This semester’s first In the Spotlight features Eric Herman ’05 and Jesse Brenner ’05, two students who epitomize Wesleyan’s devotion to both art and political activity. They have recently founded an independent production company, called Modiba Productions, which is committed to raising global awareness about political and social issues in Africa through the promotion of African music. Their first project, a compilation of an Afrobeat CD called “Jam Sudan—The Afrobeat Aid Project,” has been wildly successful: iTunes has decided to host it as its first ever charity album. All the revenue that they hope to make off of this CD will aid the hundreds of thousands of suffering Sudanese. More information about this and other projects can be found on the company’s website, www.modiba.net.
Brown: What is Afrobeat?
E.H.: Afrobeat is a genre of music that was created in the late ’60s by a Nigerian pioneer musician named Fela Anikulapo Kuti. He became legendary for speaking out against corruption politically and oppression socially in Nigeria and Africa in general. This was after he went to the States and was heavily influenced by the Black Panther movement. He became a figurehead for resistance and rights of the people.
His music is very lively, upbeat, danceable, funky music. James Brown is its primary influence. But it also has a very heavy powerful political connotation that cannot be removed from the music. The reason this idea [for the CD] came into fruition was because we love Afrobeat, we’re total beat-heads. It was the most appropriate style of music to put to a cause like this where not just the rights, but the lives of people [in Sudan] are just being stomped on and no one is standing up in resistance. The music itself is perfect, not only because it’s so heavily political but because it can really appeal to a young audience.
J.B.: Another interesting thing about Afrobeat is how internationalized it’s gotten. Over the past couple of decades, you see more Latin rhythms introduced, you see a lot more Latin musicians playing. Akoya, a band on our album, have a number of Japanese players. There’s a Japanese art studio in Brooklyn called BPM where they play every week and a large Japanese community that shows up there. I’m sure it’s getting big in Japan as well. So it’s a rallying cry for political causes around the world.
Brown: How did this project get started?
E.H.: Earlier this summer Jesse and I founded a limited liability company called Modiba productions. We specialize in African music and film. [The name is] taken from…prefixes, “mo” being one, “di” being two, and “ba” being many. That’s trying to capture the ideology behind the company that you can check out on our website.
We set up this production company and spent the summer shooting a documentary on African music in America. In the process we met a bunch of people in the industry, we made a lot of contacts with producers, promoters, press and artists themselves. Towards the end of the summer we came up with the idea of producing an Afrobeat compilation CD to raise money for Sudan. We pitched the idea to TrueMajority. Our friend Aaron Thaler [’05] is a personal friend of Ben Cohen, the founder of TrueMajority, a political activist organization. This was in late August. Since then we’ve been working on putting together the album and the artwork and a promotional video. Since we started production iTunes music store has jumped on board. It’s going to be the first charitable album they’ve ever hosted. It’s really snowballed over the past couple months to the point where it’s going to be a fairly big deal. TrueMajority is now very concerned with planning a CD release party in New York and bringing celebrities in. We’re at a point now where we have three days to finish the initial product. We’re under contract with them to have it done by Friday. It’s supposed to be released [on iTunes] on the sixteenth [of November] with all the proceeds going to charity relief in Sudan. Even iTunes has waived all of the percentage they were supposed to take from the revenue. We’re hoping to make hundreds of thousands of dollars [from this project].
Brown: What has the experience been like for you?
J.B.: It’s been a really interesting and amazing experience to be involved in a charity project like this large-scale. People just come out of the woodwork to support you. No one’s trying to make a profit off of this. It’s really cool to be working together with a lot of people in the marketplace rather than just competing against everyone.
E.H.: It’s been extraordinary to see the support from these artists. These are very serious people, pioneers, legends, in the field, and they, at the drop of a hat, were, “I’m in.”
J.B.: The fact that the co-creator of Afrobeat [Tony Allen] has just volunteered a track from his album with no resistance is really incredible. And telling as to the mindset of these people who are involved in Afrobeat. It’s not just lip-service; they really are about political change.
Brown: What is the CD like?
J.B.: We consciously chose tracks that weren’t extremely long but also appealing to those who haven’t been exposed to the music before. All our
tracks have vocals and lyrics in it whereas the majority of Afrobeat tracks are instrumental. We mixed it up a little bit. I’m interested into people’s reactions to it. It makes you want to get up and dance on the spot.
E.H.: We’ve got everything from archaic Afrobeat to very modern progressive stuff that just has hints of the sound. Virtually all sorts of Afrobeat are out there. We have Afrobeat poetry.
Brown: Will the CD be released on campus?
E.H.: That’s an issue we haven’t sorted out with TrueMajority. They’re sponsoring it so they decide how many units we’re going to be copying in our first run. Our initial plan was to have a serious college campaign in the Northeast. [TrueMajority is] approaching it as networking through college radio. We certainly want to have a very active campaign at Wesleyan.
J.B.: We’re still trying to decide if it’s best to sell CDs directly on campus or just get the word out to other campuses and have them buy it online.
Brown: What are your future projects?
J.B.: Our next project will be going back to the documentary and raising money for it. Hopefully we’ll have that done late next year.
E.H.: The whole mission of Modiba productions is to get to Africa itself and set up shop over there in Mali, set up an ongoing stream of production over there in both music and film that involves the local community and international talent. [We want to] eventually train those around us to sustain it so that we can go onto other places, to create a self-sufficient African production industry.
J.H.: It’s as much an economic and employment related goal as a music related goal. The music’s there and it’s vibrant already. There’s a lot of people who could benefit from this besides us.
E.H.: That’s the relevance of Modib—ne, two, many.
Brown: Any shout-outs?
E.H.: Dave Ahl [’05] is an integral part of Modiba productions. He’s been taking care of all our sound and audio needs. He’s the third full time member of Modiba. Also, Fela lives.
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