EmmoLei Sankofa: Transcript
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Something is missing. I can't tell what's missing. These songs are not gelling. They sound like they're a part of three different projects, like what is missing? And one day I just don't even remember, I just sat down and looked up the Morse code spelling of point a, point B, because these are also geometric concepts and Overture, Coda obviously are musical terms. But I typed it out and I'm like, wait a minute, let me translate this musically. And so I did that and I'm like, okay, I think I have something here. And so when I integrated them into the flow of things, it worked. And I decided from that point moving forward that, hey, this could also be leveraged to create themes and motifs in my film and TV work. Because even for me as a percussionist, rhythm is a huge part of how I interpret things, how I digest what's going on around me. Even when I'm just moving throughout my day, I'm often listening for the rhythm of the things around me.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. EmmoLei Sankofa is an American composer, producer, musician, and artist whose work spans music, visual media, and fine art. In this episode, we focused on her original music for Hulu's The Other Black Girl, the film score for Three Ways and her project Geometry. And we talked about her unique use of Morse code in her compositions and the benefits of limitations in creative work. I asked her about her experiences in HBCU marching band culture, at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and being part of a positive community of mentors and peers through the composer's diversity collective. With her background as a percussionist and her use of Morse code, I was interested to hear about her creative process and also about some of her visual art projects and collaborative installations. EmmoLei's discography encompasses many albums and singles and often integrates soul, jazz, classical and rhythm and blues for Single Don't Fight was included on Adult Swim's Opus Compilation album.
EmmoLei has collaborated with many award-winning filmmakers, and through her creative audio company, Bèl Son has worked with brands like Nike, Buzzfeed and Kamala Harris For the People. At the beginning of this episode, we dig into EmmoLei's unique score for The Other Black Girl, which I watched and recommend. It's based on a bestselling novel by Zakiya Dalila Harris. And the show is an edgy thriller that's a social commentary with humorous twists and shines a light on the experience of Black women in corporate America, specifically in the publishing industry. This podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as a video on my YouTube. You can sign up for my weekly newsletter to get access to sneak peeks for upcoming guests on my website, Leahroseman.com, where you can explore past episodes and support the show through my Ko-fi page. Hi, EmmoLei, thanks so much for joining me here today.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Thank you for having me.
Leah Roseman:
I thought it might be fun to start with The Other Black Girl. I wanted to check out the show because I knew I'd be talking to you, and within the first two minutes I looked at my husband, who's also a musician. I said, wow, this score. He said, yeah, that's really something else and really different. But the show itself is fantastic. I mean everything, the writing, the directing, the acting, it's really, really strong. I'm curious, had you heard of the book before they asked you to work on the show?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes, so I had heard of the book, but I hadn't read the book yet. And a lot of my friends are a part of book clubs. Some of them have their own specific book clubs. So this book has been in a few of my peers like book clubs, and I had heard people talking about it. So yeah, interestingly enough, when I heard them talking about it, it just wasn't necessarily a story that I would've just picked up because actually when I read books, I typically read biographies, autobiographies, and I'm drawn to historical things, business things. So I haven't really read narrative books recently. So when this came across my plate, I was like, oh, okay, let's see, let's what's happening here? So yeah,
Leah Roseman:
Is the book pretty different?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
So I'm not sure because I still haven't read the book and everybody asked me the question, have you read the book? And I'm like, no, I haven't. But I'm actually glad that I didn't read the book before the series because it allowed me to come into the space to create the score without any preconceived notions. And even, for example, I'll give you the Harry Potter analysis because I was a big Harry Potter fan as a kid, and when I read the books, there were some things, a lot of things translated very well, but they didn't include every single detail. And so when you come into a project like this, probably having read the book, you might approach things differently. So I appreciate the fact that I was able to approach this from a raw clean slate, no prior knowledge of the storyline, just what was in front of me with the script and what I had based on the vision of the showrunners and producers and stuff like that. So it kind of worked out actually better in my opinion.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. You're about to hear EmmoLei's main theme to the Hulu series, The Other Black Girl. (music)
Zakiya Delilah Harris, who wrote the book, I was interested to find out it was her lived experience in corporate America that just motivated her to write this book.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
I believe that that was, she's an author, and so I'm sure that she pulled from real life experience. I don't think this is her first book actually, but Zakiya is an author, so this is definitely very much so aligned with something she's experienced. And what's interesting is I was at a gala this weekend and a few of my peers were coming up to me talking about the show, and I didn't realize how many people just had this same exact experience am just like, okay, because personally it hasn't really been my direct experience because I've typically, I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and so a lot of my environments were either pretty diverse or I grew up in spaces where everything was kind of predominantly Black. So for me, I think my first experience kind of coming into the space where I was like the eyeball out was maybe grad school.
And even then, by that time, I wasn't necessarily focused on those details. I was just kind of there for a purpose. And the environment was a creative environment anyway, so it was very diverse people from a lot of different backgrounds. So it still didn't quite give that energy. And I've also never worked in corporate America. I've always been in the creative spaces, so the way we engaged with each other is a lot different in some spaces than it is in corporate spaces. And so it's been really cool and interesting to hear people's lived experiences through the experience of the show and through them kind of seeing that on screen in this format. Yeah,
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I mean, the theme alone is so very memorable and appropriately creepy, but the music and the sound design throughout the show, I just love every episode. It just really struck me.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
That's heartwarming. I love when people say that because a lot of people sometimes when they hear my work often basically tell me it's a character in itself. And I don't necessarily go into a show saying, I want to make the music a character, because you kind of have to let that unfold as you work on the project or the show or whatever. But I'm always trying to elevate things in a way that gives the music space to have this distinct sound and to kind of live in a world of its own, but also beautifully support what's happening so that it's out of the way. You know what I'm saying? And so I think I really had wide open space here because this is a brand new show, so there's an opportunity to do something that people haven't heard. Really, it's just about experimentation. And a lot of the process at the beginning of us working on the episodes was like, what is the music? What is the sound of the music for the show? What are we going to do? And so upon tinkering and just experimenting with vocals and different things and elements like that, we arrived at what you guys hear now. But it was definitely a process getting to like, okay, this is it. And then creating variations and evolving the sound of the music throughout.
