Gambia Inspires Seinabo’s Music

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COURTESY PHOTO
Seinabo Seyโ€™s EP โ€œFor Madeleineโ€ is dedicated to her mother.

By Tom Lanham

Exotic neo-soul singer Seinabo Sey spent her early childhood in Gambia, home to her musician father Mawdo Sey, of the renowned Afro-pop band Ifang Bondi.

โ€œIt was a very strict culture, compared to Swedish culture,โ€ says the sultry-voiced singer, who moved with the family back to her motherโ€™s native Sweden at age 7.

โ€œThey actually beat kids in school there if you were too unruly or you talked too much, so you learn to do what youโ€™re told and stay quiet. When I think about it now, Iโ€™m like, โ€˜Thatโ€™s crazy!โ€™ But it was normal over there, back then.โ€

Still, Gambia proved crucial to the music Sey, 24, wound up making on her debut EP โ€œFor Madeleineโ€ (dedicated to her mother), which sheโ€™s promoting in San Francisco this week.

Yet the gospel rave-up โ€œHard Time,โ€ the Morricone-inspired processional โ€œPistols at Dawnโ€ and her first European hit โ€œYoungerโ€ (in which she scats over funeral-home organ) werenโ€™t inspired by Gambiaโ€™s scales and tones.

โ€œIt was the part of Gambian culture where they give each other advice a lot, how theyโ€™re always comparing things in order to get a message across .. that really influenced the way I write,โ€ says Sey.

It started when the Stockholm-based diva first returned to Sweden. She bought a diary and began taking daily notes, many of them pep talks to herself, and soon she was penning full-fledged songs.

Raised to be quiet, she was too terrified to sing them for others, until at 15 she was forced to perform in front of a high school audience or risk failing a class: โ€œIt was absolutely terrifying,โ€ she recalls.

But she was determined to conquer her stage fright.

โ€œBy the second time I sang by myself in school, I just realized that I was more in control of my environment than I had ever been before,โ€ says Sey. โ€œSo I suddenly got used to that feeling of being in control, which I never, ever feel when Iโ€™m not onstage โ€“ a feeling that youโ€™re the master of your own universe.โ€

After experimenting with Swedish acts Afasi and Def Chronic, she met studio mastermind Magnus Lidehall, who helped her solidify her eclectic sound. Soon, she was confident enough to croon โ€œYoungerโ€ at last yearโ€™s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo.

Self-critical to a fault, Sey is over-thinking her upcoming first album, ensuring the mix is perfect. โ€œSometimes it might seem like Iโ€™m using my songs to give other people pointers. But mainly, theyโ€™re for me, just little notes to myself that I collected, and the wisdom that Iโ€™ve read. I give myself a lot of advice.โ€

Courtesy of www.theexaminer.com

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One Comment

  1. Luntango Suun Gann Gi

    Beautiful. Seinabo is Zeinab and Jainaba?

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