Gonjasufi
Callus

They say he spent the last four years alone somewhere in the Nevada desert practicing yoga and meditation exercises, before returning to life and our modern society and starting to record his new album, his second LP after 'A Sufi and A Killer' (Warp Records, 2010). They say that during this time, he has long battled his demons. Inside each of us there is a sufi and a killer, and for everyone, it's much easier to be a killer, and that's why we constantly need to find a compromise within ourselves to avoid falling into anger and violence. But reaching a state of tranquility is not a solution. It can't be enough. However, this obviously can be an intermediate state. Perhaps a starting point. In this sense, an intermediate phase may be necessary.

They say he spent four years in the desert and when he returned to San Diego, California, the city where he was born, he could have been like Jesus. The leader of a cult for the few, a kind of guru, what we could call a raggy guru. So he was exactly like Jesus. I mean, he was a man, just a man, just like Jesus, and as such he had to overcome a long struggle and internal confrontation, you know, like, that thing between sufi and killer I talked about earlier. They say that when in the desert he met the devil, he was not afraid and his heart and soul were strengthened.

He had visions. He saw the lost kingdom of Gonja, whose heirs and testimonies of this ancient kingdom are still today a significant part of Ghana's population, tasted the flavors and aromas of that place and time, and saw empires crumble that were born in the center of the African continent even before mankind left Africa to disperse around the world. He has seen the past, the present, and the future and listened to music that is timeless. Because it was the same music from the bowels of the Earth, played during tribal rituals at the origins of man and by the bluesmen of the delta at the beginning of the last century, and that played by buskers under the subway stations of the great cities of the world. The same music that will be played under the rain in the dark of street corners in a remote and seemingly dark and terrifying future that is already today, when music labels will no longer have any sense and music will finally be considered a lysergic drug, an ultra-sensory experience.

We know how things go. Record labels, even independent ones, generally create stories for their bands and artists on their roster (in many cases, it's obviously the artists themselves who invent stories). This happens generally for promotional reasons, and quite often, of course, they are a pile of nonsense. But when someone feeds you a pile of nonsense, you can tell. You know what they’re telling you is trash. Other times instead, there are indeed artists and groups who have something eccentric or, in any case, content and things to say that go beyond the simple content of their records. Goat, for example, created their own world made of mysticism and influenced by the culture and magic of voodoo. What Nonni Dead and his guys do during their shows (obviously talking about Dead Skeletons) is simply fantastic. Psychedelia and visual art, pop-art at the same time. Yes, I know full well, there are more and more of those who are more fake than Donald Trump trying to prove he doesn't wear a toupee, but I mean, who the hell cares.

In this sense, Gonjasufi has been a much-discussed character. He still is. Many consider him just a kind of 'character' who worked once, at the release of the first album, 'A Sufi and A Killer', and then rightly fell into oblivion like many others before him. Maybe deep down, he didn't have anything to say musically.

Personally, obviously, I don't think so. First of all, the aforementioned album was evidently full of great content, it could have certainly been a one-time exploit (it wasn't, just listen to the 'long' EP 'MU.ZZ.LE' also released on Warp Records in 2012), but the album's contents were concrete and so innovative as not to suggest randomness. Anyway, I didn’t ask myself that question much. Why would I. I listened to the album, and I liked it, and when the new album came out, I listened to it without any particular expectations or prejudice.

We are talking, in any case, I am sure of this, about an eccentric and extremely interesting personality. Sumach Ecks was born in San Diego, California, to a Mexican mother and an African American father, adopting the name Gonjasufi as a dual tribute to the Gonja kingdom and sufism. He is not exactly the kind of person you might meet every day on the street, and I don't refer only to his refined and extravagant look. Established over the years as a producer and DJ, but also as an actor, his main activity probably remains teaching yoga, to which he attributes his unique way of singing, which he claims is derivative and a result of typical 'stomach' breathing exercises.

'Callus' (Warp Records) is his latest album, released last August 19, and what could be described as an ideal hallucinatory and psychedelic ethical and political manifesto played in dark and obscure tones, with what can be considered a certain devotion to spiritualism and 'religion', intended in the absolute sense of rituals involving mankind to live and experience together moments that have something 'sacred'. In a way, probably, these contents might coincide with those of the hippie culture, but there's something different here from that joyful and lysergic explosion typical of the sixties' psychedelia and the album is pervaded by a certain pessimism and influences derived from dark-wave music and cyberpunk literature.

Do not expect in any case, the cover could be misleading (or simply suggest Jesus crucified with the two thieves on Golgotha), a dark music album. Nothing of the sort. Accepting the fact that his unique and peculiar use of voice constitutes a central element of his productions, I feel like comparing him from this point of view and not just to the eccentric figure of the great Dr. John (tell me if you don't recognize a certain schizophrenic echo of 'Gris-Gris' in the dubstep and groovy blues of 'Maniac Depressant'), but if at the same time I have to match him with an artist of the recent past, I’d definitely mention Mark Linkous (aka Sparklehorse). 'You Maker', 'Afrikan Spaceship', 'The Kill' are all tracks pervaded by the same style and artistic sensibility of Linkous, as well as some sounds, halfway between experimental soul and electronic music, might remind what I would describe as a distorted and disrupted by interferences Danger Mouse. The tones of the album are sometimes solemn, very often seemingly whiny, just like old blues, and accompanied by echoes of a screaming voice filtered through sound distorters. Everything points to remote atmospheres: the echo of Jerusalem the great and ancient and now lost Mediterranean sounds ('Devils'), fragments of desert ('Greasemonkey'), distorted space explosions accompanied by horrifying and disturbed voices ('The Conspiracy'), lysergic visions taken directly from lynchian visual imagery ('Elephant Man'), feverish lullabies from outer space ('Caroline Shadows'), the requiem of 'When I Die'. Scenes taken directly from the world of cyberpunk literature by K.W. Jeter. 'The Last Nightmare'. The shadow of Dr. Adder after parking his bike, performs disturbing artistic plastic surgery operations on his patients.

How do we want to define his sound? Is he a rapper? Is his music hip-hop, dub, avant-garde experimentation, psychedelic soul? To which artist and artistic movement should we compare him? It's hard to find a single definition or describe it in a few words, and in my opinion, a reference shouldn't be sought in something 'classified', but in some kind of timeline. From Lead Belly to George Clinton, Gonjasufi renews in himself and his music a suburban tradition and an underground style of approaching musical material. I mentioned Dr. John. It is not by chance. It is the first name that comes to my mind listening to this album, which in the end is a remake of the trips and acid sessions of the early Dr. John. I know not everyone will accept this kind of consideration, that many might consider it blasphemous, but the truth is that if the Night Tripper had emerged in today's society, he would have sounded exactly like this album here.