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Nathalie Joachim

Nathalie Joachim

Photo: Josué Azor

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Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: Nathalie Joach meet-first-time-grammy-nominee-nathalie-joachim-haitian-musical-roots-fanm-dayiti

Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: Nathalie Joachim On The Haitian Musical Roots Of 'Fanm d'Ayiti,' Community Building & Standing In Her Truth

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"I feel like the whole country's standing behind me and that feels amazing," the Haitian-American artist said of her GRAMMY-nominated debut solo album, which is dedicated to three pioneering female musicians from Haiti
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Jan 16, 2020 - 10:35 am

Meet Nathalie Joachim. The Brooklyn-born Haitian-American flutist, vocalist and composer received her first-ever GRAMMY nomination this year for her debut solo album, Fanm d'Ayiti. The project, whose name translates to Women Of Haiti, was inspired by her late grandmother and is a tribute to three pioneering Haitian female musicians—Carole Demesmin, Emerante de Pradines and Toto Bissainthe, weaving together their voices, stories and traditional Haitian folk music traditions.

The beautiful project, which Joachim recorded with Chicago's Spektral Quartet, is in the running for Best World Music Album at the 2020 GRAMMYs.

Nathalie Joachim | Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nom

The Recording Academy spoke with Joachim to learn more about the rich stories and in-depth research process behind Fanm d'Ayiti, her classical training at Julliard and why she sees using her platform as a vital necessity. She also shares what gives her the most hope in the world right now and how she has found strength in her identity.

What does it mean to you to be nominated for a GRAMMY for Fanm d'Ayiti?

It's huge, honestly, on so many levels. It's a humongous triumph. I mean it's my first solo record so to do that, to put myself out there in this way. I think most people know me from a classical world, and to put out a vocal record that's really personal and tied to my family's heritage in such a deep way, to really step into myself as an artist in this way and to have the record be received really positively was enormous. To receive this kind of attention for it and acknowledgment of the work feels tremendous.

And on top of that, again, bringing in my family and our heritage and history and just being able to represent Haiti in this way, and to highlight some deeply important music and political and social history of Haiti through this project, is really such a huge honor. I feel incredible about it.

What was your initial reaction when you found out about the nomination?

It's the kind of thing where you don't really know how to react. You're like, should I scream? Should I run out of the room? I actually was in the middle of this mountain town in Sweden. I was so far away and I got a text message from Allison Loggins-Hull, who co-produced the record with me and is a long-time creative collaborator. She's like, "You got nominated for a GRAMMY!" I was jet-legged, in a car on my way to a venue for a performance in this little town. And I was just like, "Oh wow," and the friend sitting next to me was like, "What happened?" "I got nominated for a GRAMMY." It was this interesting moment where you just wanted to be able to put out all of this energy but I was sort of stunned into silence a bit.

It was absolutely unexpected. I think we're all always watching in our industry to see who gets nominated and it's been so many years of seeing so many of my colleagues get nominated. So it just felt a little surreal for it to be happening to me.

Can you speak to the message behind the album and the Haitian women you chose to celebrate within it?

Absolutely. The story behind the record really came out of the passing of my maternal grandmother, who was just a hugely important voice in my life and such an inspiration to me personally and musically. We spent so much of our time together singing songs. She was really one of the first people to encourage me to use my voice, not just to make music but also to share stories. So, the loss of her voice really got me thinking a lot about women's voices in Haiti. That led me to become more curious about female artists from Haiti because the popular music scene is so male-dominated.

I started to talk to my parents about women who are popular musicians that they could recall. And that small list of women really led me to not only a lot of really gorgeous music but some extremely powerful stories of women who truly use their voices to highlight the strength of the people of Haiti, to uplift them and to help the country continue to move forward. I had such a deep pleasure diving into my research of these women and meeting with them if they were alive, both here in the United States and also in Haiti. And meeting with their family members, going to the spaces and places where they made music throughout their careers. I found such a kinship in their stories as artists, and specifically female artists, really trying to make it in a field where women's voices are ever-present but really under-represented.

