Thursday, May 05, 2005

NOVEMBER 2005/INTERVIEW/IMMANUEL FROM SOLAR


Black Athena recently had the good fortune to come across a private pressing produced back in the early eighties by an enigmatic group producing under the name Solar. After a little detective work we were able to track down Immanuel, one of the band members for some insight into the remarkable record that is "Faith For My Mind", a record that is fast becoming an underground collector's holy grail. The record melds avant garde jazz signatures with a deeply spiritual essence and as such can be held up not only as a classic of its era, but as a legitimate contemporary masterpiece as well. The dexterity of the musicians involved in this project as well as their inimitable vision is ultimately compelling and beautiful.
Read on for a rare glimpse into the untold history and naissance of this exceptional record including details of the worldview of the other band members (Mamanigi Azanya, Lucia Lamumba, Whoma as well as myriad session and backing musicians) and the eclectic influences and experiences that led to the conception of "Faith For My Mind".



Did our contacting you regarding the "Faith for my mind" LP come as a surprise at all?


Well the record is 20 years old so we were surprised, but actually you're not the only ones who have shown an interest in it. We've recently received a number of emails from Japan and the UK about it. As a result we're currently looking at the overseas market and are involved in talks to see if we can get the Solar project re-issued on CD.

When and where was the "Faith for my mind" LP recorded?

I can't remember quite the release date as I don't have a copy in front of me but it was something like 1983. I'm originally from Philly and was going down to New Orleans, Louisiana to a jewellery festival and I had my flute with me and would play at my stand, on the way back to Philadelphia we stopped in Atlanta and I was taken to this house where I saw a piano and a big upright bass in the corner and I thought that was interesting since I had my flute and my sax with me.
So that's how I met Mamanigi Azanya and Lucia, who were the real founders of the group Solar. Their horn player had just left and they were in need of a new horn player to help them complete the album they were in process of recording which was "Faith for my Mind" so I came in and worked on the tracks with them. We liked each other so much that the music and everything just gelled and I ended up moving to Atlanta and have been here ever since.


How Many copies of the album were released?

The album was recorded in Atlanta at Haywood's recording studio.
It was a limited edition as we were putting it out from our own money, I guess there were about 2000 copies, but it could have been just 500! I think we had a minimum of 2000 copies on the album jacket anyway, but as far as the copies that were made I'm not sure, anywhere between 500 to 2000 copies but it was very, very small.


Did you think about approaching a label?


We did. Me and Mamanigi were working together trying to explore all the possibilities that we could, we approached major labels, indie labels and in fact even started our own label "Path of Light Records" as a result of it. I think the sound we had was a little bit advanced for labels and they weren't able to pigeonhole it, to put it in a specific genre that they had at that time and as a result the album suffered as far as availability to the people.


The record was made in 1983, but it has more of a 70's kind of sound. What were your influences? What were you listening to at the time?

(Laughs) I don't know what to say about that, it is what it is! There are a lot of influences on the album because Mamanigi Azanya his parentage is Jamaican so he's got that heavy Jamaican bassline in his writing a type of rhythmic kind of thing going on, whilst Lucia the pianist, she has that churchy type feeling with her music - she has heavy influences from the black church. And myself my influences were John Coltrane, Archie Shep, Eric Dolphy etc.., and of course Mamanigi was heavy into 'trane too. So you've got a lot of I guess, avant garde type influences there and then you have the Jamaican rhythmic thing and the church thing. So there's a lot of different influence and I'm sure there were some other things going on too because, Mamanigi's brother was on drums and his influence was Billy Cobham.

Are you playing both the flute and sax on the record?


Yep both.


What memories do you have from the recording sessions?

We had a minimum amount of resources and that we had to get the maximum sound out of it – as a result we weren't sure how exactly it was going to turn out. We were very spiritual people and we relied heavily upon God the Creator to make it work, and it worked and to our surprise turned out better than we had hoped. We wondered how we'd get it done, but we managed by putting our noses to the grindstone and pulling our resources together. It was a wonderful session though, I enjoyed it immensely. It was the first time I'd been in the studio to do a full project, up to that time I had just been doing side work, you know a song here a song there.

There was always funny things going on too, but the most memorable situation was when we performed at the world's fair and the group had expanded to also having 5 dancers and that was a very memorable time – being on the road, all the ladies pitching in to fix the food, and staying with friends in New Orleans - before Solar came to Atlanta they lived in New Orleans too so that's why they had that New Orleans influence in their sound too.


Who composed the music?

Lucia and Mamanigi mainly composed "Faith From My Mind" - they collaborated on some pieces and did some separately. And Kariba (who was one of the backing singers) and Itea (another backing singer) they recorded one of their songs too, the reggae tune, which is on the album.