Leah Roseman:
This is Being Diplomatic from The Other Black Girl. (music)
So it's fascinating that you use Morse code as one of your things. And out of curiosity, this morning I went into a Morse code generator and typed out the name of this podcast just to hear even the word conversations,
EmmoLei Sankofa:
What it sounded like.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, even the word conversations. It was very cool. So I've done all research, I know about how you came to that, but my listeners, maybe you could just explain it
EmmoLei Sankofa:
How I came to using Morse code in my work? Yes. So I was working on a project called Geometry, which was an EP that I was working on in maybe 2017 I started. And so I had pretty much created all of the songs. And actually, let me back up. Geometry is basically an EP that I created that's based on a love story, but I use shapes as metaphors to tell that story. And so I had created Circles, Triangles, and Squares, and I'm playing it back and forth. I'm playing it for people, and I'm like, something is missing. I can't tell what's missing. These songs are not gelling. They sound like they're a part of three different projects. What is missing? And one day, I don't even remember, I just sat down and looked up the Morse code spelling of point a, point B, because these are also geometric concepts, and Overture, Coda obviously are musical terms.
But I typed it out and I'm like, wait a minute, let me translate this musically. And so I did that and I'm like, okay, I think I have something here. And so when I integrated them into the flow of things, it worked. And I decided from that point moving forward that, hey, this could also be leveraged to create themes and motifs in my film and TV work. Because even for me as a percussionist, rhythm is a huge part of how I interpret things, how I digest what's going on around me, even when I'm just moving throughout my day, I'm often listening for the rhythm of the things around me. And so a lot of composers aren't necessarily percussionists, primarily they're wind players or horn players. And so for me, this was a unique way to leverage what I already do as a percussionist to create things that can live in the film and TV space and the orchestral space and to create melodies and chord progressions.
And also just add a little bit of variation. Because the thing is with Morse code, you can set the parameters for the tempo for how long or short you want the dots or dashes to be in terms of the note values. You can set all of those parameters. So it opens up this wide world of possibilities for how you express the actual spelling of whatever you're spelling out. And so that was intriguing to me and that was inviting to me, and it kind of gave me a new way to think about how to create music.
Leah Roseman:
When you were just speaking, something went by fast, maybe I didn't understand. Did you say something about chord progressions in the context of Morse code?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes, because rhythmically, when you are playing chord progressions, you're also playing a rhythm. So if I'm playing a rhythm, I'm just stacking the chords per dot or dash or however the Morse code configuration is organized. So basically, I don't necessarily leverage them for the chord progressions themselves. It's just built into the rhythm already itself, if that makes sense.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that makes sense.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
But for melodic stuff, it's really like it helps me out so much because it gives me these ideas and it also creates a box that really gives me so many different possibilities. And lately, within my creative process, a lot of people say, oh, I don't like genres. I don't like boxes, I don't like this, I don't like that. And it's like sometimes the box is the thing that number one helps you focus, but it also opens up a world of possibilities because you have to use limitations in many different ways. It's kind of like statistics almost, or just probability, actually. So creating limitations really allows me to build out unique worlds musically because it helps me focus on a limited amount of instruments or this one particular Morse code spelling, and how many different ways can I express this to make it sound differently or emote in a different way? You know what I'm saying? So that's my train of thought when I go into pretty much a lot of what I work on today.
Leah Roseman:
Now, your life as a percussionist, I know you were very involved in marching band culture and stuff like that growing up.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes,
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I'd love you talked about it because I'm Canadian, it's not a part of our culture here.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Really? Okay, wow. Yeah. So I grew up in a musical household, first and foremost, and both of my parents went to HBCUs, which are Historically Black Colleges and Universities. That's what that acronym stands for. And within those institutions across really the United States, there's a distinct culture directly within not only just the school itself, but also within the marching band. And so both of my parents marched in the band at HBCUs, so I grew up watching that. I grew up immersed in that culture, going to homecomings. My dad, both of my parents outside of college were musicians. My mom played violin, my father played tuba and bass guitar and a lot of other things, but marching band was a huge part of my life. I pretty much started marching, not necessarily with the school, but during the summers in middle school. And then when I got to high school, I was officially affiliated with my high school's marching band.
And then when I went to college, same deal, but it's really something that you have to experience and I could give you some recommendations. One of my favorite HBCU marching bands is Southern University, which they're out of Louisiana, please look them up. They're called the Human Jukebox. And I went to Hampton University, they're called the Marching Force, and my brother's actually currently a drum major there now. But really what's unique about these organizations is the arrangement style. The showmanship is a lot different from some of the core style marching bands, just really the energy and culture around it, it is just different. It's something you have to experience. So one day you should really come. If you come to the United States, come to a game, just check it out and you'll see, you'll see. But in the meantime, I recommend looking up Southern as a starting point, Southern University, just to kind of see what I'm talking about. You'll see.