And so, those stories led me to thinking about myself and what it means to really be a part of that legacy. The three women that are really featured on the record are Carole Demesmin, Emerante de Pradines and Toto Bissainthe. I chose those three because they're all different generation but their work and their missions were so connected. Also on the record is my grandmother, whose voice I recorded years before she passed away, and the girl's choir from our tiny little farming village in the southern part of Haiti called Dantan.

It's amazing to be able to hear the voices of all those little girls here. They are all grown now but when I hear them, I think of each of them individually and know that our families have all shared so much. For some of us, it's nine, ten generations of growing up in that small farming community together, of our families having really grown together. I feel really lucky to have been able to share my own voice in a space with all of them.

That's so cool, it's really like a collage.

Yeah, absolutely. The three women are established artists who didn't have to share their stories with me but really opened up their homes and hearts. I shared some really powerful and meaningful moments with them that helped bring a beautiful sense of place to the record and a deeply personal connection.

Do you feel that working on the album shifted or further developed your connection to your Haitian roots?

Yes, of course. I'm a first-generation Haitian-American and most Haitian parents really want their children to become nurses, doctors, lawyers or teachers, something practical. My family has always been really supportive of my career, but they were always like, "We don't know, you're always in there making strange sounds with your instruments, we don't really understand." Especially coming from having studied classical music and then really being quite focused on performing contemporary classical music.

For my family in Haiti, music is such a huge part of how we engage with each other culturally as Haitians. And so, all of them are like, "Yeah, you make music, so does everybody else." This project was really, really incredible because it was my first professional project that my family was deeply involved and engaged in. I think it was the first time that they really got to see the connection between my art and my passion behind the music; just really understanding why making music means everything to me.

I think it was the first time they really saw it and understood it. This was something that, from the very beginning stages of the project, they were a part of conceptualizing it. They were a part of helping me research and understand the history as I was going through it. They really got to be with me and work with me through every single phase of it. I think it deepened all of our connection to our heritage and our celebration of our culture that felt really beautiful.

So, being able to have my family be a part of it helped me have such a deeper appreciation for our culture and heritage. It was something that was always important to me but has now become that much more valuable to me. Also, being able to see the reaction, especially after the GRAMMY nomination, of the Haitian community. I feel so incredibly celebrated and supported by them. There's just been this outpour of love and support and everyone cheering me on. I feel like the whole country's standing behind me and that feels amazing. It's like, I feel more deeply connected to every Haitian person that I meet now more than ever.

Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: FINNEAS On Billie Eilish & "Doing Production That No One's Ever Done Before"

"There's just been this outpour of love and support and everyone cheering me on. I feel like the whole country's standing behind me and that feels amazing."

I'd love to learn more about the overall creative process of the album and what it was like working with the Spektral Quartet.

Totally. This project has really changed my artistic practice in a meaningful way. It's my first really research-based project of anything I've ever made. It is also the first time that I really had to give in to the process for it to be successful. Rather than going in and being like, "I'm going to do this music and it's going to take this form and be this shape," I spent about a year and half of what was really a two-year process building this project, mostly meeting with people and collecting oral histories and field recordings. I did a lot of deep listening and being open to what was presented to me.

It was the first time that I ever really just allowed the material to tell me what it needed to be. I think that the work really benefited from that because a lot of people have really commented on how it's able to bring together, like you mentioned, this collage or this hybrid of all of these different sounds with the field recordings and the interviews. I think that was really because I took a lot of time to just genuinely interact with people, to really listen and connect with them.

When you allow yourself to do that, the stories begin to take shape in a beautiful and brand new way and you allow yourself to be present for when the through-line or the common thread begins to emerge from the experiences you're having. By the time I sat down to really get to writing the music, I had been in this really deep listening space for a long time. It felt much easier for it to be the vehicle that all of these things could exist in and that I could also express myself in as well.

