Wednesday, Sep 8, 2021 • 20min
Mustafa - Air Forces
Play Episode
Mustafa is a singer, songwriter, and poet from Toronto. He gained national recognition in Canada for his poetry. in 2016, he served on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Youth Advisory Council. Later, as a songwriter, he contributed to the Grammy award-winning album Starboy by The Weeknd, and he’s written songs for Usher, Camila Cabello, and others. In May 2021, he released his own debut album, called When Smoke Rises, inspired by his experiences losing friends to inner-city violence. His album’s been critically acclaimed, and it was shortlisted for the Polaris Prize. I spoke to Mustafa about his song "Air Forces," a track he made with his longtime collaborator, Grammy-winning producer Frank Dukes, plus Swedish artist Simon on the Moon, and Jamie xx.
For more visit, songexploder.net/mustafa https://songexploder.net/mustafa
Read more
Talking about
Speakers
(2)
Mustafa the Poet
Hrishikesh Hirway
Transcript
Verified
Hrishikesh Hirway
00:00
You're listening to
Song Exploder
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. My name is Hrishikesh Hirway
.Share
Break
Hrishikesh Hirway
02:05
Mustafa
is a singer, songwriter and poet from Toronto
. He gained national recognition in Canada
for his poetry in 2016. He served on Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau's
Youth Advisory Council
. As a songwriter, he contributed to the Grammy
award-winning album, Star Boy by The Weekend,
and he's written songs for Usher,
Camilla Cabello
and others.Share
02:26
In May 2021 he released his own debut album called
When Smoke Rises
, inspired by his experiences losing friends to inner city violence. His album's been critically acclaimed, and it was shortlisted for the Polaris Prize
. I spoke to Mustafa
about a song Air Forces its track he made with his longtime collaborator Grammy
winning producer, Frank Dukes
, plus Swedish artist Simon On The Moon and Jamie xx
. Here's Mustafa
on Song Exploder
.Share
Mustafa the Poet
03:06
And you'll go anywhere, though it ain't safe, just know that I care, I'll always care, and I'll be awake, I'll be awake. My name is
Mustafa Ahmed
.Share
03:17
I was raised in
Regent Park
. It's the first and largest housing project in Canada
. It's right at the center of downtown Toronto
, a short walk away from the busiest intersection in Canada
. Yeah, it's a community like any conventional hood, you know, there's like systemic barriers, you know, education barriers, not a lot of open roads, but that made for the closeness of community that like you just didn't get elsewhere.Share
03:47
My life before the record was incredibly immersed, and how I was going to preserve the stories of my community, and I remember when Air Forces came to me. I was editing this short film on violence in the city and I interviewed people from communities that we have been at war with for years in communities that are like practically mirrors of mine.
Share
04:13
People just like me that are experiencing the same kind of grief that I'm experiencing, but it was hard for me to familiarize with them at all, you know, because of this territorial warfare. But what happened was when I was working on the short film, I interviewed people, and I was able to ask them a simple question of how they want to be remembered when they're no longer here and how they want their friends to be remembered.
Share
04:37
I just want them to remember me by like my brother's keeper, like, you know what I mean? I'm always somebody that it's going to be there for the next manner and be there for my sister, be there for my mother, you know, I want to be remembered as somebody that left a good mark on them, not just the negative vibe, just something that they can take from and say, you know what at least he achieved something that we can have, and it's longer than him.
Share
Mustafa the Poet
05:04
And I was looking at the faces and the interviews of people from communities like mine looking at their softness and their sensitivity coming out as they answer the question of how they want to be remembered and in that I found a kind of empathy, you know, that I think I was bereft of and a lot of the rage that I felt and the frustrations I felt about the system and about other people that have inflicted harm on my community. When that rage started to dissipate, that's when I was able to approach that song.
Share
05:37
I actually have the original Air Forces vocal recording that I recorded on my phone. They'll take the morning with you, as it could faster children, I don't want nothing, but these times.