Leah Roseman:
So at Historically Black Colleges, is the marching band style different than at predominantly white colleges? Is that what you're saying?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes, very different. Very different playing style. Like I said, showmanship, the field shows. And what's interesting is some of the PWIs are starting to adopt some of the signature arrangements or songs that we play, because we also, if you go to different schools, there's a song that we have, everybody calls it Nick, but it's a song that almost every HBCU marching band plays, but everybody has a completely different arrangement. So they're like stand tunes that everybody plays, but they have different arrangements. And we kind of do these battles like battles back and forth across the field during the game. And what's interesting is a lot of times people come to the games to see the band over the football team. And so it is different. It is different. That's what I have to say. It's very different. It's something you really have to experience to understand the full weight and depth of the culture. And even one time may not necessarily do it just because if you go to different schools, there are things that are borderline similar, but every school has a different culture surrounding their band too. So it is really fun.
Leah Roseman:
And I was curious to hear about your master's in sound design at SCAD. That's the acronym, right?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yeah. Yes, yes. So SCAD is short for the Savannah College of Art and Design. And I went to SCAD immediately after I graduated from Hampton, where I got my Bachelor of Science and Music Recording Technology. And the program at SCAD is really unique because while the major is blanketly named Sound Design, we learned everything from production sound to post-production sound. So that includes production, sound mixing, dialogue, editing, Foley. We had a Foley pit in the studio, which a lot of universities don't have. We took experimental music classes, we did music supervision, scoring, surround, sound, mixing, just everything. And so it was really a program that was structured around understanding the collaborative systems and collaborative processes within the film and TV and really visual media space. And so I think that we were prepared very well to navigate this space. And based on some of the feedback that I get from my peers and other programs who may have gone to maybe just composition programs and stuff like that, their programs are situated differently because there's not necessarily a lot of collaboration with the other film students.
And so at SCAD, we're literally in the same building with the film students. And so everybody's shooting a project almost every weekend. So it's easy to get your hands on a film to practice wherever your interests live, whether that's production side, post-production side, whatever the case may be. And so I really appreciated the environment that was created at SCAD, and they actually just, they now have one of the largest lots out of all of the universities in the United States. They just set up a studio lot. So they've been acquiring and upgrading and getting a lot of land to really upgrade the experience for the students so that again, what you're learning in school is not just theory, it's also you're putting things into practice and it mimics the real world systems and collaborative processes that you'll experience once you leave there. So SCAD was great.
Leah Roseman:
That's great to hear.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
SCAD was great.
Leah Roseman:
Hi. Just a short break from the episode, which I hope you're enjoying so far. If you want to check out over a hundred episodes you may have missed in addition to your podcast player or YouTube, I have an extensive website, leah roseman.com with show notes, transcripts, the complete catalog of episodes, and you can sign up there for my weekly newsletter to get access to sneak of upcoming guests. Please do share your favorite episodes with your friends, follow me on social media and share my posts. And if you can spare a few dollars to help support the series, that would be amazing. And you can find that link in the show notes. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. Now, back to the episode.
When you were doing your undergrad, I understand one of your professors heard some of, I don't if it was your beats or other stuff you'd written and said, it sounds cinematic. You should think about film scoring. I always like to talk about mentorship with my guests. I think it's so important. And I was wondering if you wanted to reflect maybe on other mentors or your experience mentoring younger composers?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes. So mentoring is very key for me too. And in terms of mentors, I've had many different mentors throughout my life in many different ways. Number one, my parents being my first mentors who didn't always understand how to help me navigate this space, but they gave me a lot of foundational tools that helped me navigate life and kind of gave me space to be self-directed. Just really they helped me become a well-rounded being in general. And then I have one of my old band directors, actually, Mr. Roderick Smith, who was ironically my mother's college band director. He was my high school band director, but he was really great too.
He is not living anymore, but he was really instrumental in helping me navigate what I wanted to do in terms of from the high school to college track, and presented a lot of options based on the strengths that he saw in me as a leader. And I'll say that even in college, Dr. Thomasetti, who you just mentioned, that kind of prompted me to think about film scoring, I really appreciated him because he was always thinking differently and really outside of the box compared to a lot of my other professors. And he was one of those people who would present opportunities that we weren't necessarily thinking about or even things that weren't necessarily offered at school. And a lot of times he gave me opportunities to work with him outside of school where I was getting paid, you know what I'm saying? And as a college student, how beneficial that is to have some money in your pocket.
So he saw that I was taking my work seriously, and there were actually times where he would be double booked and he would say, Hey, are you able to handle this gig for me? It just allowed me to kind of strengthen my skills, refine my skillset, and kind of gave me space to, again, become more of a well-rounded creative in general. And as far as the industry is concerned, I didn't necessarily have the same track that a lot of my other peers have where they're working under a composer as an assistant. But I've had a lot of mentors who I've been able to call and talk to who've seen what I have to offer and have seen my potential at various points based on when we met and have opened themselves up to give me business knowledge, like Kathryn Bostic, Jongnic Bontemps, who we call JB for short.
He scored the latest Transformers film. Michael Abels has also at one point opened up his arsenal of knowledge to help and be of service and integrate me into the composes diversity collective, Amanda Jones, Shonda Dancy. There have been so many people, even Chris Bowers, there have been so many people again that have, even if it's just a quick conversation, have given me nuggets that have latched on to my brain. And there are things that I don't forget and that I apply often as I grow and scale because a lot of them, although we're kind of like peers, but we're all at different levels and everybody's experiencing things differently. And so a lot of them have gotten to certain levels that I'm looking to get to. And so it's always like, Hey, I'm here now.
How do I do this? Or How did you do this when you got this project? And even Stephanie Economou who I was the co-composer with her for Step Up Season three, Stephanie was really a big mentor to me on that project because that was my first narrative series ever. And while it was in season three, it was still like I was learning on the job. It was very fast paced, but in terms of just our collaborative exchange, it was really beneficial, and I learned a lot from her in terms of systems, organization, diplomacy, when it comes to engaging with executives and how to navigate the studio system when you're working on a project at that level. So there are a lot of people that have come in and out and also who are just around and here today who have really helped not only elevate me to this space, but also just really in life.
