{"id":116736,"date":"2022-12-08T13:01:35","date_gmt":"2022-12-08T11:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=116736"},"modified":"2022-12-08T15:16:30","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T13:16:30","slug":"lamin-fofana-here-lies-universality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/lamin-fofana-here-lies-universality\/","title":{"rendered":"Lamin Fofana, organizing sound for ambient meanings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cIt’s one of those things…<\/em>\u201d Lamina hesitates, somewhere far away, \u201cit depends where I choose to begin.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sinking into a disc from Lamin Fofana is like stepping into an electric bog. There will be cues encrusted on titles like \u201cSearching for Memory\u201d or \u201cRehearsal of Truth\u201d but these can be esoteric and misleading. The balance between ambient noise and elevated music is hinged on the fulcrum of experience. \u201cI grew up in Sierra Leone, in Freetown. And very early on I guess I had an appreciation for sound and music.<\/em>\u201d Lamin explains. \u201cJust being surrounded by the cacophony of Afro-diasporic influences this sound from Congo and that sound from Haiti…<\/em>\u201d Lamin has a way of wandering off into thoughts with bouts of silence. Searching for memory… \u201cIt’s not a simple listening experience or environment.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, Lamin\u2019s catalog is in no way \u201csimple\u201d. It\u2019s challenging and obscure. Sometimes a wallflower, others a snap trap. \u201cI like trying to find different small pockets of sounds that you can amplify and loop, and layer with other pieces of music. This is everything.<\/em>\u201d Repetition to make clear what\u2019s there. Repetition to make obvious what\u2019s missing. Lamin\u2019s little pockets of \u201ceverything\u201d are ear-benders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt began with listening,<\/em>\u201d he explains. \u201cAnd the thing is, even before you hear the organized sounds that we often call music, all the noises you hear, there’s already music in that. I learned this from writers like Nathaniel Mackey and Fred Moten.<\/em>\u201d The key here being not all environments are equal. The cacophony of Sierra Leone\u2019s Freetown isn\u2019t the same as the tranquil alleyways of an early morning Berlin. \u201cIn all these places Freetown, Harlem or Alexandria, Virginia… There’s a way sound appears or emanates and a way people move, you know? The way sound travels in those places, it’s distinct.<\/em>\u201d So Lamin can carry not only his homegrown zouk with the gogo hip-hop of the United States\u2019 Near South in his ebbing subconscious, but the parallel movements of people and fauna, machine and mockingbird, into his work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ink Agop<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Though Lamin\u2019s early 2010 work, What Elijah Said, <\/em>is more of an electro-bop; tracks like \u201cI will admonish you and give you absolution\u201d resonate with late 20th century West African dance music. Moving through the Africans Are Real <\/em>EP and the two track package \u201cLike White Lightning Up a Black Snake\u2019s Ass\u201d we find much of the same. Steady electro rhythms imbued with sounds that herald from afar. The titles are just as wonky and punchy as ever. However, Lamin doesn\u2019t fully embrace the ambient sphere until his first full length project, Doubleworld<\/em>. As a whole it feels like a coming to terms with Lamin\u2019s duality as a producer. \u201cWhen the Fever Breaks\u201d could be used on indie dance floors around the world, while the telling \u201cThe Ultimate \/ Outsider\u201d has a church-like soundscape and a poetic interlude that escapes form. This deconstruction continues on his 2018 Brancuse Sculpting Beyonce <\/em>and the 2022 Unsettling Scores<\/em>. The process has become centered around sound samples and the pockets and loops Lamin described earlier; the emotive synths and carefully organized noise replacing percussive foundations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the best example of this deconstruction process comes from one of Lamin\u2019s conversational detours during our interview where he describes the three water features that surround his Manhattan home. \u201cI\u2019m back in New York and I’m in between three bodies of water,<\/em>\u201d he begins, looking past the computer into some mental space. \u201cThere’s the East River, then, in Central Park, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. It’s this reservoir we call the pond. And on the other side of that, there’s the Hudson River. Just taking it slow and walking around listening, the air feels different around each of those places. The light is also different… These are the things that inform production and choices. How you listen to the atmosphere… just being sensitive to the surrounding world. And it’s not just when you are there, experiencing that air, that atmosphere in that moment, but it’s informed by what came before.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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