Is there any unreleased material from those sessions? Perhaps tracks that were omitted from the final cut of the album?

The tracks on the album are everything we recorded from that session, but from that era there are a lot of other tunes we didn't have the opportunity to record for one reason or another

Where there any other local bands making similar music to SOLAR?

(Laughs) No, no there's only one Solar. As I said they had just come into Atlanta as they were a New Orleans band, so then they came to Atlanta and started recording and I joined them so they still had that fresh New Orleans sound and they weren't at all typical of an Atlanta type group, everyone there was doing standards and not original tunes, certainly not a whole album. Nobody had the sound that Solar had, which was both eclectic and spiritual, a sound that nobody else had. Even in New Orleans Solar had a sound that nobody else had even if it was reminiscent of certain things. Even back there, there weren't any other groups sounding like that, we couldn't be pigeonholed. That's why the music sounds so fresh even 20 years later.


What are the other members of SOLAR doing right now? Are you still in contact with any of them?.

Yeah from time to time, one of them (one of the background vocalists) works at the local vegetarian store, so I see her all the time, and me and Mamanigi are working on projects together all the time, I'm in his "Eternity of Life" album and on the Tsunami project that he did and he's on a project that I did so we haven't stopped working since Solar disbanded. Lucia and her husband are doing some things on their own and I'd like to see them more often. Whoma I haven't seen for ages. Kariba I saw her 5 years ago but haven't seen her since… some people are around and some people are not.



Your current project is called AZANYA, what is that about?

Azanya "The One" yes is the name of the group. It's in conjunction with Mamanigi – when Solar disbanded we formed a group that went through two different transformations we had a group called Rebirth and then we changed to Azanya. Mamanigi didn't want it to be named after him but I was like, why don't we name it Azanya because of what it means – it means "God hear us". As many of our lyrics are spiritual they come either from the bible or are bible influenced that's what our message is. In fact "The One" is talking about Jesus Christ or Josiah the Messiah and that's why the album has such a spiritual overtone.


One gets the sense both from SOLAR as well as the AZANYA project that you are deeply religious. How motivating can religion and spirituality be in making music?

I don't know if you've heard of Hazrat Inya Kahn – he was a spiritual leader and a musician, and he said music is a picture of our beloved, so I've always looked at music as a way of expressing oneself and it takes you out of yourself and takes you out to another level of understanding or being. Music is very powerful and if you look at the scriptures, Lucifer (before he fell and became Satan) was endowed with percussion instruments in his body and had a voice that could reach 4 or 5 octaves and he could sing in chords. So the music aspect of God is very prominent and music cannot help but be spiritual, especially if you're approaching it from a spiritual position. Lots of music isn't, but our attitude is to produce something spiritual and as spiritual people we couldn't help that.

Coltrane use to talk about the healing powers of music, what do you believe the role of music to be in the universe?


The role of music in the universe is to give glory to God and as we do that, then music has the power to heal, if we don't glorify God with our music then it has no healing power, of itself it has no power.


What are you listening to these days?

I used to listen to a lot of music but right now I'm listening to a lot of gospel and mostly listening to what I have to say as opposed to what others have said in the past. I used to play a lot of traditional music covers and standards, but it varies I like listening to Indian music, reggae, and in my van, a local jazz station and a local gospel station. But I'm trying to listen to myself right now to see where my sound is going.



Artists including Sun Ra and Pharaoh Sanders have collaborated more recently with hip-hop artists, do you see formats such as hip-hop as a logical progression to what musicians such as yourself were doing 20-30 years ago?


I'm really not that familiar with hip-hop, I know there's a whole other culture, but I think it's an outgrowth of spoken word which in itself is an outgrowth of poetry, so I think poets have always done that thing of taking their poems and putting them to music so it's a natural extension of that kind of aspect of things - hip-hop as a progression of poetry to spoken word. I'm not someone that can really speak more on the subject since I'm not that familiar with it though. I know that Mamanigi incorporated his nephew on his new project doing some spoken word/hip hop and it came off pretty good. I'm doing some circular breathing techniques in the mix too so that should be an interesting recording.

There is currently an underground scene of artists that sample or are just inspired by work of artists such as you, while trying to maintain the original integrity and spirituality of those works. What's your feeling about that?

I've been hearing a lot about sampling and I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone was sampling Solar.. but my thing is as long as it's positive music and uplifting people I don't have a problem with it. It might not be my experience. but I'm not going to knock anything that I haven't checked out.. and as long as it's all positive, I'm happy.