Leah Roseman:
I was going to ask you about Michael Abels because I know he was one of the people who founded the Composer's Diversity Collective, and I've spoken to a couple of other composers on the series who are part of that.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, so networking, you had gone out to LA after you finished your Master's, right?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes, probably. So I finished my master's in May of 2014. I got to Los Angeles in February of 2015, so a few months, almost like six to seven months after I graduated. And Michael, I met basically because when Get Out came out, I was really just intrigued by the score, and I looked up who did the score, and I saw him and I was confused because I'm like, how did he get this big project? But he hasn't scored any films beforehand. He hadn't had any really big films. So I just started digging, digging, digging. I found this email and I reached out. I literally still have that email to this day because it's just a reminder. I just keep certain things like that because they're reminders for me. But basically asked him out to coffee, he agreed, and he kind of shared the process of how he got that film, what he was looking to build at the time, which now has become the Composers Diversity Collective.
And a lot of what Michael was sharing with me, he was learning on the go because being thrust into this space was new for him too. And so I'm sure he just saw a lot of things in a lot of holes where there needed to be a community like the Composers Diversity Collective. And so I'm very thankful that he took that meeting with me and shared the knowledge that he shared, and also brought me in to be a part of the Composers Diversity Collective and to navigate in exchange with other composers that I've had the honor of seeing their careers grow from that point. Because Amanda Jones was in the mix. JB was in the mix. So many people were in the mix, and everybody's careers have really blossomed and they were already going to blossom. But I think the uniqueness of this community has added another layer to the level of support that we've been able to give each other.
And when people sometimes are too busy for a project, someone is like, Hey, are you available for this? And so people have passed projects along and brought folks on to be musicians and support folks for the scores that they're working on. So at the end of the day, everybody's still getting an opportunity to work on many different and grow their careers from opportunities that other composers may not be able to take on at the moment. So it is really dope, and I'm just glad that I took the initiative to reach out to Michael at that time. And I typically, that's how I do things anyway. When I hear something I like or I'm drawn to something, I start digging and I start researching. And even if it's as simple as just saying, Hey, I really love what you do, and that's it. Just creating the connection through that exchange sometimes blossoms into things that you just wouldn't have expected. So
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And the Bèl Son Kolektif that you formed, yes. That's Haitian Creole, right?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes, you are great.
Leah Roseman:
Yes. I was curious, do you have a Haitian background at all or is it just
EmmoLei Sankofa:
No, I have a lot of peers that are Haitians, Senegalese, Nigerian, Ghanaian. And my interest in that was mainly from being immersed in the culture through one of my friends and just learning, and even just being aligned with understanding more of my heritage in general. Because Haitian Creole is actually basically broken French, so it's actually not really native to the Haitian people in terms of their true language, because Haitians came to the Caribbean basically through the slave trade anyway, you know what I'm saying? So in general, I relate to and can and find commonalities in African people throughout the entire diaspora, and that's a huge part of my name as well. Which Sankofa is Ghanaian. Yeah, Sankofa is Ghanaian, and I mean, in general, I have Ghanaian ancestry, I have Nigerian ancestry, I have ancestry from the Congo, just a lot of different places that I've been able to trace back.
So it's not farfetched and it's not something that I just pulled out of a hat, but it did come out of, really, what's interesting about Sankofa is that actually it found me before I understood the weight of integrating that into my name as an artist. And so sometimes it's almost like the action prompts the answers in a sense. So sometimes you just have to do things and the details reveal themselves over time. And that's kind of like what Sankofa was in terms of my artist's name, because actually EmmoLei was a part of my artist's name, but beforehand it was something different. And so I made a switch because what I was calling myself before just it didn't align. And so when I got to Sankofa, I knew what Sankofa was, but I didn't fully understand why it chose me at the time, and it's still revealing that as I live, but yes.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was curious about your name. So I was looking at Sankofa symbols and the different meanings of the name, really, really that's great.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
Let's go back to your life as a musician, because you're a wonderful singer and a multi-instrumentalist. I'm curious about your instrument collection. What does that look like?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Instrument collection, mainly percussion, auxiliary percussion instruments. I have a talking drum, which is actually an authentic one from Sénégal. Really what's interesting is I'm very bare minimum, and I like to create a lot of my instruments too. I have a net of pennies that I've used on a project. I just like using everyday objects, but I have claves, I have shakers, I have a cabasa. There's this, I have a drum set, obviously, but I have this, it's like a hybrid acoustic electronic situation where it's made by Sun House and it's called sensory percussion, which basically you have a drum head and you attach the device to the drum head, and you can basically turn your drum into any instrument that you want. I have an Orba and Artiphon, and those are also, so the instrument, actually Artiphon is the name of the company, but the instrument one is the first instrument that I purchased from them, which when you look at it, it looks like a guitar, but it can be transformed into, or it can be played as a piano, it can be played as a percussion instrument.
It can be played as really anything that you want. You can program it. You can change the strings based on the type of guitar that you're playing, whether it's like a ukulele or a bass guitar or you can do anything. And then the Orba is this small little, little round instrument that has eight pads. And the idea is similar, but it's not necessarily, you don't have strings and stuff like that. But what's cool is it's Bluetooth midi, and I like that a lot because it gives me freedom to move around my space when I'm working out ideas. And even certain articulations can be changed and morphed if you're just tilting the instrument. You know what I'm saying? So it's like I enjoy things that give me the freedom to move about and to brainstorm in a way that I'm not tethered to my computer. And of course, I use my voice a lot.
