WBCA Podcasts

WBCA Presents: Akwerius & Ken Field

Akwerius performs with Ken Field live on WBCA Presents. Akwerius talks about growing up in Cameroon, France, and the US, as well as his musical influences and the significance of his name. Kwe and Ken also discuss music as a communal and spiritual practice.

Duration:: 34m
Broadcast on:: 23 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to WBCA Presents on WBCA 102.9 FM Boston. This is Aquarius. I'm joined by Ken Fields, and you're listening to the Music is Healing Sounds. This first song is Praise Jha. [Music] ♪ His foundation is in the mountain, ♪ ♪ Jhala vintigai is ♪ ♪ Of Ziya, ho ho no ♪ ♪ More than the dwellings of all of the Earth ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ What the streaming from his valleys of earth ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Praise his Jha ♪ ♪ Praises and praises I get not ♪ ♪ Praise his Jha ♪ ♪ Sending praises and praises I get not ♪ ♪ Always protecting the fire ♪ ♪ Keeping the fire, never neglecting the fire ♪ ♪ This fire, I go take charge of children higher ♪ ♪ Praise his Jha ♪ ♪ Praises and praises I get not ♪ ♪ Praise his Jha ♪ ♪ Sending praises and praises I get not ♪ Protection for all the children, keep them safe, protect them all, try to lead them, keep them footsteps for many problems. Of the pestilence out there, I say be not afraid of, for he are, he are, fire is this dead, right? Yeah he are, he are, he are resilient, I am children of the most I hate, rest up, alright. Well I, rise till the star from the far eye, Sirius rises upon a 23 of July. Earth's long, love as much as these last EIE, praises Juh, praises and praises again. Praise his Juh, we send him praises and praises again. Send him praises Juh, praises and praises again. Praise his Juh, we send him praises and praises again. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Send him praises and praises again. [Music] This is WBCA Presents on WBCA 102.9 FM Boston, Boston's Community Radio Station, and you just heard praise him performed live in the studio by Aquarius featuring Ken Field. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me back. It's always great to be here and do this. Yeah, we're always happy to have you here sharing your music. But Ken, have you ever been here before? I have never been here before. Well, welcome. Thanks for coming. It's nice to be here. Thanks very much. And nice to play with my friend Quay. Yeah, and for anyone listening who doesn't know, WBCA Presents is our show where we highlight Massachusetts-based musicians, anyone interested in submitting their music to air on WBCA can actually submit it at wbcaradio.org for airplay and maybe you'll be the next guest on WBCA Presents. So, do you have anything that you want to say about that song you just performed? Praise him. What I will say is that, you know, today is July 23rd. So, I really wanted to perform this song today. It has a lot of significance to me. And also, on this day, you know, it's the earth's strong, lightly celacy and the rising of serious, which, you know, this song is sort of a meditation on in terms of just the significance of that and how that revelation has come through to me in my life, right, and what that means to me. So, it's been a marker since last year of really getting this song, since I started this song in November, to get it done by this date. So, it's good to be here and joined by Ken on the sax, which is the vision for recording the track. So, yeah, and it's also the first sort of song of my, you know, what I'm thinking of as my next album, and I'm currently working on so. Yeah, I mean, you go by the name Aquarius. So, I guess it's no surprise that astrology is something that has significance to you. Do you want to talk about why you go by the name Aquarius and more broadly what astrology, how that influences you? Sure, I mean, we can get it to that. I think more of it as astronomy. Astronomy, okay. But in terms of what's in the name, right, I was just thinking about that today. And what's in the name, really? And I think from being from where I'm from, right, we carry many names. For me, the naming is not something really that I can really explain in that way. Yeah. Now, that's understandable. Yeah. You know what? It's interesting, though, because, you know, a name is a name, but I was born in the zodiac sign. Zodiac sign of Aquarius. So is I. And so, when I walked into the studio, somebody said, are you Aquarius? Yeah, I'm Aquarius, but I'm not, I'm not quite Aquarius. I was born under the sign of Aquarius. And not only that, but my late wife, her last name was aqua. So, there's a lot of synchrony that happens. And, you know, this music, this devotional music, right, is, is, it's something that, for me, is not a direct connection to the devotional aspect of it. But the spiritual aspect is a direct connection. And so, for me, playing saxophone, playing flute with quay is a beautiful thing. And I relate to it on, on maybe a slightly different level, but a beautiful level. No, absolutely. Give things for that. Because, and you just sparked something else in me in relation to that, which is, which is kind of like what is, you know, it's not easy for me to just explain this, that you just said it right there in the sense that I go by quay, right? This is my name. And it's actually my chosen name, right? My parents did not call me that, but my grandfather was called Peter Quay. And so, in my, in my early days as a writer, I chose to align myself with the identity of my grandfather, right? And my first name is Pierre, who's just Peter in English, in French. But, but I chose to align with the quay resonance. And at the time, quaying in Ghana is spelled K-W-E-I. And at the time, I was really into acronyms, and I was in MC, right? My prior name was Bigfoot, my first MC name. You really want