Party in the Park: Esa sets the mood at Africa Oyé

Having seen record-breaking attendance and a wider remit of music than ever, Africa Oyé arrives for another year in Liverpool’s Sefton Park on Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 June 2015. One of the most ambitious free festivals in the UK, it’s steadily developed a stellar reputation as one of the greatest celebrations of African music in Europe, pulling together both international acts and vibrant local talent into a weekend of music. Headline acts include Frankie Paul, Omar and Cumbia All Stars.

Maintaining the lively atmosphere on the main stage this year is a unique trio of DJs. Pioneering BBC selector Andy Kershaw is joined by 1Xtra talent DJ Edu, and, most excitingly of all, Esa Williams, a producer with one of the most eclectic backgrounds and careers in contemporary club music, skirting electronica, techno and traditional rhythms. Spending his childhood in South Africa, by 21, Esa had taken advantage of a work exchange programme and found himself in Scotland. But before his move to Glasgow and the inevitable immersion in the hedonistic world of Sub Club and the legacy of labels like Soma, Williams first found himself in Aberdeen.

“I was selling gas and electricity door to door, Aberdeen to the coast, visiting all these little villages. I came from South Africa in December, so that’s summer, and it was minus seven or eight,” he recalls. “Then I met a girl and moved to Glasgow, and somehow or other I managed to stay there.”

Before his death on the frontline of the police force in 1999, Esa’s father had been a DJ, and his son had inherited many of his records and begun to invest in his own, many of which made the journey north of the border. Away from his heritage, Esa found that his love for the music only increased with time and distance.

“I was becoming serious about it, because those guys in Glasgow were very serious about it,” he remembers. “But there wasn’t an opportunity to play African music. I remember trying to persuade Optimo to let me do a traditional South African set. Then five years ago I met Brian D’Souza; we started Highlife and everything changed! But I was already educated in techno, house and those more formative sounds in Glasgow.”

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“In South Africa, world music is from Britain, Germany, any other country. I think people are starting to take that label less seriously” – Esa

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Brian D’Souza is better known to many as the curiously monikered Auntie Flo, a Glaswegian with Goan heritage and a similarly open-minded approach to rich, international and experimental sounds. Together, the two founded cult party Highlife, where they applied these offbeat sounds to a more traditional club template. Before long, the two were engrossed and involved in Huntleys & Palmers, a label run by their friend Andrew J Thomson. The trio regularly DJ together, and much of the music Esa produces with D’Souza is released through the label, including collaborations improvised and recorded in Cuba and Kenya. For Esa, who now teaches music software as an occupation, these were unique opportunities to meld his grip on technology with more traditional and even unearthed methods and styles.

“The British Council gave us the money to go out [to Cuba and Kenya] and I saw it as a great opportunity both to teach and work with all these artists in their traditional styles,” he explains, audibly humbled. “So the experiences for me have been unreal. I have just returned from Uganda and visited a village with a xylophone that only exists there and has only been played by around seven people. It was interesting to open up conversations with the elders there about how we might use that sound to complement what we were doing, without appropriating it. They told me that, 12 years ago, it only had 12 notes, whereas now it has 25. These people are just as advanced as you. In Cuba, there’s no internet, and yet people were asking me questions about Ableton that were too complicated for me.”

Having been in the UK for a decade and watched his opportunities flourish alongside festivals such as Africa Oyé, Esa feels that several factors have contributed to African music’s popularity continuing to bloom, some of them perhaps as simple as a slight shift in the perception of genre.

“For the past decade, people had been attempting to come to terms with the label 'world music,'” he suggests. “When that label was around, I didn’t know what it was. In South Africa, world music is from Britain, Germany, any other country. I think people are starting to take that label less seriously and open up to new sounds, and young people especially are trying to find new music now technology has come on.”

Still, Esa is just as keen to preserve and to uncover as he is to discover or push his aesthetic forward. “Brian and I have just finished recording an album with a Ghanaian singer, and she sings in a language that people aren’t really using now,” he says. “We were hoping to create something that people might enjoy on a wider scale, as part of a new breed of talent or a new breed of ideas.”

For a while now, Esa has resided in London, and can’t see himself leaving any time soon; he is quick to establish that the naturally diverse capital has left him “happier than he’s ever been.”

“I’m overwhelmed with opportunities in the African community and beyond and I’m still finding out so much and meeting so many interesting people. It’s a learning experience that I don’t want to give up.”

Four to see at Africa Oyé:

Omar (Saturday)
His first release on Gilles Peterson’s truly legendary Talkin’ Loud label was now 25 years ago, but for his fans and collaborators, including Erykah Badu and the late ODB, Omar has remained a force to be reckoned with in the worlds of soul and jazz – now even occupying a unique position as an MBE for his services to music. Suffice to say, he has both a rich back catalogue and a constant desire for experimentation that render him perfect for a headline slot at Africa Oyé. 

BKO Quintet (Saturday)
One of the most intriguing additions to Africa Oyé’s 2015 lineup is the Mali-based BKO Quintet, a cult live act credited with helping to sculpt a new tradition in Malian music; something unifying, experimental and undoubtedly lively. Their debut collection of recordings, Bamako Today, showcases a sound that will undoubtedly have plenty in Sefton Park shifting their feet.

Frankie Paul (Sunday)
Owing to his blindness as well as perhaps his evocative, throaty singing style, Frankie Paul is often referred to as ‘the Jamaican Stevie Wonder.’ And while Paul has never enjoyed quite the same degree of enormous crossover success, he is known and respected by reggae fans for having one of the vastest and most consistent collection of singles ever seen in the genre. Having clocked up an astounding 30 albums since the early 80s, he remains a go-to figure for new artists on the scene. Good luck predicting the setlist for this one…

Gordon Masiala & NKA Musica (Saturday)
Finally, returning for his first performance at Africa Oyé since 2009, Gordon Masiala is set to perform with his band, NKA Musica. A godfather of rumba, salsa and Afro-Cuban music in general, he is part of a fourth generation of Congolese pop musicians in the diaspora, shepherding a band respected not only for their notoriously tight performances but also for their incredible suits and general style. Let’s hope the mud stays away for Mr Masiala in particular.