My voice is oftentimes the foundation for my ideas when I'm out and about. I'm not always around a computer or something where I can record a full on idea. So sometimes I record my voice or my ideas with voice notes, or I'm just singing and humming and just listening and thinking about things by singing. And the voice is the first instrument anyway. And really the percussion instruments are very primitive in that way too, because when you think way back, that was really the foundation for a lot of the rituals and things that a lot of tribal cultures would do just in their day-to-day, and not necessarily anything crazy, but for dance and ceremonies and stuff like that, the voice and drums were hand in hand. They didn't have trumpets and stuff. They had horns here and there like seashells and animal tusk and just things like that. But really at this point in my life, and I've noticed this trend as I look back, but for me, I'm focusing on the fundamentals and what I can do with the fundamentals. Because if you can do grand things with the fundamentals, the embellishments are easy to deal with. And so again, for me, it's about scaling back because at the end of the day, you don't really need all the bells and whistles. You don't need everything at your disposal. You just need to see what you can do with the bare minimum.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. There was a quote of yours, Emily. It must've been another interview where you said, don't wait for inspiration.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes,
Leah Roseman:
Yes. Is that kind of what you mean by this as well? Just like,
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yeah, because what's interesting about that is there's a artist, I can't remember, I think their last name is Glass, but the quote was something to the effect of amateurs wait for inspiration professionals sit and get to it, or something like that. But when I saw that, I was like, oh, I feel called out. At the time, I was really young and I was like, dang, that's kind of heavy. Because really in the professional world, that's kind of how it works. And when you are on the hook for something, you have to just sit down and get to work. Even just in general, I feel that the best ideas often come through the action, which it is not only about the creative space and applying this in the creative space. I think this is something that can be translated throughout life. The answers to your questions happen through the action. And sometimes stillness. Stillness is an action.
Sometimes just sitting and listening, you may need to do that, but at some point you also have to get up and apply and do the thing or work through the thing to really get to the end result or to get to what you're trying to get to. And for me, sitting down, tinkering, experimenting, just getting to it, it helps me arrive at what I'm trying to get to eventually. And sometimes that happens because you end up making those mistakes that end up becoming the thing that sticks. And had you been sitting waiting for the grand idea, you might not have arrived at that point. You know what I'm saying? And so for me, I've learned to also champion and accept the mistakes, because a lot of times, those are the things that people are drawn to anyway. They don't know they were mistakes, but I've found that.
But that is a thing that I wholeheartedly believe and I put into practice, and there are points in my life where I experience life and I allow my brain to make connections and to catalog and download. And then there are parts of my life where it is time to get to work, because experiencing life is an action as well. And you need material from the world to make your work interesting. And so that is a part of, for me, just being out in the world, experiencing things, watching interviews, just digging in the archives, those things kind of lead you to what the universe is trying to get you to focus on next. And I think about that in terms of how certain projects come into my awareness too. I'm very mindful of what projects come into my plate and thinking about why is this coming into my awareness now? Why me for this project? You know what I mean? And that helps me even decide whether I work on something or not, just depending on how a certain project speaks to me and the topic of it and what's going on in the world, and just all of these different variables that come into play. But long story short, yes, that is my,
Leah Roseman:
So talking about creativity, becuase you're also a visual artist.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
I've done photography exhibits, I've done some. So when I went to California, I did this. It was basically a moving exhibit. So I drove cross country from Georgia to California, and I called it Timber, and I had drumsticks at this point in my life. I was shedding and getting rid of things that no longer served me as I went into this next phase of my life, and moving from Georgia to California was a huge, huge step in my life, mainly because I'm thousands of miles away from my family. I'm basically walking into, I had never lived there. I'm walking into this new career, I'm completely done with school. So there's a lot that I'm getting ready to be confronted with in life. And so for me, every state that I went to, I posted a drumstick and they were posted in cool areas or meaningful areas, and I would take a picture.
And so that was a part of the visual narrative as I'm moving from state to state. And of course it was called Timber, like the drumstick is wood, but it's also in among musicians we call shedding the jam session where you're just kind of playing and just getting everything out. And so for me, it was about shedding what would not serve me, entering into this next phase of my life. Then I also did a photography exhibition. I did a couple in LA, but this was a exhibition that showcased my photography work that I did in South Africa in Johannesburg. And I did an artist residency there in 2017. It was for a week. And I pretty much just went around to different parts of Johannesburg and just observed the culture and immersed myself in it. And I took pictures of things that were interesting, things that spoke to me in terms of the difference of how people live there versus here, the beauty of commerce there.
Even just seeing women in a metropolitan area, still walking around with baskets on their head. You know what I'm saying? Carrying fruit to the market to sell. It was just really interesting. And Johannesburg is very, there are parts of it that are still very much so you can kind of see the remnants of apartheid a little bit, but then there's the modern elements that very much so align with how we experience or some people experience life in America. So the contrast was really interesting to see as well. I stayed in the Maboneng precinct, which is basically the arts district, and they had a lot of different events and just unique restaurants and cars, and even just the culturally diverse nature of the area where number one, in South Africa you have 40 languages, pretty much 40 main languages that people can speak. And then you have 11 that are the top ones that you can expect to run into.
But on hand, most people will speak at least five different languages there. Even that, for me, it's like it just humbled me as an American because that experience, sometimes I feel Americans can be arrogant in the sense that we feel like because English is almost a dominant thing, and of course English is not, it's American based on the nature of colonialism, but it's still like we are not as cultured as we think we are. You know what I'm saying? And that humbled me because we have people across the world who not only have to learn English to do business sometimes, but they're navigating a lot of different things mentally. So these folks are very intelligent.
