The Sudanese American artist talks about their upcoming ROSETTA EP, queering Arabic, and more.
Excerpt:
Can you tell me about your choice to sing in Arabic on “smut” and what you’re saying on the song?
At the time when I was making that song, I was working with the Minnesota Sudanese community, who were doing a lot of organizing around the protests and riots in Sudan. I was thinking a lot about what was happening there. A lot of imagery stemmed from that [including] one word in particular: Kandaka, which means “queen” in ancient Nubian. It’s something that was used because women in Sudan are the vanguards of most of the political movements, especially this previous one. I was thinking about the implications of Kandaka, then Kundaka came out of it. Instead of Kandake meaning queen, Kundaka would be like me imagining nonbinary or gender nonspecific royalty. I knew that it didn't mean anything, but I guess I queered it.
I said a lot more. It’s kind of hard to translate in English. “It came from one place. It came from a dry place. It came from ground that fell.” It’s more imagery. I was thinking about Sudan, and how, in English, [the name] translates to meaning “land of the Blacks.” There’s a lot of speculation about where specifically the first few people [came from]. I was thinking about the erasure of Sudan. I was also thinking about pyramids and the enslavement of Sudanese people for the creation of Egyptian pyramids. Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt, but Egypt is credited for a lot of [symbols of] Blackness and romanticized in that sense. I’m not really using it as a dichotomy, but I was thinking about that at the time I was writing it.
It’s not the first song I’ve written in Arabic, but I wanted to break into the Sudani market. It's super nice to see people in the audience who understand what you're saying and who are from where you're from. I got a taste of that [playing] at this benefit concert by Everyday People that had a fully Sudani lineup. I got to perform to a crowd full of Sudani people, and it lifted my spirits in a way that I didn't think was possible. I was like, “Maybe I should release some music in Arabic so my Sudani listeners can feel the same thing.”
