Kenya and Goa

Preparing for a trip of a lifetime. Exploring creative processes through travel, collaboration, connection and family histories.

On Monday, I’m embarking on the trip of a life time: I travel to Nairobi, Kenya, to spend a week-long artist residency at the Kilele Music Summit before heading to Aldona, Goa, for Sultry Mist Festival, where I’ll also be embarking on an artist residency.

My time in Kenya will include a two-day retreat deep in the Mbooni Forest, 2 hours south of the capital, where I’ll be doing some field recording, workshops on biosonification and some deep listening. During the festival itself, I’ll get a chance to perform live with the new Auntie Flo band, hooking up with Ambasa Mandela, who sang on Green City, for the first time. I also hope to make a lot of new music!

In Goa, I'll be hopefully be able to collaborate with some traditional Mando musicians, work with the beautiful natural environment and put together a unique live performance of bioelectrical music and a DJ set.

This trip is extra special as it charts migratory pathway that my Mother’s family embarked on back in the 40’s and 50’s but in reverse. My mum was born in Kisumu, Kenya and went to school in Nairobi until she moved to the UK for university (along with the rest of her immediate family). The d’Souza’s are originally from Goa with my Auntie Florie living in Saligão until she passed a few years ago, close to where Sultry Mist is taking place. With her name being integral to my artist moniker, Auntie Flo, it is somewhat uncanny that the opportunity has arisen to visit both places back to back.

I’m delighted to be working with producer Tom Raine from the BBC, who’ll be helping me document the trip, which should be presented on Radio 4 later this year. In the meantime, I’ll use this Substack to keep a diary so you can come along for the ride.

My first thoughts are that I want to continue some of the recent themes I’ve touched on by using the trip dig deeper into my own creative processes. I’m going to explore three areas that, on reflection, have consistently fuelled my creativity as a musician, artist and entrepreneur:

1. Travel and Serendipitous Encounters

2. Soundscapes and Nature’s Rhythms

3. My Roots: Direct and Indirect influences

Over the years, I’ve felt increasingly lucky that being creative is what I do. The ability to think up and present new ideas to the world is what motivates me, gives me great pleasure but also regulates me - I’ve come to learn that being creative is good for my health.

I wish that everyone would have the chance to be creative. In the busy world we live in, the pressure to make ends meet often prohibits our creative time, and the increasingly powerful pull of advertising and social media draws our attention away from our time to think creatively and experience a flow state.

Over the past 15 years of working creatively, I’ve continued to seek out flow experiences and conscious to return to the child-like state of play as much as possible. I’ve found the easiest way to do this is to travel - getting myself out of my daily routine and familiar surroundings, meeting new people, hearing new things. These are where the best ideas come from.

In normal times, I’ve found opportunities to experience flow can be fleeting, but travelling brings on this state more readily.

I’m reminded of this beautiful quote that opens Rick Rubin’s ‘The Creative Act: A Way Of Being’ book.

The object isn’t to make art,

It’s to be in that wonderful state

which makes art inevitable

Robert Henri

1. The Power of Collaboration: Travel and Serendipitous Encounters

During my music production career, a key creative jumping off point has been collaboration with others, often strangers in places I’ve never visited before. I’ve had 15 years of experience travelling the world as a DJ. During these trips, I serendipitously meet people who I end up collaborating with. I find music such a powerful mechanism in breaking down any cultural or language barriers - I can be in a studio with someone and connect with them without the need to converse in their language.

The true beauty of music is the pro-social way it can connect us. I’ve made music in Cuba, Brazil, Uganda, The Arctic Circle, South Korea and many more places with chance encounters and in makeshift studios. Working with others helps create a synergy where we can equally exchange ideas and experiences and translate them into a song or performance.

I view collaboration as an equal exchange - an appreciation what each brings to the table - ideally with no power dynamic at play. This freedom of joint expression leads to the best possible ideas being laid down. During this trip I plan to find some ad hoc studio time and am excited to see what we come up with.

2. Soundscapes and Nature’s Rhythms

Another source of creative inspiration is the soundscape - be it natural or man made or both. In the same way that one might take photographs, I record audio. Sound is so rich in information, and recording in built environments is a great way to tap into the culture and the vibe of a place. I made the album Radio Highlife with this in mind - with tracks based on little snippets of sound recorded in places all over the world.

Over the past few years, my attention has turned more towards the natural world, which is equally rich in sonic information. Recording the natural world with headphones on and a good microphone can be like an out of body experience - you hear things that you previously were not aware of. If you can allocate some time to doing these recordings, your ears will tune into the ecosystem all around you, hidden in plain sight. This ecosystem isn’t just one thing grouped together but millions of things happening at once. It isn’t random either, with many sounds happening in symbiosis with one another - all connected in their own way.

Another way of connecting with nature has been my forays into bioelectricity, and specifically turning plant and fungi data into sound. Biodata is a way of understanding the individual characteristics (and perhaps personalities - although that might be going to far) of each species. Turning this data into audible sound is a very literal auditory way to connect with the world all around us, listening to what it has to say. Again, this highlights the living ecosystem that exists all around us, that is fundamental to life itself.

Connecting with nature in these ways has helped me develop my listening skills. I have been inspired to follow Pauline Oliveros’ methodologies around ‘deep listening’ - a listening practise which has many parallels to a meditation practice and is fundamentally about being present and attentive to the moment, actively and patiently listening to the sounds around us..

The ways in which sound is experienced during deep listening is a source of creative inspiration for me. I’ve been developing a naturalistic means of composing, which steps away from the dominance of the metronome, so present across most forms of music, and returns to nature’s symphony. What will Kenya and Goa sound like?

3. My roots: Direct and Indirect influences

I’ve been asked many times whether my family upbringing and history has influenced my music. It seems like such an obvious connection that because I make music with a Latin or African rhythmical flavour, it must be due to my Mum being born in Africa or being Goan.

I have always downplayed this as the music my parents listened when I was growing up wasn’t distinctly from any place in particular (i.e. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Paul Simon). I have no recollection of the music I had exposure to growing up directly influencing the music I make now - on the contrary, a lot of my musical tastes were in direct antithesis to the music my parents listened to (i.e. techno!).

However, I have started to consider whether my roots have had an indirect influence and this is something I want to explore during this trip.

I’ve been considering whether my roots have perhaps led to my seeking out a more diverse sound for my music. Something about my acute awareness of my past, influencing certain approaches, perspectives and interests in my present.

Two things have stuck with me when visiting both Kenya and Goa in the past few years. In both places, my local host welcomed me with the same phrase “Welcome Home Brian”.

This sentiment took me by surprise - I had never considered either place ‘home’, and felt little connection other than in my distant past. My mum had always considered herself more British than Kenyan or Goan, for example, and the insights into her family history didn’t lead much into the cultural or historical or political - just on the relatives in the family as individuals. Perhaps this was my fault for not asking these questions to dig deeper, but the sense was that I was Scottish and British, with a mixed identity but nothing more than that. My wasn’t what defines me. However, could it have had some indirect influence - on my subconscious brain perhaps - when it comes to creativity?

Does the past in any way define the present? Does it spark ideas and fuel creativity? These are some of the questions I’ll be thinking about during this trip.

Thanks to the PRS Foundation for making the Kenya part of this trip possible