{"id":42355,"date":"2018-05-22T12:26:05","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T11:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/ostinato-records-musical-storytelling-to-rebuild-ruined-countries\/"},"modified":"2020-05-04T23:22:29","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T22:22:29","slug":"ostinato-records-musical-storytelling-to-rebuild-ruined-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/ostinato-records-musical-storytelling-to-rebuild-ruined-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Ostinato Records: musical storytelling to rebuild ruined countries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14315 pam-featured-content\"  src=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ostinato-records-tapes.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"432\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ostinato-records-tapes.jpg 768w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ostinato-records-tapes-759x427.jpg 759w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ostinato-records-tapes-661x372.jpg 661w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ostinato-records-tapes-465x262.jpg 465w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ostinato-records-tapes-375x211.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(min-width:1010px) 759px,100vw\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\">As Ostinato Records\u00a0is about to\u00a0release this autumn its newest compilation about the forgotten yet golden era of Sudanese music, we had a conversation with the label&#8217;s founder, Vik Sohonie.<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the time of our interview via Skype, Vik Sohonie was in Bangkok, Thailand where he grew up, \u201cand this is the place where I spend most of my time\u201d. His label is based in New York but he\u2019s rarely there: \u201cI\u2019m usually in Africa or Asia, particularly in India \u2013 where I was born \u2013 to visit my parents\u201d. This quick explanation already draws a very <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">relevant<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> personal world map of the founder of Ostinato Records, a music label whose releases aim to \u201cshed a positive light on societies\u201d that suffered from forced migration, internal war and conflicts, or natural disasters, all having resulted in concealing or destroying the countries\u2019 artistic heritage. Since 2016 and his first release, Sohonie has relentlessly been digging up forgotten music of Haiti, Cape Verde, Somalia and \u2013 Ostinato\u2019s latest fresh compilation \u2013 Sudan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With a background and formation in journalism, Indian-born Sohonie\u2019s work seems incongruous in the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">generally white Occidental<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> small world of music digging, and our conversation quickly took a strong social and political meaning, with themes ranging from postcolonialism ever-present trap, to the possibilities of ethical and fair trade within capitalism. And how releasing music might sometimes have more impact than telling stories. Digging? Yes, but <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">storydigging<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. \u201cMusic is the most powerful weapon, as a storytelling tool.\u201d<br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe style=\"border: 0; width: 350px; height: 350px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=1761486499\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/minimal=true\/transparent=true\/\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" seamless=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ostinatorecords.bandcamp.com\/album\/abu-obaida-hassan-his-tambour-the-shaigiya-sound-of-sudan\">Abu Obaida Hassan &amp; His Tambour: The Shaigiya Sound of Sudan by Abu Obaida Hassan<\/a><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\"><span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\"><b><br \/>\nHow do you define your activity? Would you consider yourself a digger? A music producer? A musicologist? A cultural traveler?<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Vik Sohonie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I started my career as a journalist, and I would say I\u2019m still a journalist. I like to tell great stories and I use music as a storytelling tool. I look for defining political and cultural events in history, like immigration waves, civil wars\u2026 Stories that need to be told, as they\u2019ve been denied because of prejudices and editorial choices of powerful Western media.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I wouldn\u2019t say I\u2019m a digger: i think digging has a colonial connotation to it\u2026<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ethnomusicology, all these things are terms and labels that do a disservice to cultures because they \u2013 again \u2013 place the cultures of the \u201cglobal South\u201d in one room, and the culture of the \u201cdeveloped world\u201d in another room. Do people really say they go digging in Europe or in Japan? So I\u2019d say I\u2019m not even a journalist: I\u2019m a storyteller. Whenever there\u2019s a great human story to be told, there\u2019s usually great music behind it. And <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I&#8217;d rather tell a story with a soundtrack than with an article I could easily publish in the New York Times but would hardly get the reader&#8217;s attention.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\">How do you choose the countries you want to cover?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m interested in countries that have been severely badly represented and have had their international image torn apart by major media. After we&#8217;d released the compilation of Somalian music, I went to the Somalia page on <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Al Jazeera<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> website, and 99% of the stories were negative, the only positive story featured there being our compilation! Most of these countries I already had on my radar, like Cape Verde \u2013 whose music I\u2019d already loved \u2013 or Haiti \u2013 that I\u2019ve intensively studied at the university.