Eno Williams

_{Photographer Credit: Matilda Hill-Jenkins}

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Eno: That’s what music does. Isn’t it? It just transports you from the present time to, say the future or the past, depending on what is going on in the music as well.

Ryan: You’re listening to Let’s Make A Mixtape, a collaborative playlisting podcast where each episode features a different guest selecting a song based on a prompt. The prompt for this season is “homesick” and my guest today is Eno Williams, the London-born Nigerian singer who fronts the band Ibibio Sound Machine.

Ibibio Sound Machine fuses West-African Funk with post-punk and electronic music into something that is so full of life and incredibly fun to listen to. Ibibio is truly a global band with a global sound that happens to be, in a way, close to my home here in Durham where their current label, Merge Records, is based.

Ibibio Sound Machine just released “Pull The Rope” in May which they are following up with an EP titled “The Black Notes” which is out next week on September 4th. You can hear “The Black Notes” when it’s released as well as “Pull The Rope” and Ibibio’s previously released albums wherever you stream your music and you can purchase a copy at Mergerecords.com.

But enough of my yapping, let’s make a mixtape.

Ryan: Thank you so much for joining me on this season of Let’s Make a Mixtape. We are of course talking about home. What songs remind us of home and you picked Soul Makossa by Manu Dibango.

Why did you why did you pick this song? It’s lovely by the way. It was is a new to me, but it got me groovin’.

Eno: Oh, yeah I think as far as I can remember, my stepdad used to like love listening to it and he would play it every now and then in the house and my mom would dance to it and it was just, it was always just around just, you know, just in the house we’d hear it like so many times.

And then I think over the years I would hear- it’s been sampled by so many different people, even Michael Jackson sampled it. And I kept thinking, Oh my God, I remember that song. And then of course I got much older and I mean, I always loved Manu Dibango anyway, just because I think what is one of the music that were introduced, I was introduced to, obviously growing up in Nigeria, even though I was born in England, I spent most of my childhood in Nigeria.

I mean, I just love the music, the hook, the horn section. I mean, I guess that was my first introduction to just hearing like horns played on a track and just the arrangement and just his voice and, you know, the lyrics and just the way he just fuses like the whole, like sort of trying to like mix Western music with African music, but still have a groove to it.

And it’s just one of those really danceable songs. You could hear it anywhere. And it’s just, it’s a timeless song, to be honest.

Ryan: I feel like that’s true of that genre as a whole. There’s- you said your mom was, you know, dancing around to it in the house. I feel like there’s something about this type of music that if it’s not causing you to involuntarily move, you’re probably dead.

Eno: Exactly, exactly. But I think we once we actually got into trouble was- there was one time my sisters and I we were supposed to- I think we had been doing like homework or something. And one of my sisters wasn’t feeling well and my dad was away. And we thought he wasn’t going to come back from work for like a while. And then we’re grooving. It was that.

And then I think- and also the remix of the Michael Jackson song that had the Makossa line in it. And then we’re just like vibeing. So you’re literally just lost in music.

And then we didn’t hear that my dad- the car had pulled into the driveway and then and literally the door opens and ” Oh no. Dad’s back.” And we’re all supposed to be doing homework or doing some chores or something. And then we’re like, “we’d just got carried away, just partying away and booking it.”

And he was like, “Right. Is that what you guys do when I’m away and everything, where’s your homework?” ‘Cause my dad was like so strict and everything. And it kind of always takes me back to that story, just that moment as well.

But I mean, it was fun. Cause at the end of the day, it was like, well, you know, as long as you’re listening to like clean, good music anyway. And, and it was cool after all.

Ryan: That’s, that’s hilarious. I could see- I mean, it’s easy to get lost in this music. It just, it carries you away.

Eno: It just carries you. Like grooving, like dancing, like proper having a proper rave, you know, and everything. Yeah. But it was cool. It was cool. And I mean, and even today when I hear every now and then I’ll hear it on the radio or just hear like the Manu Dibango track and all that with the whole lines or with the sample.

And it’s just like, yeah, that’s the groove right there. You know?

Ryan: Yeah. Amazing. Oh, I love, yeah. Uh, I love it. What? What was it like growing up in in Nigeria? What was the what was the music? I mean, what?

Eno: I mean, we did listen to like everything. My parents sort of introduced us to every type of music that we listened to, everything that was going on at the time, all the West African, highlife.

And a lot of what was going on in Africa, like Angelique Kidjo, Miriam Makeba and then music of the West as well. We listened to stuff like James Brown, like Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin. All the like punk stuff that was coming out of England as well. And all the stuff coming out of America at the time.

So, I mean, to be honest, our ears were sort of introduced to so much music. So I guess that would have been just, you know, the house was always, there was always music in the house. There was always parties. If it wasn’t my mom or my dad throwing a party with my mom and my uncles, and so there was always music.

