Song Exploder - Nakhane - New Brighton (feat. Anohni)

Episode Date: March 20, 2019

Nakhane is a singer and songwriter from Johannesburg, South Africa. His first album, Brave Confusion, won the South African Music Award for best alternative album in 2014. He starred in the award-winning film “The Wound,” which was shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Nakhane’s second album, You Will Not Die, was originally released in 2018, and then released in the US in 2019, as a deluxe version. The deluxe version includes this song,“New Brighton,” featuring guest vocals from Anohni. In this episode, as Nakhane breaks the song down, he talks about his complicated relationship with Christianity, why the song wasn’t on the original version of the album, and what it was like to work with one of his musical heroes. songexploder.net/nakhane

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. My name is Tao Wyn. This episode contains explicit language. Nakane is a singer and songwriter from Johannesburg, South Africa. His first album, Brave Confusion, won the South African Music Award for Best Alternative Album in 2014. He starred in the award-winning film, The Wound, which was shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Nakane's second album, You Will Not Die, was originally released in 2018 and then released in the US in 2019 as a deluxe version. The deluxe version includes this song, New Brighton, featuring guest vocals from Anoni.

In this episode, as Nakane breaks down the song, he talks about his complicated relationship with Christianity, why the song wasn't on the original version of the album and what it was like to work with one of his musical heroes. This is Nakane. I actually wrote New Brighton on the 31st of December 2013. It was New Year's Eve and my family had gone to my aunt's house and I decided to not celebrate New Zealand with them because I had wanted to write music. Before then, I had written my first album on an acoustic guitar

with just voice recorded on a cell phone because I didn't have recording equipment. But for the first time I had my own laptop because I'd toured it by my first album and a little bit of money and I bought a laptop, an electric guitar, a hard drive, and a microphone. I knew it from the onset that I wanted to make something more electronic.

And the first demo was so experimental. It opens up with soundscapes and me recording myself dropping a plate on the floor. The song actually started with that guitar line. The lyrics for the song had been written that afternoon. My aunt and I had gone to buy fish at the harbour. And she was playing hymns in the car and had this idea of writing a song with the words and all the seraphim and all the cherubim because one of the hymns had those words. And I remember just sitting there thinking, oh my God, this would be such a great motif in a song.

And the cherubim and the cherubim are angels. These are angels that are supposed to protect not only the people of God, but also to send messages. And then there was a question. that they avert their eyes to all that was going on and then you can't ask that question without looking at apartheid without looking at slavery without looking at the church as a tool

for colonialism so these people that God has delegated to protect his people the angels where the fuck are you bros when people were enslaved where were you why aren't you protecting us

from your own people and that may sound like naive but I do think that It's the first question that you ask yourself when you start to question your beliefs. And I knew that the song was going to be about some walking away from something, which was the church.

And so for the first time in my life as a songwriter, I wasn't using biblical imagery as a belief system because I was a Christian, but I became apostate and I left the church. And this was very painful for me. That December, before I wrote, wrote the song. I said to my mom, it was the morning and you were sitting in bed and you're drinking coffee and she was like, Nakane, I just need you to explain to me. Are you an atheist now?

And I was like, I don't know. I was trying to explain to her that I'm in an in-between state. And I said to her, but mom, the Dutch arrived in 1652 in South Africa and they converted us to Christianity. I said to her, we didn't start existing then. There's thousands and thousands of years of history before all these people arrive. Are you saying to me that all our sisters were going to hell up until these people arrived. She said, well, no. And I don't know why, and I can't give you a neat answer, but of course not. And I said, then there must be more. And that song, I guess, started there. The first demo of the song is like seven minutes, but I got bored with the formlessness of what it first was. And normally, I'll leave the song

alone for a few months. Come back to it and go, oh, okay, that was a good idea. That was a bad idea. And then I'll record different versions of the song. So in the next one, I go, okay, I want it to be more rhythmic. I want to make a more uptempo version. And I'll say to my boyfriend, I'm going to write a pop song. I started creating drum loops.

And I'm thinking, huh, okay, that sounds catchy. It sounds poppy. And whether I like it or not, it is a political. song. Someone could even say that it is a protest song. Because it is protesting colonialism, but during apartheid musicians like Mirama Kebba and Humusichella, they used beautiful music to sing about the darkest things. And sometimes you need that sort of cushioning to get the message across, you know, a song sounds beautiful and then people go, wait a minute, what did they say? You sort of slip in with beauty and then challenge them with words.

New Brighton was the first song I wrote for the album but I demoed it a few times and labels and producers no one seemed to care for it I remember thinking, oh right you know it's okay I have enough good songs for this album and initially I wanted to write a more political album but the album ended up being about my family

me living Christianity and queerness instead of being about politics and then there was a TV show and they asked me to perform a song and I said the album is not out yet and they said okay give us a B-side and I was like okay I'll perform this song

called New Brighton I performed it and the label saw it and heard it and they were like where was this song when you were recording and I was like it was there from the beginning but no one seemed to care for it

and so we decided to record it and that's when the producers came in and we decided to make this version of the song mostly I I played 90% of the instruments in my albums. But this is the first song where I just played the guitar and sang. So it was the first time that a song was recorded with a band.