<br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe style=\"border: 0; width: 350px; height: 350px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=4282536159\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/minimal=true\/transparent=true\/\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" seamless=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ostinatorecords.bandcamp.com\/album\/sweet-as-broken-dates-lost-somali-tapes-from-the-horn-of-africa\">Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa by Various Artists<\/a><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\">How do you look for the music stories you want to tell in such different countries?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I usually look for the story first, then the music comes after. Or sometimes, like in the case of Cape Verde, I found amazing music and I found there was a beautiful story of immigration behind it. In the case of Somalia, I knew there was an amazing story to tell of Mogadiscio and the country from before the civil war, and I thought that there must be great music linked to it, and so I began my research.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because I grew in so many different countries, I understand the depth of what cultures can be and I have serious issues with the way stories are told and the perceptions imposed by global images and international news stories. That is why I look for stories that are gonna change the narrative and tell the truth that hasn\u2019t been told for many decades or centuries.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\"><b><br \/>\nWhy do you think these musics have been unheard for so long? Is it the result of five centuries of colonization?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, colonization and the media industry that it created: who is empowered to tell the stories? For example, there are many European journalists telling the story of Brazil, but why can\u2019t you find Indian journalists telling it? How come we in the global South don\u2019t tell our own stories? We come from similar histories, legacies and traumas, thus we can emphasize each other better and tell each other\u2019s stories more richly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\">What do you think are these \u201ccommon legacies\u201d between India, Africa and Caribbean?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As an Indian, when I go to East Africa, I feel like people are long-lost family members. There is a bond between us, and this is why if you let more people of color cover countries of color, you probably going to get richer and different stories. It created a solidarity that has existed for a long time, at least since the 1950s and the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement [a group of states that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc, Translator\u2019s note]. Most of the former colonized countries decided not to be part of neither American capitalism, nor Soviet communism. They created an alliance between Africa, Asia and South America and all gathered in Indonesia at the Bandung Conference to found this new movement.<br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe style=\"border: 0; width: 350px; height: 350px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=2817867693\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/minimal=true\/transparent=true\/\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" seamless=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ostinatorecords.bandcamp.com\/album\/synthesize-the-soul-astro-atlantic-hypnotica-from-the-cape-verde-islands-1973-1988\">Synthesize the Soul: Astro-Atlantic Hypnotica from the Cape Verde Islands 1973-1988 by Various Artists<\/a><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\">Still, is there a risk of being seen as a neo-colonist when you as an Indian go to Somali to exhume local music?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First of all, in our history, we are the ones who were colonized, and we didn\u2019t colonize anybody. That <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">guilt<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that comes with it colonization is not on us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I went to Haiti, Dominican Republic, Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti\u2026 and I was very nervous when I first went to these places: will I be seen as an outsider, will I be treated as a foreigner, with suspicion? Finally, it helped me learn more about my own history. Not many Indians go to Haiti, as it is far, but I found that Haitians knew we had a common history. And I would be truly happy if an Haitian did an Indian music compilation; that would be the most beautiful thing in the world!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\">I understand your work is not the same as a record producer. What are the purposes of your music compilations?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With my releases, I\u2019m trying to change global images and shed a positive light on those societies. Because who tells your story controls your image. We, in the global South, we don\u2019t fetichize war and poverty, but we look to the depths of the history. If you perpetuate false images, you\u2019re complicit in the crimes that happen to these places.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The European labels do a very great job, and we\u2019re all allies in this, but why are most of the compilation\/reissues labels based in Europe and are run by Europeans? There\u2019s an history behind that. I\u2019m the first Indian to run this kind of label, though we are a billion people. I hope the little success that my label has had, hopefully can inspire more people from Asia to take on cultural preservation work.