There was always like tapestry of all sorts of music just playing around. So we’re introduced to like a lot of like different styles, types of music all the time.

Ryan: Amazing. I was doing a little bit of preliminary reading from some past interviews, was Fela Kuti really prominent when you were growing up?

Eno: He was prominent, but thing was, because my parents were so strict- well, I had friends that when we were in secondary school, they would have gone to The Shrine, you know, to see Fela’s music live and everything. So I would be hearing stories about what went down with the dancers and the music and just the whole Afro- just the fact that he was just doing something visionary, something that no one had ever done before.

But at the time, because obviously he was speaking, I think his music was all about speaking for the people, but in some ways he was considered a troublemaker. Though, some kids would have been shielded from his music at the time.

And I was one of those shielded from his music because it was considered as a bit of like radical or like more like activist kind of music, which obviously he was speaking for a lot of things that were happening at the time. So it wasn’t until I got older that I actually learned to just appreciate a lot of what he was saying at the time.

But yeah, that kind of- his music was quite a big influence on what we ended up putting out.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. I, I guess talk a little bit about that influence, because it feels like it’s a very, it’s a very global band. And you have a lot of very global sounds, too. You have those layers of Afrobeat and highlife, which I had not heard before-

Eno: Highlife is funk and yeah, highlife is very much music of West Africa, music of Nigeria, music of Ghana. And of course with the band, because we’re all from different parts of the world, we’ve got English, we’ve got Australian, we’ve got Ghanaian, Nigerian. And so London kind of felt like a melting pot with all our different collective musical tastes.

I mean, for example, Alfred, who’s our guitarist, he’s of a Ghanaian background. And so he’s really heavy on that whole highlife genre and everything.

And so that’s sort of the tapestry, the undertones that you hear in the record. And then of course you’ve got the electronics as well. And the jazz as well. And that obviously boils down to the fact that you’ve got people like Max, who’s one of the producers on most of our records.

He’s from a jazz background. And Scott, who’s a trumpet player and also plays the keys as well. And Tony, who’s very much more on the electronic side, but also from a jazz background as well. So you hear a lot of all that mixture in all of our sound, pretty much.

[Buffer Music]

Eno: London is home also.

To be honest, there’s like music just around London generally. There’s like always the whole neo-soul, the jazz scene as well, old school music as well. So that has also like informed a lot of what we listened to over the years. But, I mean, there was also the traditional music growing up in Nigeria as well.

At Christmas time you’d have a lot of like more the traditional music that everybody else was listening to. That wasn’t like really mainstream music, but music that people would like sit around the fire and listen to, and they’ll just be local musicians just playing the local, traditional instruments as well.

Ryan: Talk a little bit about the instrumentation that you’ve layered in. You have a lot of electronic elements, you have a lot of horn elements. How have those instruments been woven into what you’re, what you’re doing now and how you see it progressing ?

Eno: With a lot of the electronics, because we were trying to lean more to the future and mix the electronic sounds and the traditional sounds.

There was a lot of elements of where, for example, there’s an instrument called the Kologo, which Alfred plays. It’s like a two string guitar. When played, Max would sometimes put that through a tape machine and reproduce the sound, for example, just to give it more of an electronic, sound as well.

And there was a lot of playing like the horn instruments through a sampler as well. And just trying to get a more electronic sound. And then also stuff like- bit’s kind of like a bass drum. It sounds quite- it’s played by hand. That’s played and that’s also fed through a kind of a synth and stuff just to give it more of an electronic sound.

So there’s a lot using traditional instruments and then trying to make them sound electronic, just to give that electronic element to it pretty much.

Ryan: And it’s super conducive is it’s so, it’s so dancing again. I mean, the same thing with the classic stuff and with what you’re doing.

I mean, if you’re not involuntarily moving, you’re probably just dead, it’s so movable. It feels like it’s full of life and I absolutely love that.

Eno: That’s what we try. I mean, that’s sort of our of vibe to keep the music positive and uplifting and just to bring that positive energy and a message of hope and just to make people forget themselves for a minute and just take them to somewhere, sort of escape to somewhere else.

Ryan: That’s such a powerful function of music.

Eno: That’s what music does. Isn’t it? It just transports you from the present time to, say the future or the past, depending on what is going on in the music as well.

Ryan: Have you ever played a show where the audience was not moving and it was weird or is it, is it always like the audience is always dancing.

Eno: The audience is always dancing, to be honest. The one time we would have done a sit-down show, we still wanted to get people to get up and dance.

Ryan: Yeah. It’s got to be kind of, kind of awkward on stage playing a sit-down show, I can imagine, with this kind of music.

