FAUZIA: creating Somali-influenced electronic music free of constraints

Having first broken through as a DJ – with a monthly residency on NTS Radio – she began putting her own releases out last year and has already earned notable plaudits. Among them Pitchfork, where Philip Sherburne enthused that ‘FAUZIA’s music is getting more confident and idiosyncratic; it’s moving beyond familiar club contexts in search of points unknown’.

In December FAUZIA continues that evolution as she brings her new live show to the Southbank Centre as part of our Purcell Sessions. And beyond that much anticipated gig on 11 December, she also pushes her creative boundaries further with an interactive installation. And it was this which we caught up with the artist to discuss, and find out just what wonderment we can expect.

So, FAUZIA, as well as performing for us as part of Purcell Sessions, you’re also producing an installation…

Yes, I’m collaborating with electronic music artist Alex Peverett to build my first installation, which will be a generative audio-visual experience.

What was your inspiration for this?

My initial thought process was to understand how my Somali heritage connects with the work I currently do. This led to us thinking about how contemporary British electronic music would sound if it was directly influenced by Somali music culture.

We decided to approach this by building a procedural or generative system to create a durational audio-visual composition knitting sonic vocabularies of modern dance music with Somali influence, the musical structures, instrumentation and other elements. Taking a generative approach we feed these kinds of ideas and rules into the coding structures we build and this allows the system to speculate on what form this music might take as much as we do, allowing nice surprises to occur for us and for us to respond to. 

This kind of approach also let’s us engage in experimentation as a process rather than as a genre and pushes against certain standardisations, normalisations or biases in musical composition which might be born from biased or problematic histories of musical cultural conditioning or more restrictive software tools that are developed predominantly in western or westernised countries.

‘This approach lets us engage in experimentation as a process rather than as a genre and pushes against certain standardisations, normalisations or biases in musical composition which might be born from biased or problematic histories.’

Why did you choose to present this through this medium?

Installation allows us to present music in ways which are slightly outside the expectations of the other environments in which audiences might encounter music, such as clubs. Although it does have certain expectations of its own depending on history, associations and architectural design the space. 

Producing audio-visual work for installation means we can work with structures that have both sonic and visual outputs in a different way, and play with patterns, space, process, association. It is often a good context for presenting work that is fluid and isn’t a fixed linear musical composition, or is more durational than when producing for fixed media like vinyl or mp3. 

The resultant visual and sonic patterns from a generative system can be potentially infinite in its number of permutations, and people can experience their own ‘version’ depending on when they attend. This also kind of comments on the idea of music as a marketable fixed object – which has only really been the case during the 20th century – and weirdly works more traditionally and fluidly with music as performance or iteration or interpretation.

‘The installation allows for presenting work that is fluid, that isn’t a fixed linear musical composition, or is more durational than when producing for vinyl or mp3.’

Do you think what you’re planning may evolve at all, between now and when it happens here at the Southbank Centre?

We’ve been working remotely so far, but have several sessions planned to work on this together in different spaces. The Sussex Humanities Lab has allowed us to work with their facilities to develop the work and it should develop there in surprising ways but we are still allowing adaptability within its design to respond to the space at the Southbank Centre when we first install it.

And what do you want the audience to take away from your installation?

Just to enjoy it really, to have a positive new experience. But if they desire more critical engagement with the ideas around the work then I hope they reflect on the richness, positivity, power, privilege and preciousness of our multi-cultural society within the UK.