Papa Zai interwiev at Saltbodan, Loviisa 30.07.2022

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- Would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners and followers ?
My name is Papa Zai. I make music and I paint as a visual artist, now my main thing is acrylic on canvas. Musically I sing and I compose and record and perform, I play instruments. Now we are having this mini festival here and I will do some singing.


- Would you like to tell us something about your creative process?
It depends, because certain ideas come first in different situations, and sometime you hear a certain riddim and you enjoy the pattern of that riddim and then some words come and start to flow with that. And then a certain times when you see a situation the words comes first; you have something to say, and as you say it over and over in your head a pattern starts to follow and the beat comes after. It can come in different ways.

 
- Do you play in some band, so the creative process is shared or it is just you ?
Well, it depends, it comes in different ways. Most of the times I sit alone and I write, because what I sing and I write it is a lot about my own experiences and also a lot of my own understanding of what it is going on around me. But then when I work with bands what might happen is that the band, the musician, may come up with an instrumental and then they give me that instrumental and ask me 'what can you sing on this' and I find something to sing on that. But sometimes, because I play instruments too, certain songs I just create the whole thing by myself. I know what I hear in my head, I know what I want to talk about. Sometimes you have feelings, you are maybe angry, you got these angry vibes and you want something that hits and sometimes you are in love and you want something mellow, something soft. When I create my own instrumental I create with my own sentiment, and for me it works better than when someone just give me an instrumental and ask me to sing on that, of course I can do that and it works very well, but it is not my natural way of working.


- Is it your first time here in Saltbodan, here in Loviisa ?
It is my third time in Loviisa while in Saltbodan it is my second time. The last time I was here it was on 2018.

 
 

- After these two years of pandemic, how's the feeling to be finally live again ? Did you miss all this ?
Well, it is very nice to be able to do this again. I definitey missed being with people because for me it is mostly about being with the people. Most of my career, a lot of my friends have recorded and released albums, I haven't done much of that. I like being carried by what's happening . Where the people are, if there's 2-5-10 people,  10000 people ... when people is there it's alive and THAT is my thing. Not being able to work because of the pandemic, you know you can record in studio any time and I have been doing that during the pandemic, but to be with the people ... You know after such a long period of isolation from the people ... before maybe each of us used to go at a certain scene, being with a certain people, you know, this is reggae people, this is rock people, this is my kind of people ... you can choose. But right now, everybody is people, it doesn't matter , it is just so good to be with the people.
- What kind of vibes do expect tonight ?
Well of course I don't know what people will bring. I am assuming a lot of people will come with expectations, I am assuming that will come here looking to feel good so what I have to offer is a bit of revolution and a bit of peace and love, I am fire and water. We need to have hope, we need to consider what we're carrying forward as a collective . As individuals we already had the conversation about human rights and all those things, so the individual has been taken care of , but what about the collective ? We see some of the individual freedoms often conflict with the collective interest, so how to work around these things ? So the only conversation we can have it is in an environment where we feel we are among friends, and in situations like that we give the love, we give the music and we have the conversations because we are comfortable with each other.
- Where it is possible to follow you, listen to your music, learn about your art ...
As for now you can find some of my older works on YouTube, or you can go on Spotify or Soundcloud and just search for Papa Zai and the music will come out
 


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