Eno: But I mean, to be honest, I think usually it’s kind of, yeah, like you said, it’s involuntary though. The minute you hear the music, you either get up and dance, like, something within you, it connects with the beat or with the spirit or something. There’s always, there’s always an element of the music that’s going to move you to just to get up and move somewhere. And I guess because music is a universal language, isn’t it? You know, even if you don’t understand what the lyrics are, sometimes the music is sort of the transcendentary element that will make you move.

Ryan: Yeah. It’s a universal language and there’s something alive about it that I feel like connects us all.

And when we’re all tuned to it, it’s a beautiful damn thing. I mean, obviously growing up in Nigeria and that musical background had a big influence. And then you also talked about how London is home as well. What kind of influences did London have on you musically?

Eno: I mean, the fact that London itself is sort of like a cultural melting pot with people from all different backgrounds, like in London, you’ve got- everywhere you go there’s clubs where you can go and listen to music. There’s places where you can go and listen to records and there’s there’s so much different kinds of music. There’s the grime, there’s the bit of the R&B, there’s jazz, there’s like a bit of Afrobeat as well.

So that’s like a mixture of everything going on in London. And because of the fact that we’re all from different backgrounds, I guess that really just helped to create the sound that has come out of the band here.

Ryan: So you have a new record coming out. Any kind of direction that you’ve, you’ve gone with this record?

Eno: Well, we’ve sort of kept with the electronics. I have kind of pushed the boundary a bit more in terms of just making it more drum-heavy and more beat heavy, but also focusing a lot more on songwriting and song structures and actual songs. Just telling- just kind of going back to the main crux of storytelling and just getting people a bit more involved with the lyrics and the songs so that people can sort of sing along because we find that with the past album, people have always wanted to sing along when we’re at gigs and everything.

It felt only natural to kind of get those kind of catchy hooks and lines that people can just sing along to just join in to.

Ryan: That’s beautiful. Yeah. And you mentioned storytelling as a prominent focus, tell me a little bit more about that storytelling aspect that you take from your songwriting.

Eno: Because the thing is, when we started with the first record, it was obviously influenced by a lot of the stories that I got told growing up as a child, folktales and everything, and sort of just went back to that whole thing of just trying to tell a story. It could be a story like something that a moral story or something that talks about a story about love or a story about what we’re actually experiencing in today’s world.

Bringing people together, uniting people and pulling- Or just the fact that we’re all the same, regardless of where we are, we could just be who we are. So all those stories, everybody’s stories, my story, your story, and just the story of the world generally is just trying to put that all together and just make us all see that at the end of the day we can all really come together and we can be united and we can realize that we’re really the same.

Ryan: I love that. That’s so powerful. And I love that that’s sonically kind of represented too, which is- I mean, you’re pulling from so many full sound too, which is wonderful.

[Buffer Music]

Ryan: William Onyeabor. Having grown up with his music. Before it, you know, there’s that resurgence of his music a few years back.

Eno: When the resurgence happened, I remember hearing the song, it was [vocalizes] “when the going is good and so many, many people.” And I thought to myself in my head, I could just remember, I could remember what it was when I first heard that.

‘Cause my granny had a distributing sort of network in one of the main markets in Lagos. And she was one of the first distributors of Nestle products in Nigeria. So she had like a big warehouse where all the traders would come to her to buy all their products pretty much. And I remember one Friday evening as we were shutting down and the market was- the whole area gets turned into like a street party basically.

And then that was one of the songs that kind of kicked off the night. And I remember hearing all the electronic, the sense, and I was like, just blown away. I was like, what the heck? What is this? I’ve never really heard anything. I was, I wasn’t quite young anyway. And that is like, just so cool.

Just the beat, the synth, the synth lines. It’s like computer sounds. I mean. It just sounded like something out of nowhere. And then I just thought to myself, “Oh my goodness, I remember this.” And then everybody was like,” Oh my God, is this?” And then I started saying, “Oh my God, I heard this when I was young growing up in Nigeria.”

The guy was William Onyeabor. And I remember so many people used to talk about the fact that he was this mysterious producer that just happened to come back from overseas and had bought all this electronic instrument, which a lot of people, no one knew how to use about himself.

So he had this studio down in the East where he was just him and all these electronic synths and keyboards and everything. And he used to wear this cowboy hat apparently that made him like, yeah, he looked like a cowboy pretty much. But, and the there was like a nickname going around that he was like an African cowboy.

And then it just took me back to that as well. And I thought, Oh my goodness. And everybody was just asking who the heck is this person? Who’s this guy? Who’s this guy? I was like, I remember this person. Then I later saw a documentary and it just took me back down memory lane and I was like, Oh my goodness. I still remember that well.

But it’s a shame though, because I mean, he stopped making music for many years, but then he’s just carried on. I guess he was like, so ahead of his time anyway.

Ryan: That’s amazing. You talked about hearing the song and then being transported back into this moment in time and again, another powerful thing.