to know. And when I decided to go with quay, it was also an acronym in the sense of knowledge will empower, right? That was the evolution. The first was the King with eloquence, which is what I saw myself as, as an MC, and as a wordsmith. And that evolved through my study and my involvement in the community to knowledge will empower. And over the years, to making music and the music evolving from spoken word to hip hop, into roots, reggae, and into the spiritual aspect I can refer to, this is where Aquarius arose. And really, the Aquarius is not me, right? Because as you say, it's a tribe, it's a vibration, it's a frequency. And so, when I perform, it's under Aquarius or the Aquarium Project because it's a vehicle through which Quay can express himself and community with all those who have influenced him, who are traveling with him, right? And so that's kind of like how I see that, you know, that name, you know, in terms of my life. So, you know, thank you for complimenting that with what you said. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for sharing all that. I understand that you're originally from Cameroon. Yes, Cameroon is where I was born. My father's from there. I was born in Yangon Day, and my mother's from Ghana. Yeah, so you were born there, and then at age 10, you moved to France, and then later you wound up here in the US. How did that diversity of perspectives and backgrounds influence your music taste and what you perform and also what you think of when you think of community? Great influence. I think in those days, and the influence came from all around, right? It's just in terms of the experience of growing home and traditional sounds and also the music that my parents listened to, right? Which is always where things begin. And so really carrying all that broad spectrum of, you know, my parents actually met in the United States in the 60s. So their musical tastes are very collecting. My dad was really into jazz. And through the 90s, you know, like everybody else in my generation, I really kind of got into hip hop. And that became the primary influence. I was just actually the brother who played brother Kavaya, who played keys and bass on this track. We were just talking about arrested development, who, you know, unbeknownst to me, who we used to play with. But that was really, I was sharing with him that at the time, that was really a very influential group for me in terms of what they represented based on my experience. As an African living in France and seeing this group of brothers from the United States really being half a centric and embracing that. And I was in school getting punished for rocking my attire, right? And I was getting suspended for like rocking my African attire. And I was seeing this reflection in the music as a very powerful medium to express yourself despite all those things. And so that really influenced me a lot. Yeah, I'm sure. We have two more songs coming up from you. "Do My Best" and "Hail", is there anything you want to say about those two songs before you perform them for us live? "Do My Best" is also in the same vein as praise him in terms of this next sequence of songs that are coming through. Yeah, I think it's pretty self-explanatory. And "Hail" is yet again another song that I wanted to do today in terms of the significance of this day. And just as homage to the creator and also in correspondence with the earth song "Love Is Majesty". Without further ado, this is WBCA Presents. I'm your host, Tommy Shenifield, and we have Aquarius and Kenfield in the building. This is Aquarius. You listen to WBCA Presents on 102.9 FM Boston. This next song is "Do My Best". [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] You listen to WBCA Presents. This is Aquarius on 102.9 FM Boston. This next track is "Hail Him". [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] You are listening to WBCA Presents on WBCA 102.9 FM Boston, Boston's community radio station. Once again, we have Aquarius and Kenfield in the studio. They performed "Hail Him" and before that "Do My Best". Thanks again for those great performances. Thanks for having us. Once again, it's been great. I want to learn a little bit about what you call the music is healing collective. Improving the vibrancy, what I call improving the vibrancy of communities worldwide, because music is not what we think it is. It's more than entertainment. It saved my life. It's the reason that I'm here today. It gave me a reason to push forward. These songs gave me a reason to be here today. That's the case for a lot of people. To reduce it to ticket sales or CD sales or whatever it is to me. There's a lot to be said about that, especially with what we've seen and what we've experienced in terms of the history of music. It's just a project that's intended to further that mission and reach more people, teach, and provide just whole vibes. You know, at the basic, at the core, that's kind of what it comes down to despite all the rationalizations. I don't know how you see it. How do you see it, Ken? Thank you for asking. I think just what Quay said, music has a lot of roles in our society. It has a lot of different roles. It has a role of commercialism. It has a role of celebration. It has a role of sorrow. It has a role of bringing communities together. I've spent a lot of time playing music that's based in New Orleans, the New Orleans Brass Band tradition. That tradition is unique in that it brings together a lot of times it came out of the New Orleans Funeral tradition, Brass Band Funeral tradition. It brings together kind of at the same moment or almost the same moment the joy of living and also the sorrow that comes with living and dying. And so that deep spiritual resonance that music can have that can bring out emotion that can heal communities, can heal individuals. And I think it's powerful. I'm