On his latest album, The Diving Kind, Sonny Smith of San Francisco departs from his usual method of composing. The music was improvised in a studio in Senegal, with Senegalese musicians.
“I went to Senegal with Robin Girod, who runs the Moi J’Connais label in Switzerland,” Smith said. “I met him during many years of touring Europe. I’d play with his bands when I was in Geneva. We had a mutual friend, who married a Senegalese painter, M’baye Diop. When we had the idea of making an album in Senegal, M’baye said he’d be our guide. When we heard that, we began organizing a way to go with him to his home country.”
After Girod arranged for a grant from the Geneva Arts Council, they flew to Dakar, the country’s capital. From there, they traveled to Saint-Louis and the studio of Boubacar Tall. Tall brought some musicians he knew into the studio. For the next six days, they jammed with Smith and Girod.
“The language barrier was complete,” Smith said. “No one spoke English. I didn’t speak Wolof [the main Senegalese language]. The French they do speak is a very different French than what Robin [Girod] speaks. We communicated through music and the occasional pantomime.”
Smith said the Senegalese music heard in the West is generally more commercial. “The production qualities are a bit antiseptic to me,” he said. “The lyrics often focused on a positive message. Once we were there, in taxi cabs and on the streets, we heard a lot of raw underground music. It’s called Mbalax, very percussion-heavy, often long jams.” That’s the sound Smith and Girod aimed for.
Girod produced the sessions and played bass in his own post-punk style. Smith played piano, guitar, organ and bass. He wrote lyrics and sang during the sessions, mostly to convey the song forms he was aiming at.
“I’d present some kind of form, maybe two chords or three chords, and it would take off from there,” Smith said. “The keyboard player, Souleymane Samb, performed in many styles—one had a very Arabic percussive mallet kind of sound. Khadim Niang, the hand drummer, was amazing, with rhythmic parts I’ve never heard; ways of stopping the beat or increasing the polyrhythms. Sometimes he’d carry a song with just a kalimba, or a talking drum, later on adding 13 sabar [hand drum] parts.”
Smith then brought the tracks back to San Francisco on a hard drive. In his home studio he put them on a tape machine and added bass lines and additional drum parts supplied by his friend, Joe Lyle. He asked Theresa N’Gambi from Zambia to sing on some tracks, and mixed them into the sounds that appear on the album. “The result departed from Senegal, or Zambia, or America, into something less easy to categorize,” he said.
“Letters from the Future” is a mid-tempo jam that rides a complex pattern supplied by Khadim Niang, percussionist Yorro Niang and Girod’s swooping bass. It showcases the group’s interlocking rhythms. The keyboard hook Samb plays to open “Something To Hold Onto” has a hint of R&B that’s augmented by Girod’s rolling bass line. N’Gambi’s multi-tracked harmonies complement Smith’s delivery of a lyric describing life’s unpredictable twists and turns.
“House Of Mirrors” is an instrumental track blending reggae and R&B. Samb’s keyboard alternates between the sounds of a calliope and a melodica, riding over the intricate rhythms of Niang and Niang. Smith adds a few dub effects here and there, replicating the feel of a reggae track from the ’60s.
At his upcoming show at the Great American Music Hall, Sonny and his San Francisco band will play songs from the albums he’s previously released. He’ll be selling LPs of The Diving Kind, but won’t play the songs on the album without the Senegalese musicians featured on the recording.
“I’m sure there are American musicians that could pull it off, but that doesn’t ring true for me,” he said. “That music must be played with the musicians from Senegal. Maybe that sentiment will change someday, but for now it feels connected to those musicians. I would feel odd playing it with others.”
Sonny and the Sunsets will play at 8:45pm Friday, Nov. 14, at The Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell St., San Francisco. 415.885.0750. gamh.com. Listen to ‘The Diving Kind’ at: sonnyandthesunsets.bandcamp.com/album/the-diving-kind.