Share
05:54
I remember sat in the studio with my friend Simon husband, we were listening to a lot of
Nick Drake
, just trying to immerse myself in folk songs that I loved after that we just started like writing courts. The first thing that came to me was "don't crease your air forces, just stay inside tonight".Share
06:14
Don't crease your air forces, just stay in your home this time, you know what happens during these times. Those are the words that came to me, and then I knew that I was like exploring something honest, you know. Simon he just is like a beautiful human being and so it's easy to like be open with him and to make mistakes before him.
Share
06:50
I was with my manager in
London
and I played him this song, and he was like, well we have to bring Simon to London,
and we just wrote songs together every day and slowly the project came together. Don't crease your air forces, just stay inside tonight, you know what's happening outside.Share
07:17
I just took on the perspective of like the caregiver, and it is a thought that comes to me all the time, but I was really thinking about the mothers in the community and the kind of like unmanageable weight that they feel when their son step out into a world that they know was not built or designed to protect them.
Share
07:40
And then I was like, okay, I have to take it further. I'm like, I want to continue to describe this person described the narrative by way of like maybe even material things, and so that was described the chain of like, you know, you say it's okay, but you took your chain. You say it's okay, but you tucked your chain, like if they take it, I won't see you for a while.
Share
08:02
It was almost like I was choosing folk cords and doing what my friends who are rappers do when they hear a beat. Because I've been in those rap sessions for so many years of my life, I was just doing the same exact thing except I was taking a different musical form, and I was just like, okay, cool. Like let me describe my life, let me describe what's going on, let me describe loss.
Share
08:29
And I tell you how I feel, in case it's the last time, you know the odds, you know the flaws, it's all by design, and you'll go anywhere, though it ain't safe, just know that I care, I'll always care, and I'll be awake. The original idea I had when it was just those guitar parts and my voice, that's how I wanted to release the song. I kind of resisted the idea of like producing the song out, but then I'm like, you know, after having some conversations, I knew that I had a responsibility to take it to a place sonically that also felt progressive.
Share
09:12
Then we just kind of filtered the guitars and then added like, you know, kind of this rhythm.
Frank Dukes
was the executive producer of the record. He's like my closest collaborator, Frank Dukes
I met when I was 18 years old, and I messaged him and I said, I'm like, "I really admire the work that you do", and he said, you should come and meet with me, and he was nervous that I was going to come and want to do poetry, and I was nervous that he thought that I wanted to come and do poetry.Share
09:57
We started to explore songs together, you know, that's when I was incredibly young, and so I learned a lot from him throughout the years of just making music with him, and we wrote a lot of songs for other people together. And I was told
Frank
that I wanted to tap into what the sonics of my Nubian culture
was, because I think it was something that informed a lot of what the communities look like and feel like, and I hear my mother singing these melodies and these words as she's washing dishes and I wanted to hold on to that, and I wanted it to be a part of the narrative.Share
10:34
So, we were listening to like the
Sudanese
songs of burial in war. And I was like, "oh, this is amazing", because it's like these are like the chance that would be shared when the men would return from war. And then here I am taking on a perspective of like what it feels like when young boys and girls are stepping out into the war.Share
10:60
I thought those parallels were incredible. And so when that project came to me by way of
Frank
, it was kind of inevitable that it was going to be a part of the song.Share
11:24
Jamie xx
found a Mickey Newbury
sample. I didn't even know it was Mickey Newbury
when he first played it, and Mickey Newbury
being like such a beautiful folk singer. I was happy that we were able to leave him into the song.Share
11:56
In the second verse, I was just exploring what our lives and our mortality and survival can look like in a community like
Regent Park.