That is a new way of working for me, so it's also terrifying. For a long time, there was no music being written and you're like, I hope I come up with something. In the end, it showed me that this way of engaging with people makes us stronger. It makes the work stronger, it makes my understanding of what is necessary or what is valuable about the stories that much more clear. I already have a few new projects underway that are really influenced by this change in my practice. It has really allowed me to center how I would like to work going forward because I feel so deeply interested in connecting with people through my work. With the state of the world right now, that feels particularly important to do through my work as an artist.

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One of your projects I'm really interested in learning more about is Discourse with Carolina Performing Arts. Can you speak to that a little bit, and how you hope to engage in community building with it?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you mentioned it because the process for that project has really been influenced by my experience creating from Fanm d'Ayiti. Allison, my creative partner in Flutronix, she and I have been embedding ourselves in the Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh community. The whole project is commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts, which is through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And so, for the past two years we've been doing exactly as I described I had done for Fanm d'Ayiti. We've been going down there, engaging with community partners, doing everything from holding music workshops to just simply breaking bread with people. It's been about embedding ourselves in the community and connecting ourselves to their leaders.

We've been doing that in an effort to really gain a deeper understanding of American history and that has been incredible. I think you learn so much more about a space by simply sitting and having a conversation with an elder of the community, with a young person to get a sense of what they feel like, or a homeless person who has to engage in a community where they're overlooked. And the transient university community; how does their engagement change the shape and the history of a place? We've also been talking to members of the indigenous community there as well, and how have they been impacted as people who've been there long before any of these other people.

So, that's been beautiful. Allison and I were both really dismayed after the last election, not just about who was elected but about the fact that there is this huge divide in America that we have lost a sense of connecting with each other on a personal level. And so, we're really hoping that through discourse, by connecting with real narratives of real people and by showcasing the value of those narratives, that we are fostering connectivity within a community, creating a sonic representation of a history of the space. And again, doing that through an evening-length musical work that deeply features the stories and the collected histories of the community itself.

We are very excited for that to premiere this Spring, April 2 and 3 at Carolina Performing Arts. It's been a deeply moving process and we feel a great responsibility to honor the stories of the people who have been so generously sharing their time with us. And we're just excited that an institution like Carolina Performing Arts would get behind such an experimental work about social change. This will be our first iteration of it in Chapel Hill.

We do have future iterations planned in cities across the country, which is also really exciting. And each space sounds different, every story has been completely different and beautiful but also universal in that it brings us back to our sense of humanity. North Carolina is not just some distant place that's far removed; it's full of people who all have stories and love and light in them just like the rest of us. We're hoping that this project is able to travel the country and show that there's a lot of good to be had in simply opening yourself up to truly connecting with people.

"You can start to feel small but then you realize music is a universal language. It's something you can share with anyone across the globe and that in itself puts you in a position of power, where you can use your platform to connect to people anywhere."

Why do you think it's important to use your music and platform as an artist as a catalyst for social change?

It feels important to me. Historically, if you look timeline-wise, just about every major artistic movement coincides with a major change happening in the world. So, I think artists have always been really tapped into what's happening with communities and have always taken on the responsibility of commenting on it because we have a platform to do so, whether it was 1,000 years ago or now.

I think it is the job of an artist to be reflective of our time, I don't think it's enough to operate in a vacuum. And I think that the reflection can take many different shapes and forms. Even just looking at the Best World Music Album category, you see such a beautiful reflection of our times in every single album that's represented. Which is another reason I'm so proud to be a part of such an incredible group of artist and thinkers who are really tapping into that.

It can feel daunting when you wake up and the news is sort of dismaying every single day. You can start to feel small but then you realize music is a universal language. It's something you can share with anyone across the globe and that in itself puts you in a position of power, where you can use your platform to connect to people anywhere. For me, it feels like the right thing to do because you're moving the needle even just a little bit and I think every bit counts.

Yes, it does. And what is the biggest thing you hope to see shift in the next couple of years?

So, we're living in a digital age which is a blessing and a curse. But if there's one thing that Fanm d'Ayiti and Discourse have shown me is the value of coming off the computer screen and talking to people in real life. We all have very busy schedules but it's important to get to know your neighbor. Know that you can step out into the world and really connect with people. I hope that is something people elect to do more often.