You speak, I know in different parts of Canada, there's French. I went to Montreal and I was very shocked. As soon as I crossed the border, everything's in French. So I don't know. It was a great experience. So that was another place that I did visual work. And then I've done, I did Mistakes in Motion, which was a series that I started again on my own where I think it was one day I was in grad school and I had my phone in my pocket, and I saw all these pictures that I had taken on accident, but they were so interesting, and so I took them and processed them in different ways. And so over the course of a few months, whenever I would see a photo that I had accidentally taken in my camera roll, I'd take that and manipulate it into this. Some of them look like paintings essentially, and I had merch and printed some of them and all of that.
So I've done a lot of these things over the course of my life because photography and visual art is often another space that I can express myself and kind of give myself space. Well give myself a chance to digest the world outside of music, because I'm always listening. That never ends. But sometimes when you hop into other disciplines, it gives you inspiration. And again, it goes back to the action of something and seeking inspiration through the action of a thing. So again, visual art is something that allows me to do that, but I can absolutely share some of that. And I actually have, there's basically, I'll say some people have my photography hanging in their homes. I don't publicize that, but it is a thing that I do take serious. And it's almost like when there's the period of me focusing on that, I focus on that.
But, and my dad was actually very much so into photography as well. He's also a great visual artist. So my grandmother used to tell me all the time, my dad was the kid that was like, he was always chosen to do the bulletin boards. And actually growing up, whenever I had a project where I needed some elaborate drawing, my dad was the one that helped me with that. So in hindsight, actually, that being a part of me is not farfetched because my dad is very good, and a lot of people in my family actually have a lot of artists in my family.
Leah Roseman:
Well, for some of my, I guess we have a small gallery of images associated with their episode. So we could put in a few, and of course, everything will be linked to your website.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
I can share personal links with you so that you can kind of see that stuff.
Leah Roseman:
Cool.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Because it is some of my favorite, actually, some of it more than the music, because for me, there's no pressure when I do it. I'm just experimenting even deeply more deeply when I'm doing visual stuff, because a lot of it is not, I didn't go to school for it, and it's not my main thing. So I can be even more free in this medium than sometimes I can musically. So yeah, in grad school, I actually did a couple of collaborative installations. There was one that I did with Jessica Henry called Plant This, and that one was installation on sustainability, food and sustainability. And so she did these video projections and I did the soundscape for that environment, and it was very organic, sonically. And then I did another installation slash collaborative performance with Rain Blanc, and that was in Savannah as well, but that one was called Unlearning.
And she actually did this as a nine day performance art piece. And I was on, I think day seven. I performed with her on day seven. But that installation was basically about learning and unlearning and just the realizations that you come to throughout life as you navigate and figure out what to keep and what not to keep and relearning yourself as you grow into adulthood. But it also was, I didn't do this, but she had LSD. It was a very interesting situation. And so she's flowing through this trip in real time, kind of exploring that topic that I was just talking to you about, just learning and unlearning. And so through that, I created, I think an hour long soundscape that I did some live things with her, but I also have the recording that I did. So a really interesting, that was really interesting, that was really interesting.
But Sonic, the soundscape that I created for that is really interesting. It has a lot of different parts to it, and it kind of takes you on in my brain because when she described it and she kind of prompted and prepped me for how she was going to do it, I had to use my imagination and think about what someone might experience as they're going through this trip. And so it's just really a matter of me pulling the wildest things, but also leveraging intention to communicate some of the internal battles that one might have as they're trying to determine and who they want to become, what they want to get rid of, what needs to stay, and also learning new information that kind of shakes everything that they've ever known. You know what I mean? So yeah, those were really fun. Those were really fun. But those are definitely worth listening to. And the pieces that come from that, it's Golden Dragon and The Plant. This Plant, this is named the same as the series, but a learning one is called Golden Dragon
Leah Roseman:
With Geometry. You have also your commentary album, which is very cool, but I thought maybe she wants to make movies, because it's so narrative.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Oh my gosh, yes. I directed, so for Geometry, I directed the music video that I created for that. And a lot of my peers have mentioned that I should explore directing movies and stuff. I do have a visual language, and even though it was a music video for that particular piece, I was inspired by an old short film that Cheryl Dunye had done, and I don't know if you're familiar with that director. She's worked most recently a lot with Ava DuVernay. I think she directed some episodes of Queen Sugar, and she's done some other stuff recently. But one of her most famous features, I think is Watermelon, but the visual language that she had, the film was called Janine. And I was just like, wait a minute, why is she editing? Or why are we seeing feet? But we're hearing dialogue and we're not seeing their faces, you know what I'm saying?
So there's a focus on things like very crazy closeups on things that are typically not necessarily crass, but they're, they don't hold the audience's attention the way that we should traditionally edit and assemble cuts to keep people engaged. And so I appreciated that Norman McLaren was an animator, but a lot of his work was very inspiring to me, and just the way he experimented and played with light and all of that, which actually the geometry cover was inspired. You can't see my poles because of the shapes, but that cover was actually inspired by a very famous Norma McLaren photo.
