{"id":149063,"date":"2012-06-19T19:25:06","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T19:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socancom100stg.wpenginepowered.com\/knaan-introduces-some-me-time-in-his-new-songs\/"},"modified":"2012-06-19T19:25:06","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T19:25:06","slug":"knaan-introduces-some-me-time-in-his-new-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/knaan-introduces-some-me-time-in-his-new-songs\/","title":{"rendered":"K’NAAN introduces some \u201cme\u201d time in his new songs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les traductions pour les articles avant l\u2019automne 2013 ne sont pas disponibles pour le moment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Singer\/rapper K’NAAN\u2019s name has become synonymous with conscious music, and the man himself, a person willing to speak out about injustice and poverty, and suggest aid and solutions. Born Keinan Abdi Warsame, he had lived in Mogadishu as a child during the Somali Civil War and even when his family safely arrived in North America, when he was 13, the memories of those times never left him. Many years later, they found their way into his music, particularly on 2005\u2019s Juno Award-winning The Dusty Foot Philosopher<\/em>, then his international breakthrough, 2009\u2019s Troubadour<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThirteen years in Somalia is going to be more important to you than 20 years in Canada,\u201d he once said.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the past two years, the 34-year-old, Toronto-raised rapper (now living in New York) has seen his single \u201cWavin\u2019 Flag\u201d become a bona-fide anthem for peace and unity, as he collaborated on versions with artists all over the globe as part of its license to Coca-Cola for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Then Bob Ezrin produced a \u201cTears Are Not Enough\u201d-type benefit single re-make under the banner Young Artists For Haiti \u2013 to help earthquake victims there \u2013 with 50 other Canadian artists, such as Avril Lavigne, Justin Bieber, Sam Roberts and Drake.<\/p>\n

Long before the launch of his music career, K’NAAN appeared before the U.N. Refugee Agency when he was just 21, performing a spoken-word piece that criticized the U.N.\u2019s failed aid missions to Somalia. Last summer, he met with Bono to discuss the drought and famine in his homeland. Later, the pair made media rounds together on CNN and other important outlets to raise awareness about the severity of the conditions in East Africa.<\/p>\n

So it’s a little unusual that on K’NAAN\u2019s new album, Country, God Or The Girl<\/em>, out in June, that the musician should pull back a bit from politics and go for some \u201cme\u201d time.<\/p>\n

He got divorced in 2010, but his new relationship had started to fall apart when he returned from an extensive world tour, and that \u2013 in the time-honoured tradition of songwriting \u2013 is the source from which he drew much of the inspiration for his songs this time. One title is \u201cHurt Me Tomorrow,\u201d produced by Ryan Tedder; another \u201cThe Sound of My Breaking Heart,\u201d produced by Redone; and then there\u2019s \u201cAlone,\u201d featuring will.i.am, and co-produced by the Black Eyed Peas star and Ezrin.

: \u201cYou don\u2019t really know the meaning of what you\u2019re writing until you\u2019re in the place to listen to it.\u00a0\u00bb<\/div>\n

\u201cThere was [a relationship with] someone I cared about that ended just as I was writing music,\u201d says K’NAAN. \u201cIt was hard because in all my music before, I had written songs while having some distance from the events that I was writing about, and so this is the first time, while in the middle of the scenario, that I\u2019m also writing songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not certain it made him feel any better about it, though.
\n\u201cI can\u2019t be sure,\u201d he admits. \u201cIt would be as painful to listen to when I wrote one as it was when I was writing it, but it\u2019s because I didn\u2019t have any distance. It\u2019s hard \u2013 I mean, an ensuing breakup. You\u2019re still seeing the person going through this idea of ending something and, in the evenings, you\u2019re in the studio writing it; it\u2019s kind of insane, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

