Nakhane speaks Bastard Jargon'Nakhane has released their third album, Bastard Jargon, a dancier and gritter work that is rooted in existential sex .by Mambaonline.com
03-04-2023 10:22
in LGBTQIA
Nakhane speaks Bastard Jargon'. Photo: Mambaonline
South Africa's queer creative innovator Nakhane has released their third album, Bastard Jargon, a dancier and gritter work that Nakhane says is rooted in existential sex .
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Many of the songs on Nakhane's previous album, 2018's You Will Not Die, were written while the artist was still living in South Africa, where they had grown up gay in an increasingly fundamentalist Christian family.
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Given the trauma it drew on, Nakhane says, You Will Not Die wasn't exactly a party album - a fact underlined when the time came to play festivals.
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Nakhane was playing the 2 pm slot, just as the crowd were warming up with a few beers, the sun is blaring on us and I'm singing these sad songs to people who just want to dance and I thought I can't keep crying for people. I want to write an album that has movement in it, you know?'
The result is Bastard Jargon, a pounding, physical, hot-blooded third album which sounds like grit sprayed over shiny pop.
Written over 18 months in Lisbon, Ghent, Oxfordshire, London and Hastings, It's an existential sex album, says the artist.
Almost every song on it has some kind of wink towards sex. It's not necessarily a seductive, come to me, bedroom eyes kind of sex - it's much more inquisitive, psychological sex. When I wrote You Will Not Die it was at the end of my relationship with Christianity, and then when I wrote Bastard Jargon I'd moved to London and I threw myself into just wanting to feel good.
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To realise this lustful vision, Nakhane recruited Nile Rodgers as executive producer, having first met the Chic legend at the BBC doing Later With Jools Holland.
I was in the makeup room, I got up to say hello, slipped and fell into his arms. It was like a romcom but also quite humiliating. We exchanged numbers and I thought that was it, but I thought of him when I wanted someone to do production work on my album and he said Sure, I'd love to'.
When you have sex with somebody and then they have really scary views, you feel tainted When you have sex with somebody and then they have really scary views, you feel tainted.
Rodgers plays on the second track (and co-produced 5 others), Tell Me Your Politik, along with a ferocious rap from South African performer Moonchild Sanelly.
The song is Nakhane's densely pulverising demand for prospective lovers to be ideologically aligned.
I wanted it to sound like a pack of wolves barking, saying unless you get your politics right I'm not gonna fuck you, Nakhane says. It's a song drawn from their real life. Oh my god, you have no idea. When you have sex with somebody and then they have really scary views, you feel tainted.
Other producers on Bastard Jargon include John Congleton (St Vincent, Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten), Leo Abrahams (Wild Beasts, Brian Eno, Regina Spektor), Matthew Herbert , BLK JKS (a South African rock band), Max Hershenow (previously of MsMr) and Emre Turkmen (previously of Years and Years).
All 10 songs were written or co-written, and co-produced by Nakhane, who also has an engineering credit on most of the tracks.
Due to the pandemic, the album was largely made remotely, a process the artist enjoyed.
Sending music files back and forth, the process becomes a little faster. It becomes about trust and kindness, because it's quite difficult to detect someone's tone on email so you have to be careful.
The album's title comes from Nakhane's student days at Wits University, Johannesburg, studying literature and African languages. Before a language is standardised, before it becomes a pidgin or even a creole, it's called a bastard jargon because it's neither here nor there, it belongs to no-one, Nakhane says.
Nakhane feels like creating a new language for himself I remember the first time I heard that thinking it would be a good title for something. And then making this album I felt it represented that newness and sense of discovery. When you write at the piano all the time you can start to repeat yourself, and I really wanted this album to be percussive. So when I wrote the songs I would programme maracas, tambourines, handclaps and then put on the musical idea over that. I felt like I was creating a new language for myself.
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Nakhane's desire for songs to dance to has been fulfilled by the unabashed pop of You've Got Me (Living Again) and Do You Well.
The latter song is a duet with Perfume Genius and an exuberant invitation to bed. Normally I'm Oh my God, Jean Cocteau this one is just rutting sex, Nakhane says. Which has its place!
Then there is the irresistible Hear Me Moan, partly inspired by Herbie Hancock, South African jazz icon Zim Ngqawana and Kwaito, in which Nakhane abandons their singing voice for a spoken word invitation to Pour yourself another cup of coffee/And tell me what you're embarrassed of.
People are so used to hearing me sing, but how do you write a song without using the thing everyone knows you for? Nakhane asks. Be a little more post-punk, Laurie Anderson, Gil Scott Heron about it.
My Ma Was Good is an exhilarating, sweeping farewell to Nakhane's past, as they probe their painful family dynamic, then blow past it in a cathartic rush of piano and four-on-the-floor disco beats.
Hold Me Down, which features vocals from 3D from Massive Attack