Eno: Exactly. I love that. It takes you back. You know, you remember, like they always say, music makes you remember where you were at some point. Either a point in time or physically being with somebody or just something. I mean, music just has that power to do that, isn’t it?

Ryan: Yeah. Are there any other songs that have had a strong- I guess, pulled you back home just by, just by listening?

Eno: There’s so many, I mean, to be honest. Yeah. Let me think. What else? I mean. Lord, there’s just so many. I mean, Angelique Kidjo for one example. Every time I listen to Angelique Kidjo songs, because what with my sisters, we used to watch a lot of like, back then, I think this was way before MTV, actually, we used to have all these videos that would just play.

And it was just music that came from Africa, music from the West. And I remember her video, there was a lot of her videos that would play. I think Agola was one of them. And because she was one of the first- probably the first black women that I would have seen in music. And I was just really inspired by her. Just by her voice and what she was doing at the time.

Ryan: Have you played in Nigeria?

Eno: Not yet. We’ve been asked twice to go, but something always happened and it clashed and it just fell through. So we’re hoping that very soon.

Ryan: Where else have you, are there any favorite places that you’ve, that you’ve toured to?

Eno: Oh, North Carolina.

Ryan: Really?

Eno: Yeah. We’ve always loved coming back to North Carolina every time.

Ryan: Are you, are you, is that on the tour schedule for this next record?

Eno: We’ll we should be there soon, hopefully, yeah, soon.

Ryan: I very much look forward to it. It feels like the the live show is just such a vibrant, lively experience for both you and the audience as well.

Eno: I always feel like the audience just give us so much love and it’s like, we just sort of give it right back.

And yeah, it’s like a two way thing. So it’s always good. It’s always good, when we come out and the audience are on the ride with us. So it’s always a good thing. So we are thankful because obviously without the audience, it’s kind of pointless, really.

Ryan: Yeah, if you’re making music that’s meant to be a communal experience, you want to make sure that there’s that community to experience it and give that energy back. It’s such a beautiful thing.

And I love the style of music. There’s so much life. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. Thank you for making some just very run records. As I was preparing for this and going through your discography again, same thing, like just couldn’t stop moving.

Eno: Oh, thank you. I mean, thank you. And then the guys, the guys are just amazing as well. They’re all, the whole band. They’re all like, just really, really talented and we’ve just all been on the right together.

Ryan: Yeah. Well you’ve been doing this for about 10 years.

Eno: That’s true. Yeah.

Ryan: Congratulations. And how did it all come about if I go way back to way back.

Eno: It was pretty much myself and Max at the time sort of like turn around ideas with the whole just Ibibio lyrics, just the storytelling to start with and just telling him about a lot of the stories, just singing some of the stories.

And it was like, Oh, that’s quite rhythmic, the language itself. And then gradually that sort of came together. And then we had Alfred, who’s, like I said, of Ghanian background with the highlife background. He also came along with his own heavily skilled influence of highlife music and put down a few ideas as well.

And then we had Tony and Scott, who are more from the electronic background, they kind of put that all together. And then a few of our other friends that we worked with at the time also put some ideas together and that’s how it all grew. Really was more like a bedroom project that just came up organically and just formed that way.

Ryan: It can probably no longer fit in a bedroom.

Eno: Too much energy. No, it can’t. It’s it’s grown past the bedroom now.

Ryan: Well, is there anything that you want to talk about with this, this new record? Anything that you want to say or promote or anything that we talked about or that we didn’t talk about home?

Eno: I feel like we talked about everything. Music always takes you back to a place, or a person, or reminds you of somewhere.

And I feel like with the new record, we’re just focusing still on our positive energy and bringing people together, really. And you know, the fact we’re just trying to pull the rope, but pulling not against, but trying to pull everyone together type of thing.

Ryan: I love that. And yeah, congratulations on 10 years of doing the thing here, and some phenomenal records, very excited for Pull the Rope to hit people’s eardrums.

Eno: Can’t wait for it to come out. Can’t wait for it to come out now.

Ryan: Well thank you so much for joining me and for helping me to make a mixtape. Very much enjoyed your song selection. And very much looking forward to the new record.

Eno: Hope to see you when we come out dancing.

Ryan: Thanks to Eno for joining me for this episode of Let’s Make A Mixtape and thank you, dear listener, for tuning in. To hear Eno’s song selection as well as the selections of my previous guests, subscribe to the show playlist on Spotify or YouTube. Links to which can be found in the show notes at letsmixtape.com. Please be sure to subscribe and rate the show on whatever platform you’re listening on to feed the algorithm gods and to make sure you don’t miss next week’s episode on which I talk with KP of Black Belt Eagle Scout. Thanks for tuning in. All editing and recording was done by little ol’ me. Intro & transition music was recorded by Scotty Sandwich.