I think that the internet can be an awfully expanding place but an awfully isolating space also. I'm hoping to see more people really reaching out person to person and getting to know their communities and that is maybe the best first step in helping us move forward. I think the more we're connecting with one another, the more we're able to help each other, whether you're talking about climate change, social justice or politics.

I think it's all connected to us really taking a good look at one another and appreciating who we all are in all of our shapes and sizes and colors. I hope to see people move more towards a sense of togetherness and to step away from the sense of divide.

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When you were younger, what drew you to making music and to the flute specifically?

I started playing piano when I was four years old. It was the first instrument that I played and I was very bad at it but I obviously really loved music. At that age I was spending a lot of time with my grandmother; we would always sing tons of songs together as a way of doing stuff around the house or just making up stories and songs together. When I was nine, I had the opportunity to choose an instrument at school and I pretty randomly chose the flute. I took to the flute much more quickly than I took to piano, and my band director recognized that right away. She was a flutist herself and gave me private lessons during our lunch period and I started to excel pretty quickly.

At that point, the Julliard School had started their music advancement program, in response to a lot of music education getting cut from public schools throughout the five boroughs [of New York City]. It was essentially Julliard's community schools program for students who weren't necessarily beginners and showed promise but were losing access to music lessons in their schools. I got in and started going when I was 10 years old.

A few years later, my teacher there had me audition for Julliard's pre-college program and I got in. I've spent most of my musical life at Julliard. People often ask me how I decided to be a musician. My honest answer is I think it chose me more than anything else. It's truly the one thing that I have always loved and could never imagine my life without. I feel really lucky to have been able to find something that I genuinely love so deeply, so early on.

Julliard gets all the credit for my musical training of course, but I have started openly crediting two other kind of funny sources. One being my grandmother, who in truth was really one of my first music teachers without really knowing it. Also, for anyone who's an old-school New Yorker, there used to be a Tower Records right across the street from Julliard and I used to spend all of my free time over there at the listening stations. That's really where I found my love for electronic music, hip-hop, jazz, you name it.

I would spend hours in there hanging out at the listening stations. It expanded my musical pallet in a beautiful way, and you have to imagine that it had some impact when I was having such deep musical training at Julliard. While my brain was being shaped in that way, I was spending a lot of time not just listening to the music at the music stations but on some level analyzing or really understanding like "how does this Bjork album relate to what I just learned in my music theory class?" All of that, I think is reflected in my musical style today. On the record there's this huge influence of my classical training but also the electronics and bringing in these other voices in this way and the folk elements.

I think a couple questions ago you asked me about Spektral Quartet and I didn't talk about that.

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Yes, please do. Thank you!

I would be so upset with myself if I didn't mention that they are incredible collaborators. The project was commissioned by Kate Nordstrum, who is the curator of the Liquid Music series. I originally premiered Fanm d'Ayiti with members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. After that, I was asked to do a performance here in Chicago, so I reached out to Spektral Quartet there. They weren't available for that date but where totally game to record it with me. It felt great that we all got to work on it and record it here in our home city, which was really wonderful.

They're exceptional musicians, and if there's one thing that's true about making music in Haiti, it is really more than about being about any individual, it's about every single person contributing a deep part of themselves to the process. That was something that I really learned through my grandmother, that it was really about you sharing what you can for the group. Music-making in Haiti is about a communal practice and so much of the music that we have is not written down in a western way, but it in fact is passed down through an oral tradition. Spektral Quartet was incredibly flexible; everything thinks of classical musicians as being totally rigid and they are the exact opposite. They really gave themselves to the process and opened up to experimenting. It was really that spirit of their musicality that allowed for the project to become as beautiful as it really did on the album and is now even still growing as we're touring it together. People should try to catch it live; it's definitely been growing and evolving ever since we recorded and I'm so happy and lucky to be working with them.

"It is important to seek out the people who are living the life that you want to lead and if you don't see that person, to have the courage to become that person so that somebody behind you can see you as a role model."