<br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe style=\"border: 0; width: 350px; height: 350px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=245615982\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/minimal=true\/transparent=true\/\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" seamless=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ostinatorecords.bandcamp.com\/album\/tanbou-toujou-lou-meringue-kompa-kreyol-vodou-jazz-electric-folklore-from-haiti-1960-1981\">Tanbou Toujou Lou: Meringue, Kompa Kreyol, Vodou Jazz, &amp; Electric Folklore from Haiti 1960 &#8211; 1981 by Various Artists<\/a><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\">As an Indian-born person, why haven\u2019t you released a compilation about Indian music yet? I guess there must be some unheard or unrecognized music in such a huge territory populated by so many different communities.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019ve already thought about this question, and I very much want to do something with Indian music, but there are many reasons why I haven\u2019t released this music yet. When you\u2019re born in India, you\u2019re told not to like your own country, and you\u2019re taught to look West, because of the British colonization. My parents who grew up in the 1960s in India were listening to The Beatles! That was the major thing at the time, especially for the people living in the city, who didn\u2019t have link with the small villages life. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I myself had to learn about Indian music through European record collectors! That\u2019s crazy.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I grew up with the African-American culture: listening to American hip hop, reading Black poets\u2026 Hip hop was everywhere where I grew up \u2013 big cities of India, Thailand, Philippines. Then I could relate to this culture because I felt similar racism and inequalities in my life before.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second thing is linked to journalism: in the major news companies, if you are a White Westerner journalist, you can cover any country in the world and tell the story you want, but if you are a Sudanese, they only let you cover Sudan. And the same goes for other South country. And because I myself have been pigeonholed this way, I haven\u2019t felt like covering Indian music till now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The third thing is though I want to celebrate Indian music, if I look for a great story, I don\u2019t find one. India is such a diverse country, because it was never meant to be a unified country, due to so many different cultures and communities. There are so many things to be told, so where do I begin? Actually, I\u2019m currently working with a great Indian music collector and we\u2019re trying to find out what we can do. But as an Indian, I\u2019ll have to be very careful with that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The last thing is that \u2013 and you shouldn\u2019t forget about it \u2013, as any other colonized society, India has its own complexes. So an Indian like me, who has spent a lot of time abroad and in the U.S.A, has an American accent, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m not Indian enough for Indians<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. And they would tell you \u201cWhy do you care about our past? We have so many great things happening nowadays.\u201d India is not like Somalia or Sudan, where so much has been lost and the infrastructures damaged: India doesn\u2019t need a global perception change. It would be for me more a way to discover my own music and culture. And I still need some time before understanding how to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\">Before you go back to your Indian roots, what\u2019s the next stop then? \u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You mentioned the Carribean earlier, and I precisely would like to work on Guiana. I want to tell the story of Indians in South America. And I find Guiana has an incredible history.<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #f2c94c;\">Read next:\u00a0<a style=\"color: #f2c94c;\" href=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/abu-obaida-hassan-the-mysterious-pioneer-of-sudanese-shaigiya-music\/\">Abu Obaida Hassan, the Mysterious Pioneer of Sudanese\u2019 Shaigiya Music<\/a><\/span><\/h6>\n<div id=\"attachment_14310\" style=\"width: 2058px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14310\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14310\" src=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Vik-Sohonie-.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1368\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Vik-Sohonie-.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Vik-Sohonie--759x507.jpg 759w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Vik-Sohonie--1010x675.jpg 1010w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Vik-Sohonie--1440x962.jpg 1440w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Vik-Sohonie--661x442.jpg 661w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Vik-Sohonie--465x311.jpg 465w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Vik-Sohonie--375x250.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(min-width:1010px) 759px,100vw\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-14310\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ostinato&#8217;s Ahmed Asyouti (Left) and Vik Sohonie (Right) laugh with singer Emad Youssef in his home in Omdurman, December 2017 \u00a9 Janto Djassi \/ Picture Me Different<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Ostinato Records\u00a0is about to\u00a0release this autumn its newest compilation about the forgotten yet golden era of Sudanese music, we had a conversation with the label&#8217;s founder, Vik Sohonie. At the time of our interview [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":14315,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7835,9405],"tags":[6618],"location":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42355"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=42355"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=42355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}