Hip-hop musician Soweto Kinch is the epitome of cool! The humidity and the heat do not appear to dampen the enthusiasm and verve of this jazz saxophonist from the United Kingdom as he joined MetroPlus for a quick chat about his music and his signature programme Flyover Show, before he went shopping for coolers.
On his third visit to India, though it is his first trip to South India, he says he has always enjoyed visits to the country and talks about his show in Mumbai, when he played with Louis Banks and Sivamani. “Sivamani was mindblowing… how many fingers does this guy have? He was playing on everything and anything,” he recalls. The musician has visited Delhi, Kolkata and Jaipur too, where he remembers with awe meeting author Ben Okri.
On the trip to Mumbai, he happened to visit Dharavi, one of the biggest slums in the world. “Instantly it evoked memories of Birmingham where I hail from and where I live. These places are inhabited by people who make the most of their circumstances, very enterprising, very creative people. And I got a chance to conduct a workshop with some children from that area. In spite of the bad press that these areas get, there is so much of creativity,” says Soweto.
In fact, Soweto hopes to bring over his signature Flyover Show to Dharavi if all goes well. The Flyover Show, titled so because it is held under a flyover in inner Birmingham, is a day-long music and arts festival that tries to remove negative perceptions of inner cities by bringing the best of the arts and entertainment world to these places. “How do you attract people to an area that is associated with garbage, guns, gangs, crime and destitution? I have a vision of bringing the best of stagecraft and entertainment to such places and say that: ‘you deserve all this too’. You are as much a part of the city as people living in a high-rise.”
Agreeing with a smile that he was indeed named after the famous township in South Africa where the most visible and strong uprising against apartheid took place, he adds: “I was born two years after the uprising and my mother had this dream in which she was told that it would all change and that was why I was named after the town.”
Talking about the Flyover programme in Soweto, this year, he says that “it was one of the most emotional moment in my life. I shared the stage with some great musicians and great friends. It was a dream come true. I was playing the saxophone but I was crying inside. There was a 3,000-strong crowd there. The history of this place still means so much to the people there.”
The music
Soweto has composed the music for the inaugural film of the 17th edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK). Seven musicians from the U.K. will play the score for the 1927 Alfred Hitchcock silent film The Ring , which will be screened at Nishagandhi on Friday.
“This is my first film score and I could not have chosen a more demanding one. It was a challenge to compose music for this movie. I have composed for theatre. Of course, I know about Hitchcock’s body of work! But when I was commissioned to score for this, I wanted to move away from what had been done before and bring in something fresh and different. There are a lot of complexities in this movie and when this film was screened Hitchcock would not have commissioned a score for this as each theatre would have had a separate band playing whatever music they thought fit,” says Soweto.
The music that he has created, according to hints dropped, also includes songs set to lyrics. “This is a complex film about relationships. And women in this are quite different from his latter movies. They are not docile women and there are no blondes, these women are feisty and have a mind of their own. In a way the music is another character of the film. I am really glad that you are going to see it alive,” he says with a smile.
A foodie
Tucking into rice and spicy fish curry at Keys Hotel, Soweto explains: “I enjoy spicy food and am used to it. Birmingham is a multi-racial society and there are many Punjabis there. In fact, the balti chicken originated there! I enjoy cooking and I cook when I get time. I make Jerk chicken… but I have no idea why it is called ‘Jerk'. I also cook kurma, pastas and, recently, my favourite, paella.”
Fact File
Eldest son of theatre actor Yvette Harris and playwright Don Kinch
Winner of the Rising Star at the BBC Jazz Awards
Debut album was ‘Conversations with the Unseen’
History graduate from Oxford
Mercury Prize nomination for album of the year in 2003