Do you have a message for young people, especially young women and/or people of color, interested in pursuing a career in music now?

You know, it wasn't until very recently that I felt like I could stand in my whole identity as a black woman, as a Haitian-American artist creating new work in today's climate. For a very long time, it was hard for me to call myself a composer because I came from a world where composers generally didn't look like me or live a life like me at all. Or to call myself a vocalist, when I had come up in this oral tradition of singing with my grandmother, which felt very different than my very buttoned-up conservatory training took a lot. It took a long time for me to really embrace all of the pieces of my identity as assets, as the true beauty of who I am, not just as a person but certainly as an artist.

I feel a huge responsibility to be standing in that truth and to really be embracing that side of me because I know how valuable it would have been for me at nine years old to have seen someone doing exactly what I'm doing. It would have helped me more easily step into that space because it feels so much more possible. I don't think I had even played a piece of music by a person of color probably for decades with my training. That's insane to think of that.

So, to every young artist out there today, it is important to know that it is absolutely possible for you to stand in your truth and for it to not necessarily look like Beethoven or Mozart and to still have it be real. To still be able to claim those titles as your own because what we see is that each of these practices, whether it's folk tradition, or hip-hop or something incredibly fringe and experimental, each of them is really valid in their own right. It is important to seek out the people who are living the life that you want to lead and if you don't see that person, to have the courage to become that person so that somebody behind you can see you as a role model.

"To every young artist out there today, it is important to know that it is absolutely possible for you to stand in your truth and for it to not necessarily look like Beethoven or Mozart and to still have it be real."

I think what's true on the record and I'll echo what Carole, Emerante and Milena Sandler [the daughter of late Bissainthe] say on the very last interlude of the record, which is to be yourself and to keep moving forward and to know that there is a little one behind you who's looking to see if they can become what you are. It's really huge. It can be life-changing for someone.

I know that in researching this album and talking to all of these women, I left almost every single interview in tears because I felt more capable in talking to them, knowing that they had a led a life where they really were able to stand in their truth and to make the world a better place against all odds, in a world that was really against them.

If you look at Emerante, she was somebody who came to popularity in the '40s and '50s, at a time where women were not supposed to be doing anything and she really defied that. She's a true hero and without women like her, it would've been really hard for me to even me to have the career that I have now. And so, it is important for each of us to stand in our truth and in doing so, stand against anything that says that we cannot do so because you absolutely can do. I hope that every little girl, every little person of color is out there seeing role models. I think that's happening a lot more today but it's been possible at moments where there was no one else doing it. And so, it's totally possible for each of us and for every person who's coming up behind us.

What gives you the most hope right now?

Honestly, the thing that gives me the most hope right now is the voices of young people who I think are more courageous than I ever was at their age. I think who are really coming together in a way that's really beautiful. And also, becoming much wiser much sooner, I think in my opinion. I would have been terrified as a little girl to stand up to authority or question the adults. I think there is space for both. I think adults can learn a lot from the young and there's nothing better than having a conversation with somebody who's been on earth for almost 100 years, like Emerante.

Children are honest and more aware and tapped into their spaces in a way that adults can sometimes become too busy to be. I feel a lot of hope when I'm going into communities and talking with young people who are really just able to say, "I'm young and I have a lot of life to live but I also know what's right and wrong and I'm here to lend my voice." You see this in young people like Greta Thunberg.

That does truly give me hope, I think we all have a lot to learn by talking and listening to young people and understanding where their hearts and heads are at. I think the generation of kids coming up right now is a generation to be admired and they certainly have their work cut out for them.

