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A A backpack with large, sleek keyboards, the MPC One drum machine is an eye-catching instrument. Not easily overlooked among the various synthesizers, guitars, amps, samplers and vinyl albums in Renell Shaw’s studio in Wood Green, north London. This month, when the 38-year-old singer is playing two concerts at Kings Place, five kilometers down the road, a black box of precious stones will accompany him – and it has a special voice.
“On stage, I’ll have my score with the MPC, and my grandfather’s words stored in it. He’ll have a band in front of me,” says Shaw, an artist who lives in Kings Place. A Season of Memory Unwrapped, a series of songs that explore emotions, change and fate.
The testimony of his elders is an important part of The Windrush Suite, the first of two additional works that Shaw will perform that are personal. “I needed to tell the real stories, not just the facts, of the West Indians coming on a boat called the Windrush in 1948. Our story is one of growth, and it’s also a love story.” I mean, my grandmother came here from Jamaica to look for work, and my grandfather came to chase my grandfather! he laughs. “When you approach the migration of people, you connect with them, whether it’s your culture or not, because it can be successful in a crisis regardless of gender, race, age.”
Shaw aims to portray the Windrush generation as “sons of empire” who, in the narrative, helped rebuild Britain after the war by making valuable contributions to public works. The stories he’s written add an edge to the music that’s strange if not cinematic, with jazz horns and classical strings mixed with taut, crisp funk performed by a 12-piece band.
The group, meanwhile, has a wide range of ages, from 65-year-old marimba player Orphy Robinson to 30-year-old Romarna Campbell through 41-year-old singer Ayanna Witter-Johnson. “Having different generations in the same room means that the music has a living experience, a memory of the past and a vision of the future at the same time,” says Shaw.
Best known as a bassist and producer (he has worked with soul-opera singer Carleen Anderson, rapper Speech Debelle and drum’n’bass act Rudimental), London-born Shaw is also a prolific composer, receiving the Ivor Novello award for The Windrush Suite in 2020 in his role in Bolnes., it was originally performed at shows during the pandemic, with all musicians playing different parts in different studios during the country’s isolation. Shaw shudders at the memory, but also puts a fine spin on the closing. “One of the few good things about Covid was that all my favorite people were at home, so I could hire them to play my songs, since they weren’t on tour!”
At the same time, “it was strange not having an audience to respond to, even though there were ‘likes’ and ‘shares'”, says Shaw. For marimba player Robinson, who taught Shaw back in 2002 (we’re talking a few days after I visited Shaw’s studio), moving from reality to reality is more interesting these days because of the loss of things. reality musicians. “This is the era of AI, never mind what we experienced with Covid,” he says. “I would say that live sports are more important than ever. We have to interact with the people in the same room as us. It has to be art and not fantasy.”
While Shaw is enthusiastic about the upcoming show, he is keen to emphasize that the suites speak to disturbing truths that need to be told. Echo in the Bones records the events of his parents, who were born in Britain and not immigrants from the Caribbean. The repression they had to endure, especially the police brutality at the height of the brutal stop and search of SUS laws in the 1980s, is shocking.
“When I heard my uncle and father talking about the police, and being beaten in the back of a car, I thought that they understood that this was not necessary to be tolerated in a way that my grandfather was not allowed to do,” he says. “I think my parents feel like they have an owner birth here, so there’s a little bit of compliance, there’s a lot of resistance in Echo in the Bones. I spent a lot of time talking to my parents, Black Britons of Jamaican and Dominican descent. I wanted to tell their story. They say: ‘No, this is so mine our country, we will fight.’
Shaw emphasizes this stance in a lyrical poem written by the poet Afronaut Zu, but he is willing enough to lend his suites a full character and character. Some materials were chosen because of their unique characteristics. The powerful sound of Robinson’s marimba – a large, gaudy xylophone with a wooden handle – gives the song a solid feel and is comfortable in the more dynamic sections.
Another central element of Shaw’s music is provided by Birmingham drummer Romarna Campbell, who has praised her work with her trio and collaborations with artists such as Mercury Prize winner Benjamin Clementine. Campbell is adept at creating unique drum kits for each new project, often with the idea of combining acoustic and electronic equipment. He began working with Shaw on the play Black Power Desk, a musical about a police watchdog group formed in 1967 to disrupt Black Power protests, and he sees what’s to come. it allows him to move more efficiently.
Because Campbell was trained in jazz and classical, he plays a variety of drums. “I use traditional materials, timpani and sounds related to the Caribbean sea, but it’s not fancy, not too much. Making everything with the precision that Renell made is very important, so all these things are chosen and assembled very carefully. It’s like I’m building small ships.”
Seeing Campbell walk with both feet on the ground – musically speaking – while Robinson and connect the difficult parts of Shaw’s show must be more fun on stage than it is in closing.
Looking forward to the one-man show, Shaw is eager to challenge his audience in the way they are received at the door. In October at Kings Place, they will also present Remember Us Tomorrow, the third and final chapter of The Windrush Suite, which focuses on the new generations of Black Britons. He promises that the project will be as interesting as the way it started.
“I think that the audience doesn’t want high art as much as it used to, so artists don’t feel the need to offer high art,” he says bluntly, before mentioning a contemporary icon known for his political work, which was often controversial as it was unyielding. “I have to reflect on time, as Nina Simone said, and make music that allows listeners to be curious about the world.” I’m trying to figure out how to be myself while doing that but I feel like I’m going.”
Photos by Renell Shaw Windrush Suite and Echo in the Bones is in Kings Place, London, at 25 June; Remember us tomorrow is on 9 October.