not a religious person, but I do spend a lot of time playing music like I'm doing right now with Quay, but also music and other religious traditions. And it's powerful for me to do that despite the fact that I'm not a religious person. I'm a spiritual person. I believe in being nice. That's my religion. But I think that when there's a deep meaning behind what people are doing musically, when there's that real, I don't know, this really inner thing that drives them to do the music, the music comes out powerfully and importantly and meaningfully. You know, I do want to tell one little very short story. There was a band I played with many, many years ago at the time of the 9/11 attacks in New York. And we had a gig in New York that was a couple of weeks after that happened and we were trying to decide should we go down to New York from Boston and do this gig. It seems superfluous. You know, people are suffering there. They're rebuilding. And we decided to go and do it. And we did one particular piece that's a very meditative piece. And people were crying during that piece. It was such a powerful moment for people to just hear music and heal and heal, help them heal. Thank you for sharing that. And Aquarius, I love what you said about how it's not just ticket sales. It's not just people in a seat listening. It's being part of a community. And I love how you recognize all the music encompasses. Yeah, you know, I think also, you know, just following up on what Ken was saying, you know, and it's not only music, right? Because the wellness, right? The healing aspect and the wellness expands beyond music, right? Like, in order to be here, there's a lot of, you know, physical and spiritual work. Like Ken was saying that, you know, has to be done. And that's part of the music making, which is really, I think, an important aspect of this. And the other piece, you know, connected to what you were bringing up is this participatory aspect, right? Like that, from my standpoint, where I come from and how I was kind of brought into this music, it's a participatory endeavor, right? It's not a spectator sport. And if you can walk, it can dance. If you can talk, you can sing. So the idea is there that everybody can participate. And really, also, that was one of the impetus behind, you know, starting these projects was to create forums and venues where we could. And right also, compositions that were that were amenable to that amenable to a lot of people participating in them and then having a part to play and playing their part. So I just wanted to highlight that. Thank you. Unfortunately, we only have a little bit of time left before your last song unto him, but I can't let you go before I hear a little bit. I want to hear about Drumbal. Drumbal. What could you explain to people? What is Drumbal, which I understand is part of your urban Greo collaborative and urban Greo playground. Yeah, yeah. So now you get into into some of the extension of the music into education and research and really looking at early childhood, you know, the affordances and the benefits, leveraging the benefits of drumming and of rhythm, right? And the movement in early childhood. And this project was inspired by the talking drums, African truck talking drums, basically drum drum language communication and recognizing also, you know, that black musical traditions. You know, as we know, it's like a vision in improvisation, right, but that improvisation is stems beyond the music as well into also the technology and the instrumentation and all that. And there's constant development there. So that line of research is looking at what does, you know, what does the future of talking drums look like in the digital era? And how can we leverage some of the developments in haptic technologies and AI and web, you know, Internet of Things, all those, you know, all those new developments to create a new approach, a new pedagogy and a new ecology for learning that's rhythm based, starting in early childhood and then creating and designing curriculum that's lifelong, but really grounded in drum rhythm and drumming, you know, because you have to remember when we talk about education and literacy, like there's an ongoing literacy crisis, right? That's it has been widening, right? These issues are historical, like there's a historical precedent to this, and it goes all the way back to these debates between oral cultures and print cultures and how institutions and things are placed, you know, in technologies that developed that, you know, ultimately exacerbate that. So we're looking at how to leverage culture to address some of these issues, and the drumball research is one of those aspects. A lot to cover that we can't get into in just a half hour show, but that's really fascinating. Leave for another conversation for sure. Yeah, so before your last song, Aquarius and Ken, do you two have any upcoming performances that listeners might want to be on the lookout for? I myself have been so swamped teaching that I have not been performing, but I'm sure Ken has a few things coming up. I do. I have a few things coming up. Everything that I'm doing is on my website, kenfield.org, so people can check that out. And Aquarius, where can people listen to your music? Yeah, they can find some of my music on the Music is Healing YouTube channel. I also have a website which needs some care, Aquarius.com, A-K-W-E-R-I-U-S.com. Great. Without further ado, this has been WBCA Presents on WBCA 102.9 FM Boston. Boston's community radio station. I have been your host, Tommy Shenafield, and I have been very fortunately joined by Aquarius and Kenfield, and now to close it out, they have one more song. You've been listening to WBCA Presents on 102.9 FM Boston. This is Aquarius joined by Kenfield, and this last track is on to him. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]