To what are we evеn destined? Where we have wives and children or is that not written for you and I. Truthfully, it's like, it doesn't matter if you were putting on the chain or if you have the gun or if you don't, it's like we're all vulnerable to state violence. We're all vulnerable to the poison of poverty, you know, and the poison of anti blackness and so many other things.Share
12:32
Exploring that was so necessary for me in the second verse. And all these intersections, where we've been kept and left in? I wonder why God keeps us alivе? When I was writing the background vocals on Air Forces. I just wanted to be subtle and I wanted to be gentle and I just wanted to feel almost like it's just lifting it texturally more than anything else. Not written for you and I.
Share
13:02
And so I wonder why God keeps us alive, I wanted that to lift even in the slightest, and so that's why I chose to like find like, you know, a subtle harmony there. I wonder why God keeps us alive.
Share
13:16
Throughout the song, I wanted it to feel that it was of course about this deep care that I have and this love letter that I'm writing for my brothers in the hood, but also this letter I wrote as a reminder to myself of like the condition of this community. Just know that I care, I'll always care, and I'll be awake, I'll be awake, I'll be awake, I'll be awake, awake.
Share
13:38
I've had a difficult time sleeping for years after the burial of each friend, you know that insomnia continually got the best of me, and for so many people it is that way. You can get a call at any given moment in the night, you just don't know if that's going to be the final call you receive from someone. Awake, I'll be awake, I'll be, I'll be, I'll be.
Share
14:11
I
Frank Dukes
is singing on that part of Air Forces. Of course he filtered it and put a lot of things on his voice, it almost felt like an instrument. And so when he did that, I decided that I was going to just find a harmony overtop what he did.Share
14:49
We wanted the song to feel like it was sort of climax, you know what I mean? That now like all the voices have kind of joined together, you know the voices of
Nubia
and my own voice. I'll be, I'll be, I'll be.Share
15:12
This song ends with my friend's voice, a close friend of mine named Puffy, and I called him and I said, "I need you to describe what the walk home feels like".
Share
15:24
You see a couple of kids running around playing games, the dope boys riding around.
Share
Mustafa the Poet
15:28
If you step outside of your household in the hood, most times it's like you're walking quickly, you have to be alert, and you don't get an opportunity to like just appreciate the existence of your home community, you know. I could remember faintly what it was like when we were younger because when we were younger we were freer and so that's when he started to describe things to me is like when I walk out, you know, like I see the green box, just people chilling.
Share
15:57
Riding bikes, then you see obviously manage pulling over at the green box.
Share
Mustafa the Poet
16:01
Yeah, it was like an entire universe in this open circle of like a backyard, and that's where a lot of my first experiences took place. It was like my first time using a water gun, my first time watching my cat be outside of the home, it was little things, but it was things that I couldn't focus on later on it. And so I just wanted there to be an account of what that was from someone that lived there after experiencing the kind of traumas that I did.
Share
16:36
The community and my idea of the community, my relationship with the community, transformed completely. And I think that in the effort of even having Puffy's voice at the end, it was to try to return to what it felt like in the beginning.
Share
16:50
Just cracking jokes kicking up.
Share
Mustafa the Poet
16:54
I do feel like I'm incredibly bitter, sometimes bitter, by the fact that I had to write these songs. I will never forgive the publications who announced the deaths of my friends using data mug shots, I will never forgive them for that. The fact that people in my community and people like myself couldn't even grieve is something that I'm going to have to try and make peace with for the rest of my life.
Share
17:25
I'm just trying to chase, as quickly and as purposefully as I can, a humanity. If I could when it's all said and done it's like I made myself and the people around me a little more human then maybe it wasn't all in vain.
Share
Hrishikesh Hirway
18:02
And now here's Air Forces by
Mustafa
in its entirety.Share
19:56
To learn more visit song exploder. net/mustafa. You'll find links to buy or stream air forces and you can watch the music video.
Share
Break
Add podcast
🇮🇹 Made with love & passion in Italy. 🌎 Enjoyed everywhere
Build n. 1.38.1
Hrishikesh Hirway
Mustafa the Poet