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Flashmag August 2018 www.flashmag.net
Geoffrey Oryema
Land of Anaka
Excerpts
do and what I want to present to people. That's it, the album is ready, it is missing only a few settings. You know I'm not formatting, if I do not feel a project I do not release it. For me the music is not trade even if I sell, it is first of all art, and sharing.
“ Je suis delivree” (I am Delivered) the title is evocative of what issues? hassles facing the realization of some projects?
It's deeper than that, when I say delivered, I imply dispensed from some retrograde practices, I know that in Africa no matter how old you are, parents often do not consider you mature enough, which sometimes can create situations, leading to serious problems. In addition, I come from a fairly complex family where family relationships have practically perverted me, and I had to take my distance. I freed myself to accept without saying anything. To advance, to save myself, to move away from a certain moral violence, toxic relations. I had to refocus on myself, because I believe being always turned towards others it's a way of not facing yourself, a kind of dismissal, a flight . I needed to face myself at a given moment.
Many of those who live in the West or who seem to have been more successful in life in the tropics, feel that there has been a perverse change in African society with the period of great impoverishment of the 1990s, solidarity became interested. Namely some expect more from those who seem to have more material and forget that everybody is important in fact it is the factor of exchange and mutual support which since is unbalanced. You are not the first person to see it alas. Hopefully the African family will recover from this ailment, because everyone has value at its level, the one-way help is impoverishing ...
Yes, quite you said something very important. African solidarity. Some think that strength or help is only related to material power, to capital. That is not true. I remember we did a job with Aminata Traoré and her daughter Awa Maïté, creating a bridge in the other direction to learn from non-Western women but Africans living in Africa. A very enriching experience that made us learn a lot culturally and humanly. It has been a great pleasure to us to explore what these women
had to teach us. The kind of African misery that some want us to swallow all the time does not exist.
Every time I've been to Africa, I've seen people, very strong, struggling to win important social battles, to live without complex a rich life, free from prejudices. From an intellectual and managerial point of view, Africa does not have to be ashamed, there is quality and excellence in its human resources. I saw women in all sectors of activity who, without complex, did what they had to do.
Another debate the African woman is not so submissive and always oppressed as it is sometimes said but she is rather strong, in Africa where she is an important factor of development.
Absolutely
For this opus you went to Jamaica or rather Jamaica came to you with the pianist of Bob Marley and the Wailers, Tyrone Downie who added a touch to this single. With the time going by, you thought you had to go back to the source?
It was important to team up with people like Tyrone, whom I've known since, and worked with on a lot of projects in the past. My favorite music is reggae, a musical style that intrinsically suits me, in its aspect of revolt, awareness, and harmony because it is swayed by melody. And better with the Bob Marley sample that I included in this title it was normal that the one who played with the master, gives more credit to it. brings his touch, put a little of his soul. It made me even more comfortable knowing that I was in my world with Bob Marley at my side.
You know when I look at your career I feel that you are either unconventional, or you like to complicate your life, or when you are what you are, everything is already complicated in a very square world that does not leave always the place to the originals, and as some say when we know that the fight