While writing from both a temporal and geographical distance from his life in Somalia provided much-needed perspective, K’NAAN found that writing in the moment about a personal relationship brought forth a floodgate of honesty and emotion that he didn\u2019t hold back.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote it all,\u201d he laughs. \u201cIn fact, in that way it was therapeutic because of the lack of censorship, because I thought the only way I know to properly talk about something is to write it in a song. So a lot of time, it was actually helping me figure out where I stood within the context, and how I felt about what was happening, rather than already knowing and writing about it. \u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that his beliefs in activism and his interest in social and political justice \u2013 and just plain helping to improve the conditions of peoples in impoverished conditions \u2013 didn’t enter into the lyrics on Country, God Or The Girl.<\/em> Much has been made of the viewpoint that this is a personal album, but that isn’t to the exclusion of all else.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just an album about the heart, or about love in that sense,\u201d says K’NAAN. \u201cIt\u2019s because it introduces my personal life, and writing about those things in this album, which I haven\u2019t before. And so, I think that\u2019s the only way that it is different, but it isn\u2019t that I\u2019ve stopped writing about other things that concern me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He starts to recite the lyrics to \u201cThe Seed,\u201d which was produced by Sham and Motzart.
\n\u201c\u2018I was a seed\/Planted by lovers in a refugee camp\/Then overseas, I grew free\/Out grew my roots and I became a tree\/So now they\u2019ll never cut me down.\u2019 What that song is about is, out of the vulnerability of the concrete jungle comes something that can withstand and not break,\u201d K’NAAN explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cBulletproof Pride,\u201d the song featuring Bono and produced by Brian West, Chuck Harmony and Jon Levine, he says can be interpreted in different ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t really know the meaning of what you\u2019re writing until you\u2019re in the place to listen to it,\u00a0\u00bb says K’NAAN. \u00ab\u00a0It\u2019s like listening to the radio, and you listen to a song, and it\u2019s totally cheesy, and sometime later you might have had an experience in which, when you listen to that song you\u2019re like, \u2018This totally makes sense.\u2019 \u2018Bulletproof Pride\u2019 is a deceptive song because sometimes I listen to it and it\u2019s about country, and sometimes I listen to it and it\u2019s about the girl, and sometimes it\u2019s about myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

K’NAAN says of \u201cGold In Timbuktu,\u201d a song produced by Chuck Harmony and Gonzales, is about old age. \u201cThe way that I wrote the song, it\u2019s the perspective of someone who has gotten old, and instead of looking back at their years, in that kind of grace, they look at their son and they\u2019re envious of the infinite potential of someone who now has their life to live, when they [themself] are at the end.\u201d
\nThe new album also includes guest appearances by Nas on \u201cNothing To Lose,\u201d Nelly Furtado on \u201cIs Anybody Out There?\u201d and none other than Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards on \u201cSleep When We Die.\u201d The Richards connection came through K’NAAN\u2019s friendship with drummer Steve Jordan, who\u2019s also on the album.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteve is friends with Keith [he actually co-produced Richards\u2019 solo material and played in his band],\u00a0\u00bb says K’NAAN. \u201cSo he played my music for Keith in a studio and Keith, from what I hear, just loved it. In fact, I was away and Keith phoned me, and I remember my response to the person on the other end, and me saying, \u2018Whoever you are, you do a very good Keith Richards.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Country, God Or The Girl features many producers, but only a few share in the songwriting with K’NAAN, namely Tedder, Sham and Motzart, and Lil Eddie.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way that I look at production \u2013 because it isn\u2019t just somebody who has made a beat, and then I write [to it] \u2013 is, I don\u2019t separate it from songwriting,\u00a0\u00bb he says. \u00ab\u00a0So in that sense, because Chuck [Harmony] \u2013 who doesn\u2019t write lyrics at all, or melody, I write all of that \u2013 plays the chords, and because that takes the song in a direction that I otherwise probably wouldn\u2019t have taken it, he becomes part of the writing for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Country, God Or The Girl<\/em> comes at a time when K’NAAN\u2019s persona has come to mean a lot more than the words he puts to music. He is viewed as an advocate and activist. This new album just might be the thing that stops him getting pigeonholed as the guy who writes about his childhood in Somalia and refugee status.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be dishonest to just be that guy all the time because I am not that guy all the time,\u201d he states plainly. \u201cI have a life. I have concerns. I have thoughts. I have feelings. It\u2019s not a tactical decision, but it is the truth and I couldn\u2019t imagine just writing another Troubadour or another Dusty Foot Philosopher because it\u2019s not how I\u2019m feeling. So I think it’s a good time. \u201cWe\u2019ll see how people respond to it, but that\u2019s secondary in my view. What\u2019s important to me is just to create what I need to create.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the political to the (somewhat) personal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":111350,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-non-categorise"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}