
*turn up to my practice
*collaborate, and ask for help
*the to-do list never gets shorter, the mountain never smaller (especially when battling with mountains of laundry as well!). But I write things down, and then cross them out, so it feels like I’m moving. And then I make myself a cup of tea to celebrate.
*take time to reflect on my progress (I should do this more often).
HC: Looking back at your musical journey so far, what song or project are you most proud of, and why?
Namvula: I’m proud of every project for different reasons. Shiwezwa, because it was my first offering, and I knew nothing, and still did something. Quiet Revolutions, because I honoured the stories of so many women, and I recorded and released it whilst becoming a mama. All Shades of the Sun, because it was hard times with Covid, and Brexit, and I released it whilst becoming a mama for the second time. And now Chasing Shadows, because it is my most vulnerable piece of work yet, I believe.
HC: How do you stay inspired and avoid creative blocks? Are there any rituals or practices you find particularly helpful?
Namvula: There have been times in my career when I’ve felt profoundly bored with my music and my music-making. I don’t think it’s a block as such, more of a feeling of being static and dissatisfied, and not knowing how or in which direction to expand. Collaborative vocal improvisation has continuously been one source for filling my creative well in those moments, of offering me a creative spark, or a reminder of where to tap into (inwardly) and tune into my creativity. Sometimes I’m just too busy with admin, or the day-to-day busyness of being a mum, and it feels as though my creative brain has had the off-switch hit. In those times, I often walk a lot, try to free-write a lot, try to rest more, and try to be much more intentional about turning up to writing or playing practice (even if it’s just 15 or 20 minutes) daily.
HC: Tell me briefly of the workshops you facilitate…
Namvula: I run a couple of local singing groups for parents near my home in Oxford, as well as facilitating perinatal mental health singing groups in London.
HC: For aspiring musicians who admire your work, what is one piece of advice you would offer them on their own musical path?
Namvula: Be persistent, and consistent, and offer yourself a whole heap of grace, always.
HC: When you are not making music, what hobbies do you enjoy?
Namvula: I’m really enjoying spending time in my garden, growing things, and trying to keep our 5 chickens from destroying it! I love reading, when I have the time, and baking, when I remember to buy the flour.
HC: Do you have a non-musical skill or talent you can reveal to me?
Namvula: I’m a great events organiser (with a friend we set up Film Africa, which is now one of the biggest festivals of African film in the UK), and I was once, in a previous lifetime, a social documentary photographer.
HC: What types of music do you enjoy listening to when you are not concentrating on your own creativity?
Namvula: I recently made a playlist of some artists that I’m finding particularly inspiring at the moment. It includes Liran Donin + Idris Rahman, Chief Adjuah, Germa Adan, Nala Sinephro…you can listen here. I also love just sticking on fip (Radio France), as it’s usually got great stuff playing!
HC: What do you enjoy most about being a musician?
The making of the music – and the making sense of the world around me through lyric.
HC: You will be coming to rural Suffolk for the Sonic Wave night on 13th June, are you excited about coming to Suffolk? Have you been to the county before?
Namvula: I’ve heard great things about The Cut, so I’m really looking forward to playing in that venue, and also getting a chance to listen to Sunda Arc’s show after ours! We played in Suffolk years ago, and I haven’t been out that way for a while.
HC: Can you tell us about your performance for Sonic Wave, what can the audience expect?
Namvula: I’ll be playing a duo show with my long-term collaborator, the beautiful and virtuosic guitarist Giuliano Modarelli, who is the co-founder of award-winning Kefaya. Playing as a duo allows us to offer the music in a wonderfully intimate way, one that perhaps feels much more vulnerable and immediate than when playing with the full band.
Go here for Namvula’s website
For more about Sonic Wave go here