But film is in my cards at some point. It's just about assembling the right thing. I have a lot of things that I've written out and mapped out because I have some really intriguing ideas. So at some point, very cool. But I, I've dipped into that side through executive producing for now and kind of understanding the lay of the land and just being of service to some of my peers who are making short films who just need some financial support and just donating and just being in the mix. And sometimes they like to ask me for my feedback, and sometimes it's just me just giving money to their project. But either way, I love to, I'm always thinking about the bigger picture anyway, I'm always thinking from assembling the entire thing. So that's just how my brain works already. So at some point,
Leah Roseman:
This is a clip from EmmoLei's video for her composition Triangles. The complete video is linked in the show notes.(music)
So you were Executive Producer on Three Ways, and your tune Triangles, which you'd already produced for Geometry, you used another drummer, Laguzza is that his name?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Oh, so Nate Laguzza. Yeah, so Nate Laguzza was the drummer who I had performing the percussion stuff for the score, but Triangles itself, that was still in its original form from when I did the song for my project. So that was like a sync placement situation for that, because the director actually went through my geometry EP before finding me or upon getting my name, because he was actually, I think, yeah, he was referred to me through one of my friends Damo. And so upon learning about me, he went through my EP and actually cut some of my work to picture to kind of show me what his vision was for the score. So that came about because he just really liked the song, it aligned with the narrative anyway, and so that just made sense. But yeah, Nate Laguzza is the guy that I had performing the drums for the score for Three Ways.
Leah Roseman:
So I listened to the soundtrack. I haven't seen that movie, but I was curious in terms of notation or how free it was. And then I'd also heard that for singers, you had used graphic scores. It's just kind of a picture.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
So for Three Ways, I use Morse code as well for the drums. So the drum parts, which are where the main themes and motifs are built out, they spell the number three, the word three and three, the number and some. And so basically I built those out on my end and gave them to Nate so that he could hear. I built them out in the drum set, and so I gave it to him so that he could hear. And we went back and forth kind of molding them for each specific cue. And so that's how that process went.
Leah Roseman:
This is a clip from They Look Great together from Emmolei's score to the film Three Ways (music)
EmmoLei Sankofa:
But with The Other Black Girl, the graphic scores I used to make the vocal clusters that I used for some of the horror elements within the show. So there are times where you'll hear a lot of different sounds happening at once to heighten the thrill and the tension. And so the graphic scores were distinctly used for that because with horror and in general dissonance, we don't like dissonance. And dissonance is just unpleasing sounds essentially things that just don't necessarily harmonically mesh. But I wanted to create dissonance and discord. And so when you have five singers in a space and you give them each a different completely drawing, and you tell them, you pick the pitch, you pick when you stop, you pick when you start, that creates discord automatically because none of them have had a conversation about which note they're starting on, how they're going to end, how they're going to start, none of that.
And so we're in the middle of the session, actually, while we were on break, I went and wrote the scores on each of their stands, and they came back and they're like, oh, what is this? What are we getting ready to do? And so I explained that process and there were some people who I gave specific starting notes to at different various points. And actually Alexander Blake, who, he was the vocal contractor, but he also worked with me because his group, the choir, that's his group Tonality. And so this was my first time working with a vocal group. So he also was in the mix to kind of help me with certain arrangement things that I needed to be mindful of or just helping me arrange some of the vocals because he understands his ensemble, he understands what they can do. And so having someone in the mix for that too, to kind of tweak things here and there and to share insight about how we can build out things based on what we have, he was very instrumental in doing that. So shout out to Alexander Blake of Tonality. But yeah,
Leah Roseman:
This is a clip from Dinner Party from The Other Black Girl in which you can hear some of the choir music EmmoLei was just talking about. (music)
Your voice is a lot in the score as well. Were you singing with this group of singers as well?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
No. So the day that we did the session for Tonality, we recorded literally everything that you hear from them in the show in one day. And so what I had to do for that was I had to think of the overall, how I wanted to use their voices overall in the entire series. Because I think when we recorded that session, we had only gotten to episode two, so I hadn't even used choir vocals in what I had done for the show yet. And I basically recorded them singing variations of the motifs that I had built out. And then we did a lot of, again, pitch clusters and things that we could leverage for dissonant sections where there's perceived chaos and tension and stuff like that. And so what I did from there was once I got all of that material and got the motifs that I wanted to leverage them for, once I got back to Atlanta, I was cutting that stuff into what I was building out for the specific cues.
And there were some instances where the choir material needed to be supported with something that I did vocally. And so I would interchange, I'd use my voice a lot because again, I'm working through these episodes week by week by week. And so a lot of the stuff is like improv me doing what's necessary for the specific cue that I'm working on at the time. And once everybody heard the vocals, they were like, no, we need the vocals everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. And so I'm like, okay. So a lot of it was a matter of me creating variations and me being the person who could do that on hand, because once I got all of the material for the choir, that was the material I had. And so even with that, again, it goes back to the limitations I would cut. I would morph a lot of that material as well. Some of it is very clear cut. You can hear the choir. And then there are other places where you don't know if it's a choir or not, but they're in there. So yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Here's a final clip from The Other Black Girl entitled Friends and High Places. (music)
We talked before about books. We kind of started this conversation about the book that the other black girls based on. And you mentioned that you to read a lot of nonfiction. And in a couple of your other interviews you mentioned this book by George Prochnik in Pursuit of Silence. I have it at the top of my reading list, but I haven't read it yet. So do you want to speak to that? I know it really affected you.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes. Oh my God, I read that book in grad school and it completely changed the way that I thought about sound, the way that I thought about silence. And it sent me on this, I mean, I had been thinking about my ears and maintaining just the sacredness of my hearing in general, but that book made me more conscious about how I crowded my space with sound, because you're getting the opportunity to learn and read about people in different countries where their perception of what silence and sound is completely different. And what struck me was when he went to Kenya and took two people and stood them a few football fields apart, and they're having a regular conversation at a normal tone, and they're able to hear one another. And I thought, What? I have peers that you might be standing right in front of them and they're like, repeat that. You know what I'm saying? And I'm very mindful now about how we fill our space in the western world, because even from reading that book, it made me more conscious of the fact that our ears are really survival mechanisms. They're designed for us to be able to respond, to react to localized sound if we're in danger, is it coming from the left? Is it coming behind? And so how can we leverage and use our ears the way they were intended if we're always crowding our space with sound? Because at this point, and even I've done it with my peers, a lot of times I'll ride in the car in silence and they're like, where's the music? I'm like, you can't ride in silence. What's that about?