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Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: Antibalas

Antibalas

 

Photo: Celine Pinget

 
 
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Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: Antibalas antibalas-fu-chronicles-interview-meet-first-time-grammy-nominee

Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: Antibalas Talk 'Fu Chronicles,' Kung Fu And Their Mission To Spread Afrobeat

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Antibalas members Martín Perna and Duke Amayo discuss their origin story, their decades-long rise as an outlier in Brooklyn and how their first-ever GRAMMY nomination for Best Global Music Album could help introduce new listeners to Afrobeat
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Feb 16, 2021 - 7:27 pm

Even somebody who barely listens to music could presumably name three artists in each of these spheres: rock, blues and jazz. Sure, Bob Marley may remain the embodiment of reggae, but chances are you've heard of Toots and the Maytals or Lee "Scratch" Perry at least once. What about Afrobeat, a West African amalgam of soul and funk with regional styles like Yoruba and highlife?

For many, the Afrobeat conversation begins and ends with the outrageous, incendiary, brilliant multi-instrumentalist and pioneer of the form, Fela Kuti. While the Brooklyn Afrobeat ensemble Antibalas, which ranges from 11 to 19 members, undoubtedly work from the template Kuti helped create, they argue the story of Afrobeat begins—not ends—with him.

"I think that's one of the weirdest things, being in a genre of music that is so defined and predetermined by one person," Martín Perna, the multi-instrumentalist who first dreamed up Antibalas in 1998, tells GRAMMY.com. "Even reggae artists don't all get compared to Bob Marley. I don't think anybody in any other genre is in the shadow of one person like people who play this music." (For those who wish to dig deeper, Perna recommends Geraldo Pino, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou and the Funkees; his bandmate, Duke Amayo, name-drops Orlando Julius.)

"It's been a weird thing," Perna continues. "I would have thought after 22 years that it would have expanded a little bit more."

Antibalas | Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee

More than 20 years after Kuti's death in 1997, Afrobeat may soon expand radically in the public eye thanks to Antibalas. The group, who played their first gig half a year after Kuti's passing, has been nominated at the 2021 GRAMMYs Awards show in the newly renamed Best Global Music Album category for Fu Chronicles, which dropped last February on Daptone Records. Their first album to be solely written by lead singer and percussionist Amayo, its highlights, like "Lai Lai," "MTTT, Pt. 1 & 2" and "Fist of Flowers," partly derive their power from his other primary pursuit: kung fu.

A Nigerian-born multidisciplinarian who is a senior master at the Jow Ga Kung Fo School of martial arts, Amayo aims to find the nexus point between music, dance and martial arts. When he received the unexpected news that Antibalas had clinched their first-ever GRAMMY nomination after 20 years in the game, he launched into a dance of his own.

"I walked over to my girl and said, 'Check this out. Is this real?'" he recalls to GRAMMY.com with a laugh. "She Googled the GRAMMY nominations, and it was surreal. And then I did that usual thing where you shake your hips, violently doing the hip thrust back and forth. Then, I woke the whole house up screaming, as my daughter screamed with me for a minute or two."

GRAMMY.com spoke with Martín Perna and Duke Amayo about Antibalas' origin story, their decades-long rise as an outlier in Brooklyn and how their nomination could help introduce new listeners to Afrobeat.

These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

How would you explain the vocabulary of someone like Fela Kuti to a person who's unfamiliar?

Martín Perna: Afrobeat is like musical architecture. It's a set of ingredients and musical relationships between those ingredients. All the instruments are talking to each other. They're all in dialogue, and these dialogues create dynamic tension in the music. Some instruments create a rigid structure, and others—vocals included—have much more free reign to improvise or solo.

Duke Amayo: I would describe it as a tonal language of the common Nigerian—or African—singing truth to power from a marginalized place. That is the window from where Fela Kuti was operating. He drew from observations around him and expressed them truthfully throughout his music. He is like the Bob Marley and the James Brown of Nigeria rolled into one.

Perna: Whereas the guitar might be playing the same five-note pattern without stopping for 20 minutes, the singer or keyboardist gets to improvise. Or, when the horns aren't playing the melodies, they get solos. It's both very rigid and very free, but it's a dynamic tension between the two.

In a nutshell, describe how Antibalas came up in the Brooklyn scene.

