Acts look forward to taking on Cork's new innovative music festival, It Takes A Village
Young Fathers have just given birth to their third album and are looking forward to playing in Trabolgan, writes .
Storm Emma had made landfall in Edinburgh and with much of the city claimed by snowdrifts Young Fathers’ Kayus Bankole isn’t sure how he’s going to make it to band rehearsal on time.
“I don’t know when I’m going to get to the studio. I might have to walk the whole way,” he chuckles in a deep voice that will be immediately familiar to fans of Young Fathers’ intense and uneasy hip-hop.
The laughter is a surprise as Young Fathers are not exactly renowned for their jollity. When the Scottish trio won the prestigious Mercury Music Prize for their 2014 debut album, Dead, and they were trooped in front of the obligatory scrum of photographers, they glowered as if they’d just received some bad news. As curmudgeonly cherry on top they also declined to be interviewed by several right-leaning publications.
This wasn’t grumpiness they would later insist. They felt uneasy in the spotlight and didn’t see why they should pretend otherwise. The tone is very different as Bankole chats to the Irish Examiner.
He is easy-going, his conversation peppered by humorous asides. Perhaps it’s a case that he is more well-inclined towards a fellow Celt than towards the London press pack. Or maybe he’s in a good mood because Young Fathers are about to release arguably their best album to date, the astonishing Cocoa Sugar.
The popular line on Cocoa Sugar is that it’s Young Fathers’ most commercial record. Concocted during a protracted period in the studio, it is undeniably melodic and if you were straining for a comparison, you might describe it as the Beastie Boys featuring Irvine Welsh (the band were all over the soundtrack to Danny Boyle’s Transporting 2).
And yet going “pop” wasn’t on the agenda, says Bankole. When making an LP, they tend not to have fixed
destination. “The impetus from the start has always been to push ourselves, allow ourselves feel uncomfortable. That’s where we get inspiration from. With each record, we want to embody a different part of ourselves — something we weren’t aware existed.”
So if the results are catchy… well and good. There’s no grand plan to woo a more mainstream demographic. And while not lacking for hooks, there is also much about Cocoa Sugar that is strange, starting with the shrieking choral effects and lurching grooves, over which all three members exchange spitfire rhymes.
“It wasn’t,” says Bankole, “Like somebody was whispering in our ears… this is how you need to do it.”
BONGO CLUB
The three rappers who would become Young Fathers met 14 years ago at Bongo Club, an under-16s hip-hop open-mic night in Edinburgh.
Alloysious Massaquoi was born in Liberia and moved to Edinburgh aged four; Bankole and his family lived for several years in his parents’ native Nigeria; Graham ‘G’ Hastings was born in Edinburgh, growing up in the suburb of Drylaw.
In view of their cosmopolitan backgrounds and the UK’s fraught relationship with immigrants — one of the triggers of Brexit lest we forgot —Young Fathers have inevitably been labelled “political”.
It is a perception they have sometimes fuelled. Last year they made a video for National Galleries of Scotland in which Bankole boxed with several grandees depicted in the portraits as a voiceover proclaimed “Does this mean I don’t exist? That I’m not a man?
Because I don’t see a face like mine framed in gold hanging on the wall?” There was a backlash — the group were accused of anti-white racism — and, at Young Fathers’ behest, the piece was removed from the gallery’s website (it will of course live in forever on YouTube).
FREEDOM TO DANCE
They don’t flinch from the political badge, says Bankole today. Nor, however, do they embrace it.
“At the end of the day we’re just human beings man. I don’t have the answer to world problems. If it comes to being Beyoncé or something… we’re not there… I don’t think any of us likes the finger-wagging. At the end of the day we’re also fans of music. Get me dancing and then tell me something political — that’s more effective.” ”
They return to Ireland shortly, with live dates in Dublin this March and April in Cork, where they headline the It Takes a Village festival at Trabolgan Holiday Village in Co Cork. Young Fathers have frequently blazed a trail here. They were astonishing at Electric Picnic 2017 and lit up a grey Dublin afternoon when opening Forbidden Fruit Festival in 2016.
“If people love our music…that would be nice,” he says. “If they hate it…that’s nice too. The worst thing is to be in the middle of the road… ‘well, whatever’. You want there to be an emotion: whether that’s one side or the other. So long as they get something from it – that’s what really matters. We have created a place where people can project their own identity onto the music.”
Questions and Answers with Joe Kelly, one of the organisers of It Takes A Village
‘Proper facilities are not too much to ask for’
I would have observed theSouthport Soul weekenders and I All Tomorrow’s Parties (residential event in the UK) over the years. Also in 2000 I went to the Big Chill in Naxos Greece – there was the same model of renting accommodation and putting on DJs, bands. I was always aware Trabolgan was sitting pretty 20 miles or so from Cork city.
