Song Exploder - Michael Kiwanuka - Black Man in a White World

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

Instead of a new episode this week, revisiting this episode originally published in May 2017. Please consider donating to local and national organizations engaged in the work of racial equality. Here are some links: American Civil Liberties Union NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Community Bail Funds Michael Kiwanuka is a singer/songwriter from London. His second album, Love and Hate, came out in 2016, and was named one of the Best Albums of the Year from the BBC, NME, The Guardian, GQ, and more. One of the songs on the album was used as the theme for the hit HBO series Big Little Lies. In this episode, Michael breaks down the song "Black Man in a White World."songexploder.net/michael-kiwanuka

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. I'm recording this on June 3, 2020. This week, with protests against police brutality happening all across the world, there's an urgency, there's a life and death urgency, in fact, in the discourse that's taking place right now. It seems unbelievable in 2020 that something is simple and true as the idea that Black Lives Matter has to be asserted over and over again. but here we are, it still does. I was thinking of letting Song Exploder be silent this week. It's hard to feel like a show about the creative process

is necessary in a moment where everyone's attention should be focused on trying to carve justice out of an unjust world. But music can accomplish things that other forms of expression can't, and it can make you feel things with the power that can't be replicated. And that is important. And I thought of this episode from 2017 with Michael Coonuka and his song Black Man in a White World. I love this song, and there are things.

that Michael said about it that I really wanted to hear again. Before the episode plays, I want to mention that Michael also put out a new record in 2019 called Kunuka, and it's also great, and you should definitely go listen to it. And if you want to get involved in the fight for basic human rights and equality, please do it in whatever way you can. Donate, listen, learn about the realities of racial injustice, call your government representatives, and demand that things change. If you do want to donate, there's some links in the episode description. I'll be back with a new episode of Song Exploder soon, but that'll be for another time.

Okay, here we go. Michael Coonuka is a singer-songwriter from London. His second album, Love and Hate, came out in 2016 and was named one of the best albums of the year from the BBC, NME, The Guardian, GQ, and more. One of the songs on the album was used as the theme for the hit HBO series, Big Little Lies. And in this episode, Michael breaks down the song

Black Man in a White World. He talks about how the song began, where it came from, and what the title means to him. My name's Michael Coonuka, and I'm a single songwriter from London. The song started in the studio around November time 2014. I've only done two albums, this is on the second album that's come out, Love and Hate. I'd done the first album, and I was struggling to make the second album. I'd written all these songs, made what I thought was an album, listened to it back, and decided it wasn't good enough. It was missing that excitement that you want to hear off an album.

So I was really dejected and stopped making music really. I just thought maybe the first album was just luck. It was the first few songs I wrote and they worked, but now it's come down to it. I just don't have the ability. Everything doesn't sound good. I kept sending things into the label. They were like, yeah, it's all right, but it's not really happening. And I knew it deep down.

And I was just kind of sitting around. So my manager was like, why don't you work with Inflow? I was like, who's Inflow? It's like, he's good. and I hadn't collaborated very much with other producers or co-written really that much so I said well I'm not doing anything and nothing's happening and it's not like

I've got any options so we met in central London and we just talked for like a couple of hours and I saw these guys really cool and seemed like a nice person so let's go in the studio but I was really really down and I sometimes Flo would call and be like let's go to the studio

and I just wouldn't turn up I just couldn't face being in the studio and listening to music that wasn't good enough all the time. It's like this is just depressing because it was like I haven't made a good song in years. It feels like years and but then on like the fourth day of being in the studio every day. I just had my acoustic and I started playing some chords like country style bluesy chords and just started singing. I'm a black man in a white wheel. I'm a black man in a white world. I'm a black man in a white world.

And Flo was in the other room and he was like, what's that? Sounds pretty cool. I knew straight away that there was something too. it. But when I got signed and started making music professionally, it's the first time people say, well, you're this or, well, you're that. You should be doing this kind of music. And every time I'd send a demo in or like a tracking, and then our guy would be like, you know, you're not going to sing a country song. You're black. So that used to really rile me up because I felt like being black was like, stopped me from being a successful artist. Because I thought, well, if I was white, you know, I'd be able to do country music.

because it would fit, it would be like, oh yeah, he looks like that. It fits. So I had this feeling of like, you don't fit. So I thought, well, let's get rid of the acoustic guitar country lick. I said to Flo, I've been listening recently to Sun House, early blues music, and there's just one Sunhouse song, don't mind people grinning in your face, and he's just singing and clapping.