The first thing I loved were the size in the beginning. It's actually a guitar. And it made a sound like that. And then Charlotte Haveli, who played synthesizers, what you hear alongside that is also her going, to make a sound that vocally almost resented. And I really, really enjoyed it because I thought it was so irreverent. I mean, there was always humor in my music in the lyrics,

but for the first time there was humor in the music. And that sound was one of the first things that I really, really liked. The other thing I really liked was the drum sound, because I'm obsessed with drums. I loved how compressed they were. It reminded me of the radio hit sound, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, national anthem from Kid A.

The snare sound is compressed so much to the point that you don't know whether it's actually a real snare drum or if it's programmed. Kea Adamson, he's in my live band and he plays live drums in the song. And then in the chorus, that's programmed. I don't particularly see myself as a great guitarist or a good guitarist for that matter. I've always used instruments not for virtuosity, but more just as tools. but one of the things that was really important about the song was the guitar line. And so Ben Christopher's, who's the other producer, played it the first time. But the label was not happy with how it sounded.

Everyone was going on about the fact that his take on it was different to my take. So I played the guitar and I could tell the difference. There was something about it that was less technical. But I also think it's a cultural thing and it's a counting thing. Ben Christopher's I used to not argue but we used to misstatite each other on where you come in in a song when we were recording

he'd want me to come into the one but I'd always come pre-bar so if you can't do one two three four and a lot of South African pop music that's how it works that's just how we count things are still a little bit more loose

and I think that's cultural and I think that particular guitar line needed me to play it because it was the cornerstone of the song. It was the first thing that came to me. I went to Paris to record the vocals. I slept on the pebbles

on the way to the gate held my balance on the cuff of your shirt. The song is about monuments. Walking around my city, Port Elizabeth and seeing all these colonial monuments and going, why are we celebrating these people

who stole from us? These people who were pressed We were going to the port Elizabeth's port. How from the hill you did point was Frederick's fort. South Africa was gold mine, not only in labor, but also in resources, in land. And there were wars and different European countries used to build forts, not only to fight against the indigenous people, but also to fight against other European countries who were fighting for that piece of land.

Which is why I loathe for it. And I'm like, what the fuck were they fighting for? They're not supposed to be here. And every day when I go to buy bread, I'm reminded of that history. You see these monuments and these proud white men, and sometimes women. And on the base of the monument is the name.

And we'll always remember those people. Well, the monument is supposed to help people remember someone fondly. And my question was, how can I remember these people fondly. My anger, which I'm allowed to have, says their names should be obliterated from history. I don't want to know them. I want to know the people who created me, the people who gave birth to me. Where was their name? Simple line, I was upset, because the people who raised me, the people who should have been celebrated, people who looked like me, was seen as subhuman. And these men,

When these white guys who arrived almost 300 years ago, who were seen as saints, saviors, no. Colonizers are not in colonized spaces to create newness. They're there to extend whatever was happening in their country of origin. And you see that with names. And that's why it was so important for me

to name the song after the township, which is called New Brighton, named after Brighton in England. writing in England. My mom and my aunts were all classically trained singers. So I grew up in 60 voice choirs and

I knew that I wanted it to sound like a choir. On some level I was sort of harkening back to that world again. The guest vocalist in the track is none other than the great legendary Anoni.

She's are my famous singers in the world. When I was 20 years old, and lonely released I'm a bird now and I heard and I take care of me when I die

will I go and I heard that voice and I heard those words and nothing was ever the same to me again musically personally politically

everything changed I had never heard of the word transgender before and I looked at people that I loved before who were called names, bad names, and I understood them more because I was learning so much from Anoni. And when we were just about to finish the song, it was done, I had the idea of maybe featuring someone,

and she'd wrote on her Facebook that she loved my music, which was completely insane to me. How can Anoni know who I am? Not only that, she likes my music. You know, this is mad. Okay, hi Mark, I email my manager. Do you think it's possible for us to get an only two singing this track? Long shot.

But we email her, she says yes. And I was in Australia last year when she finally sent her vocals. I remember I was jet lagged and it was 3 a.m. in Sydney. And I listened to it underneath my covers. and I started shaking. I got up and I switched on my lights and I started jumping up and down my bed. One of the notes I sent to my mixing engineer,

I said, mix her like an ancestor. When she comes in, I wanted her to sound like an epiphany. That moment of understanding. Never live in fear again. She was saying that to me, I felt. It's the fear of people's power over you, whether that is colonial power, homophobia, racism, transphobia, and the fear that your history doesn't matter, all of those things that you've been told over and over again,

and being able to look at them in the face and say, fuck you. And I guess on some level, that's what the song is. But do it with joy and do it with life. And now, here's New Brighton by Nakane. featuring Anoni in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net for more information about Nakane and Anoni. You'll also find a link to buy or stream this song. Song Exploder was created by executive producer Rishi Kesh Hirway. This episode was produced and edited by Christian Coons. Carlos Larma made the artwork, which you can see on the Song Exploder website.

Special thanks to Dave Godowski and the folks at Isotope for their help with this episode. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia. from PRX, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts. You can learn about all of our shows at radiotopia.fm. You can also find Song Exploder on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at SongExploter, and you can find me at Tao Get Stay Down. My name is Tao Wyn. Thanks for listening.