Not that many really. Trabolgan runs for eight months of the year and is already well set up for functions and fun. All we have to do is bring in our sound systems, lighting set ups, some choice local food stalls andthe acts.
We run Live at St Luke’s so we always try and think out of the box. The name we use, The Good Room, comes from that Irish phenomenon where we had the best room in the house and no-one used it only for special occasions. We think these spaces should get more outings. The first show I ever put on in Cork was in Sir Henry’s, February 1989 [a DJ gig with Kelly spinning the decks] so from that point forward we have always tried to be different.
Brilliant — the idea is original, in Irish terms, as Trabolgan is the only operating holiday village in the country. Obviously, they have been doing these type of “live in” events in the UK for years. This will be the first in Ireland. We’re putting 1,000 people in 172 houses and 35 serviced camper van pitches over the weekend.
You can. Sunday day tickets are available. It would be too difficult to deal with 1,000 people checking in on the Friday and to have to deal with day tickets also. We want to give priority to our residents. It is something that Trabolgan and ourselves agreed on.
Also we can go later on the Friday and Saturday nights because it is residents only. If we had day visitors it would mean having to stop the party a lot earlier. We will see how the Sunday day tickets work this year and definitely come back to it next year.
I’m not sure. I would never use the word “boutique”. What we are saying is that you can have a music festival with a roof over your head and a broad cross section of acts and entertainment. Hot showers and proper facilities are not to much to ask for. I would rather say we hope to build a small village community for three days where patrons will go home with new friends that happened to be their neighbours.
Since August 2015 we have run the series of gigs at “Live at St Luke’s”. We also run Crosstown Drift at the Midsummer festival. I worked in Sir Henrys for nearly five years, then with three partners opened the old Bodega on the Coal Quay in 1996 and then ran The Pavilion from 2008 to 2014. All I would say is that between all the acts from The xx toHozier, Masters At Work to Basement Jaxx, Gil Scott Heron to Mercury Rev, Roy Ayers to Rakim, we have tried to bring some of the best music we can to Cork.
It’s in Cork which is handy for us. The site was the former family home of the Roche family of Roche’s Point fame. They always built the great houses of Ireland in great locations. It’s on 121 acres in a valley south-facing on the Atlantic coast. The site itself is beautiful and the views out to sea are exceptional.
Trabolgan has three indoorvenues that we are going to use as our main stages. Also the pool parties will be something really different. And we are doing pop-up gigs in the amusement arcade. They have just weatherproofed the central area with 18,000 sq ft of glass so we are protected from all the elements. If the weather is favourable there are numerous outdoor spots we have picked out for block parties, “ceol at hole14” and woodland riversidegigs.
Joe Kelly, one of the organisers of It Takes A Village, tells Ed Power about the innovative event
ITAV festival highlights
Despite the name, Fujiya and Miyagi are a group of middle-aged musicians from Brighton. But their music is entirely esoteric, drawing on krautrock, analogue electronica and Eighties alternative rock. The band had a big hit in 2006 with the charmingly unconventional Transparent Things. “Fujiya” is a brand of record player while Mr Miyagi was the teacher in The Karate Kid.
After The Gloaming’s concerts in Dublin this week, the trad supergroup won’t be doing any more gigs in Ireland this year, but two of its members are teaming up for this event.
Dubliner Marcus Lambkin has achieved renown as part of the DFA New York music collective that spawned LCD Soundsystem. He remains friendly with the band’s James Murphy and supported LCD Soundsystem in Dublin’s Olympia last year.
The Mayo songwriter takes the temperature of the Irish soul on his new album, The Curious Hand — an account of leaving the West for London and the many unlikely adventures he experiences on the way.
Andrew Weatherall He first visited Cork when Sir Henrys was in itsheyday, and has been keeping the beat going ever since.
What would The Dubliners and Pogues sound like if covered by punk-obsessed millennials? That is the question the Dublin quarter seek to answer on debut album,Between the Earth and Sky.
It’s not all music, you know. With his novels City of Bohane and Beatlebone, writer Kevin Barry has basked in acclaim, and has appealed to a younger generation with an oeuvre that’s more dub reggae than traditional Irish literature. His fellow Limerick man Blindboy will also record a podcast at the event.
Dreamy indie pop from Cork band who are preparing to release a new EP. They’ve been variously likened to My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive — though such comparisons fall away after you’ve spent time with their music.
