{"id":54226,"date":"2020-06-23T10:30:50","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T09:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=54226"},"modified":"2020-06-23T14:42:32","modified_gmt":"2020-06-23T13:42:32","slug":"lafawndah-you-at-the-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/lafawndah-you-at-the-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Lafawndah, the day after the world ends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Following the launch of the EP <em>Tan<\/em> on Warp Records, and then <em>Ancestor Boy<\/em> (the experimental r\u2019n\u2019b debut album that led her to tour the world in 2019) Lafawndah has embarked upon some remarkable collaborations, notably with avant-garde percussionist Midori Takada, as well as forays into fashion, visual music, and contemporary art. It\u2019s a beautiful repertoire, totally fitting considering this magnetic artist\u2019s thirst for musical and spiritual exploration. She&#8217;s back today with \u201cYou, at the End\u201d, a masterful rereading of a Kate Tempest poem and the cornerstone of <em>The Fifth Season<\/em>, a second album due out on 8th September on the out-of-this-world French label Latency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whilst maintaining the electro feel and experimental soul that\u2019s close to the singer\u2019s heart, this second album takes a powerful orchestral turn. It is haunted by a twilight brass from Theon and Nathaniel Cross, influences of London jazz, Valentina Magaletti\u2019s timpani, Fever Ray-style keys from Nick Weiss, as well as the rapper Lala &amp;ce for a superb final duet. With intense incantations that occasionally, disturbingly evoke Bj\u00f6rk \u2013 particularly on \u201cYou, at the End\u201d \u2013 Lafawndah stands as a high priestess on the brink of a new world, with six tracks of light and dark, \u2018songs of ashen rain; ballads for an overturned world\u2019 fed by dense literary and musical references.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"You, at the End\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4Iz_dGRRTm8?feature=oembed&#038;autoplay=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Lafawndah &#8211; You, at the End<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>We find \u201cThe Woman the Boy Became\u201d by Kate Tempest, but also \u201cVieille Pri\u00e8re Bouddhique\u201d, from a piece by Lili Boulanger dating from 1917 (entitled \u201cOld Prayer\u201d), a cover of trans singer Beverly Glenn-Copeland\u2019s song \u201cDon\u2019t Despair\u201d, and multiple references to the <em>Broken Earth<\/em> trilogy by African-American science-fiction writer N.K. Jemisin. \u2018The book was a guest on the album,\u2019 Lafawndah explains. \u2018I was really moved by it because even though it\u2019s about the end of the world, it\u2019s also about a new order, a renewal. Dystopian discourses really affected me growing up, and I much prefer people who imagine the end of capitalism, patriarchy, and the nation state. So <em>The Fifth Season<\/em> is an invitation to imagine what doesn&#8217;t exist yet, but is already in the air \u2013 a collective awakening.\u2019 It is utopia and a new dawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For <em>The Fifth Season<\/em>, Lafawndah has taken a very different approach to the highly productive creative process that produced <em>Ancestor Boy<\/em>. This time she\u2019s focused on letting go, listening to her intuition, and working on collective improvisation. \u2018I feel like this record used me in order to enter this world, and I was just it\u2019s conduit. The music is completely free and it flowed through me, beyond my will or my control. It&#8217;s music for the day after the world ends\u2019 she explains, speaking from London where recording took place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Born in Paris, Lafawndah has travelled extensively, from New York to Tehran and New Delhi, from Mexico to the tropics. Alongside this, the artist has cultivated an aesthetic of displacement for herself and her evolving art, a new musical continent on the border of Eastern and Western traditions. \u2018Music that sits nowhere,\u2019 she says speaking of Lili Boulanger&#8217;s work. In <em>The Fifth Season<\/em>, Lafawndah explores the collective dimension of ritual, as well as the healing powers of repetitive music, influenced as much by Egyptian z\u0101r, traditional Indian music and gnawa, as by leaders of the American minimalist music movement such as Steve Reich, Monte Young, and Terry Riley. \u2018I&#8217;ve always been fascinated by a state of trance. I often think about how we listen to and consume music now. For me it\u2019s very important not to forget the social, almost psychiatric, aspect of music, in that it\u2019s capable of healing\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s no doubt about it, this record couldn\u2019t have come at a better time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Listen to &#8220;You, at the End&#8221; by Lafawandah in our Songs of the Week playlist on <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/5Au5WzqKtuYMaqK1zT88Qv\" target=\"_blank\">Spotify<\/a> and <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.deezer.com\/fr\/playlist\/1878285902?app_id=105611\" target=\"_blank\">Deezer<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With \u201cYou, At The End\u201d, Lafawndah is back \u2013 a high priestess on the brink of a new world. From London, the artist has announced the release of The Fifth Season, a second album expected on 8th September. Let\u2019s meet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":54215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7834],"tags":[2500,5924],"location":[7984,8230],"yst_prominent_words":[16049,8509,16032,9172,16041,16039,16060,8542,8435,16046,11361,16040,16029,16030,8857,8543,8438,16045,16031,16028],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54226"}],"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\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54226"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=54226"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=54226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}