The whole song is just singing and clapping. Oh, but bad is in mine, a true friend is hard to find. Don't you mind mirror and you're off. So we just started clapping and I just started singing. I'm a black man in a white world. I'm a black man in a white world. I'm a black man in a white world. We had no chords and I just started singing the verse.

I've been told all my life. And then we listened to it back and it just sounded good just like that. We thought, wow, this is exciting. We stacked up the choruses for I'm a black man and doubled it, and I did some harmonies on it. I'm a black man in a white world. I'm a black man in a white world. And Flo went into the live room and played a bass drum, just three beats.

Like I've been here before, I feel that knocking. We've gone as far as we can without any chorus. or anything. So I just picked up an electric guitar and plugged it straight into the desk. We had no amp so we just plugged into the desk. And I was thinking of like Karets-Mayful tunes or the way people played on those like 70s records. I just obsessed with that still. The guitar is so cool and exciting, but it's smooth as well and clean.

I wanted something like that, so I picked up the guitar and then just found the key and then just played a G and A in like as funky rhythms I could do. We had this outtune, kind of broken bass that was in the studio. So I just plug that straight into the desk as well and just follow the guitar. And then that's all we had. That was like a space of half an hour, 45 minutes. I felt validated, you know. I felt some affirmation just within myself and my emotion because I was like I haven't been this excited about something I'm creating for so long, you know.

So it was a really big moment, like maybe I can do it, you know. But what was holding me back was the lyric. I'm a black man in a white world. But I can't sing that. I can't sing I'm a black man in a white world. Most of the people that come to my gigs is not really that many black people that come to the shows.

So what would they think if I put this out on an album or released it as a song with people think I just hate white people, you know? So all this fear kind of came in and I tried to change the words. I'm a black man and I feel down or I'm a black man in the wrong world

or anything. I was just trying to just shoehorn. You know, I could just say something else around what I mean but just soften it a bit, you know, and that way no one will get upset because I was like, you know, no one's going to listen to this. I sound like some like racist, you know, that hates white people. I just thought, which it isn't, but I thought people misunderstand because it was just this repetitive like mantra, I'm a black man in the white world. But I want to sing it because it felt so true to me, like incredibly true.

Nothing had felt that clear as a lyric up until that point in terms of what I felt like at the time. For me being a black artist, doing the music that I do, it's not, it doesn't really always connect with modern black culture as such. Growing up, I was always listening to Navarna, I was listening to Green Day in my early teens. I was going to punk festivals, watching Pennywise, and it would be like, none of these bands have black guys in it.

Because of where I grew up, Muswell Hill, there was no real black family. So all of my environment, all my influences were from, from kind of middle class of white backgrounds. But my family are Ugandan's and everyone had two cars. We didn't have any cars. We had like different foods. When friends came around to stay, it would be like, oh, you don't find my place strange.

You know, we eat like Ugandan food. So, you know, all these things. So I was always like, I don't fit. And on top of that, the music industry and the struggles of just like people trying to put you in a box. So back to the lyric, the feeling was like, half acceptance to myself and two just declaring like, well, this is it then.

That's what you see me. I'm a black man in a white world. So that's it. That's what I'm supposed to be. Cool. Sometimes it annoys me. Sometimes I get down about it. But at the same time, good, you know.

You said that, I'm going to say it too. But then after that, we just had this demo for like a year. And we couldn't finish the song. Because every time we tried things, it just ruined the excitement that we had at the beginning. We tried to be recorded with the proper band, but we just couldn't get what we were wanted. We couldn't replicate that excitement. And we realized at the time, the reason why we were losing the energy of it was that we

were trying to fix all the mistakes, like the out-of-tune bass, and the tempo just goes up and down. It's not to a click. It's just so all over the place. Then Flo and I realized we were back in London, and it was like, well, maybe we just play to the demo and extend that, because that's got the excitement. I'll have to get a drummer to just play through the weird tempo changes that happened. And so I called my friend Graham up, who's a drummer.

We said, we've got this track. Can you play drums on it? So he came to a studio in London, and we just kept playing the track. I'm a black man in a white world. And then his second beat he came up with just fitted the song and kept the excitement there, but elevated it. The beat that he had was like this Felakuti-style beat, Afro beat feel. And so Flo and I looked at each other like, wow, this sounds perfect. He also brought his congas along.

