Musically, he describes “We Belong” as a “love letter to black music.” The New Yorker, born Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab, had always put together his own colorful mix of styles such as reggae, funk, soul and dancehall. This time, however, the lyrics are about the history of black music instead of your own experiences.
“For ‘We Belong,’ I looked to the outside world for inspiration,” he says. “I began to study the lives and works of musicians such as Fela Kuti, Bob Marley and Gilberto Gil. If you do this, you will automatically learn a lot about the history of black people in Jamaica, North Africa, Brazil or South Africa. And I noticed that there is a collective experience, that we have a common identity. That’s what I wanted to show with this album.”
By “collective experience” does Sinkane mean racism? “Racism is just the tip of the iceberg. The very first is expulsion and slavery. Racism is just a byproduct of this. But because we were displaced and black people emigrated to all parts of the world, we brought our music to many other cultures, integrated it there and created so many wonderful styles of music that have a strong African identity, but are still unique to the place where we landed. Gilberto Gil’s songs can clearly be attributed to Brazil, but they also contain African and Caribbean influences.”
Sinkane dedicated the title song “We Belong” to the jazz musician Sun Ra. And the attitude of Ishmael Reed, a black US writer who was humorously and often ironically committed to the African-American protest movement, runs through the entire album.
Exile in the USA
The interest in these topics comes from Sinkane’s life story. His father was a Sudanese diplomat and journalist who, in the 1970s and 1980s, opposed the dictatorial tendencies of Omar al-Bashir, who was then in the opposition, uncovered his machinations and even had to go to prison for them. When al-Bashir came to power in a military coup in 1989, Sinkane’s father was studying in the USA and subsequently had to apply for asylum there because it would have been too dangerous for him to return to Sudan, which was ruled by al-Bashir’s authoritarian rule .
“That makes me a very political person,” says Sinkane. “I don’t see myself as a protest songwriter, but as a political musician. I don’t know how else I could write songs if not about topics like that. But I’m no longer as aggressive as I was as a young man. Today I want to give people hope with my music – a little break from all this toxic, negative energy that constantly surrounds us.”