Or even if an environment is too quiet, people are on edge versus the opposite when something is too loud and you can't pick out what's what, it's like we actually should be a little bit more alert when that's happening because it's hard to decipher what is meaningful, what's not. You know what I mean? And so after reading that book, I was really conscious about my environment and how I designed my environment sonically. And even now, my brother's in school for architecture, and he's doing his thesis on really sports arenas and sound and building sports arenas with sound in mind, especially because sports arenas are multi-use facilities. So outside of the game, how is sound being leveraged or how are we thinking about designing this space for other uses? But I just think about the buildings that I'm in, and I'm just mindful about all of these things.
And that's kind of how that book really transformed my life. But I absolutely think you should read it immediately. It's a great book. And actually, Patrick Shin, he's a director, he took that book and was inspired and made a documentary out of that. And I reached out to him too, because that was my introduction to his work. So I was a huge fan of the book, and I saw him making pretty much a film version of it. And I'm just like seeing folks in different parts of the world just have the luxury of a quiet environment. Planes are not going over 50 million times. You don't hear the ambulance, you don't hear the city sounds. It's different. And the way you respond to sound in your world is absolutely related to your location. And so at some point, I want to travel to all these different spaces, just different places around the world to get a feel for how other people hear and listen. And oddly enough, my thesis for grad school was going to be based on that, but my professors told me that was too ambitious because at the time, and I'm like, what? Too ambitious. But essentially that book is great.
Leah Roseman:
Let's wrap things up. I was just thinking about, actually, we didn't talk about you singing in the church choir when you were two, your mom taking you and being immersed in that, but we talked about beginning in Atlanta and you've managed to move back, right? You didn't stay in la
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes. No, I was in LA for five years, from 2015 until 2020. And then I came back here, which coming back to Atlanta was always the plan for me.
Leah Roseman:
I was listening to the Splendid Table podcast, which is a cooking podcast, sometimes it's fun to listen to. And one of the guests was saying how exposure to different flavors is like different genres of music. But I thought it really works the other way. And someone like you heard your mom's classical music playing in the background and your dad's record collection and marching band and church. It really, it's like you have this palette, right?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes, yes. That is absolutely correct. I think being exposed to many different genres. My parents have uniquely different listening styles. There are some times where there are listening styles merge, but when I was with my dad, I knew to expect Funk, and we were able to listen to some R and B and Rap and just some other stuff. And with my mom, it wasn't just Classical, but she exposed us to a lot of that stuff. She was very mindful of what she allowed us to listen to coming up. And so from, from my parents, just their influence and their musical perspectives. And then you have my own self-discovery. And even when you're in school and stuff like that, we used to exchange, especially middle school, we used to make all of our peers, we used to make mix tapes and stuff for each other. So we'd be swapping Cds like, oh, you have this song, I have this song, or check this out.
And so just growing up, it was a mix of just a lot of different periods and time and different ways that we were listening. And I came up, actually, it goes back even further because my Aunt Melanie used to make me mix tapes on a cassette tape, and she would funnel mix tapes and stuff to me too. And so I was always with the Walkman, always with the CD player. And then when the iPods came, I always had an iPod and sometimes I would get in trouble for listening to music at school in the middle of class. But it is a beautiful blend of many different influences. And I'm so thankful that I had a wide variety of experiences, a wide variety of people with different listening habits who shared and exchanged with me throughout my life to put me on to things that I may not have ever discovered without being in that space at that time. So there's so much, it's like sometimes I get overwhelmed because I'm like, oh my gosh, there are so many things that I've listened to over the course of my life. And there are also periods of time where I was only listening to this stuff or only listening to this thing. And so just thinking about that, I'm just very grateful for the vastness of things that I am able to pull from when need be.
Leah Roseman:
And we talked a little bit about the environment, and we didn't use the word soundscapes, but how everything's music. And this came up when I talked with Verna Gillis, and I'm just curious, just one last question. Are there sounds from your childhood that you miss hearing?
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Ooh, sounds from my childhood that I miss hearing. I miss hearing the telephone, the house phone. I miss hearing the telephone because I don't know what it is, but it was like as a kid, when the telephone would ring, especially when I got to middle school, I would get excited. Like is it for me? Because that's a time where you start having crushes and you're on the phone with your friends all day. And even just family would call people that, my family that I really enjoyed talking to. I had a sister, and me and my sister are almost three years apart. So we are running to the phone trying to see if it's one of our friends calling and stuff like that. But I really do miss the sound of the house phone because not a lot of people have house phones anymore.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks so much for this today, EmmoLei.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
No, thank you. Thank you. But I appreciate you for allowing me to come on your platform, and this was a really great interview.
Leah Roseman:
Thank you. Appreciate that.
EmmoLei Sankofa:
Yes, no, thank you.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. There's such a fascinating variety to life and music and this series features wonderful musicians worldwide with in-depth conversations and great music. With over a hundred episodes to explore, many episodes feature guests playing music spontaneously as part of the episode, or sharing performances and albums. I hope that the inspiration and connection found in a meaningful creative life, the challenges faced and the stories from such a diversity of artists will draw you into this weekly series of many topics that will resonate with all listeners. Please share your favorite episodes with your friends and do consider supporting this independent podcast. The link is in the description. Have a great week.