So he put a Congo part down, put some percussion in some other sounds that we hadn't heard before and, I mean, Graham went for it. Graham just started playing shakers. You played everything under the sign that you had in this percussion box. We needed to do some backing vocals. Those were done in London by three great singers.

They come from, like, church background so they can sing, like, really, really sing. I just had the idea to have this sound that goes, just to shock people in the verse. So I sing before, that I'm in love. And so I just said sing love straight away after that. I'm in love but I'm still sad.

Like a bullet to shock someone. And then nights as well. Nights. On my nights and all my day. Later on in one of the verses, there are these ars that they do too. There's overdrive distortion on the vocal to make it sound grittier.

So there's like a crunch to it. I love that stuff. And then there was this engineer that assistant engineer that was at the studio. And he's got this really low voice. He just starts talking and he's like, man, your voice is low. And Flo had the idea he turned around and was like, I wonder what it sounded like if after the breakdown, the assistant sings underneath my harmonies,

I'm a black man in white world to give an extra lift because he's got this really low voice that we couldn't get down to with a real strong character. So he asked him and he was like, what? I'm not a singer. I'm not a musician. You want me to sing on this track? And he was like, yeah. And it sounded amazing.

I'm a black man in the white world. I'm a black man in a white world. I'm a black man. We wanted to put some like string quartets and soulful string parts on a lot of the songs, which is the fun part near the end of a record. But I decided not to put strings on the black man in the white world. I thought it's not really that kind of lush kind of mid-tempo soul song. This is more exciting, so I don't want to take away from that

to have this really pretty string sound on top of it. Flo knows this lady called Rosie Danvers, who does strings for a lot of artists. like Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Adele, stuff like that. So she's like the go-to. So Rosie's in the studio. We play out all the tracks on the album, but I leave out Black Man and White World,

but she hears it because she's the end of the day. She's like, what's this? It's like, it's a song Black Man and White World, but I don't really want strings on it. She was like, well, let me just try something. So I say, cool, you know, we can just try it. And if you don't like it, can just take it out. And they play these really nice, long notes over the chords.

I thought that's pretty, it's cool. That's what I expected. But then the drop came, and she just put these disco 70 strings, like Lesando's like, just like, what? This sounds incredible. This was one of my favorite parts of the song. It was like the icing, the cherry on the cake. And at that point it was like the song's done.

I used to be just really upset with just not fitting in. I wanted just to be in a group that looked like someone that looked like me, and I just was desperate to fit in. When we would go to Uganda, it would be like, there's this word in Uganda, which is Muzungu, but it basically means foreigner or white person. So they'll call me and my brother a Muzungu because we were like chubier than everyone, like didn't speak to Uganda. We had different kinds of clothes.

And I'd be like, Muzungu, Muzungu. And I was like, don't call me that, man. I'm like, I'm English, but I'm not white, you know. And then, but then when I would be in England, it would be like, well, you're black, you know. So I was just in the middle of nowhere. And I hated it. And I wanted to sing about that. and it came out in this song.

So, Black Man in White Worlds, I'm glad that's the lyric. I realized how much of a blessing it is to not fit in. You can relate to different things that people don't really understand. And then I'd listen to my favorite artist, and I realized they all kind of had that in some way. So for me, this song represents all of that eureka moment of like, oh, right, okay, this is actually an incredible that I get to be a bit different.

And I'm so lucky that I grew up in Muswell Hill in North London, in the middle-class area and I'm so lucky that I like rock music, you know, I'm so lucky that my parents are Ugandan, I'm so lucky that I'm black. And now here's Black Man in a White World by Michael Kuanuka in its entirety. I've been low, I've been high, I've been sold all my lives, I've got nothing left to play, I've got nothing

left to say I'm a black man in a white world I'm a black man in a white world I'm a black man in a white girl I'm a black man in a white I'm in love but I'm still sad I found peace but I'm not glad on my nights and all my days I've been trying wrong way I'm a black man in a white blue. I'm a black man in a white blue. I'm a blood man in a white blue. Visit songexploder.net for a link to buy this track and to learn more about Michael Kuanuka and to watch the award-winning music video for Black Man in a White World. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way.

I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April,

and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now.

You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary cutting-edge podcasts made possible by listeners like you.

Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. You can find SongExploder on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at SongExploder, and you can find all the past and future episodes of the show at SongExploder.net or wherever you download podcasts. My name is Rishi K. Sherway. Thanks for listening.