Perna: I was 22 when I dreamed this up, and a lot of it was just trying to create a scene that I wanted to be part of. At the time, I played with Sharon Jones—rest in peace—Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. A bunch of the musicians were my colleagues in that band. The rest of the musicians came pretty much from the neighborhood—just people I knew who either had the chops or the interest to be in this band.

Amayo: I was living in Williamsburg, a neighborhood that embodied gentrification in record time. I was in the right place at the right time as I opened a clothing store/martial-arts dojo in my residence called the Afro-Spot. From here, I hosted many fashion shows, using Nigerian drummers to maintain an edge to my brand. This exposed me to musicians who wanted to make resistance music, if you will.

So that brought me in contact with Martín and [Daptone Records co-founder and former Antibalas guitarist] Gabe [Roth], who stopped in my store one day to hang. Eventually, they asked me to join the band. I started as a percussionist and then became the lead singer.

Perna: I wanted to make a band that was both a dance band and a protest band. Because you need so many people to make this music, it fulfilled that idea of being a band and a community. You need anywhere from 11 [musicians] on the small end; at our biggest shows, there have been 19 musicians on stage. So, already, you have a community of people.

Coming up in Brooklyn, did you have local peers in this style? Was there a scene?

Perna: No, there wasn't a scene. There were individuals—mostly West African guys a generation older than us—that had played with Fela or were part of some other African funk band in the '70s. But no, there weren't any peers at all.

Amayo: I would state that we were the scene.

How would you describe your vision for Fu Chronicles as opposed to past Antibalas albums?

Amayo: Fu Chronicles is a concept album written by only me. While the past albums have been written by different members employing the group dynamics of the time, my vision was to create a musical universe where African folklore and kung fu wisdom can coexist seamlessly, supporting each other in a harmonious flow.

The first song I composed [20 years ago], "MTTT," came from my intention to compose a timeless, logical song, expressing a new frontier in classical African music. I wanted to move the music forward by writing songs with two distinct-but-related bass and guitar lines and shape the grooves into a two-part form: yin and yang.

How did martial arts play into the album?

Amayo: I wanted to reimagine Afrobeat songs from a real kung fu practitioner's mindset. I'm a certified Jow Ga Kung Fu sifu, or master. I started studying kung fu in Nigeria as a young boy. The song "Fist of Flowers" describes the traditional form of Jow Ga Kung Fu that I teach. My rhythmic blocks are sometimes based on the shapes of my kung fu movements.

How did you learn about your GRAMMY nomination for Best Global Music Album?

Amayo: The first person who texted me was Kyle Eustice, [who interviewed me in 2020] for High Times. I didn't react at first. I walked over to my girl and said, "Check this out. Is this real?" She Googled the GRAMMY nominations, and it was surreal.

I did that usual thing where you shake your hips, violently doing the hip thrust back and forth, and quickly calmed down. Then I woke the whole house up screaming as my daughter screamed with me for a minute or two.

Perna: On my fridge, last year, when I set my goals and intentions, one of the five things [I wrote] was to win a GRAMMY. This year has been such a disappointment in so many ways, so it's exciting that at least we got, so far, the nomination.

This nomination serves as a punctuation mark on Antibalas's 20-plus-year career. How do you see the next 20 years?

Perna: Oh, gosh. I hope it provides some wind in our sails to continue to record and tour and grow our audience. It could be either a nice end to a beautiful history of the band, or something like I said: wind in our sails.

Amayo: I see the next 20 years of Antibalas as a flower in full growth, writing music to push the genre forward while maintaining excellence in the trade. We began as a bunch of guys in Brooklyn who wanted to make a change, make some noise, and be part of the revival of activist music.

And it's still as relevant as ever, demanding for justice movements like Black Lives Matter, Indigenous peoples' plight, and a more comprehensive education system based on truth ...

Perna: … To get this recommendation and this nod from the GRAMMYs, it's like, "Hey, everybody! Pay attention to this band! They made this amazing record, and you should listen to it!" That's something that propels us out of the world of just musicians listening to us. It feels good to get a little bit of wider recognition.

Amayo: I've been praising my wife ever since [the nomination]: "This is all mostly you." Because if she hadn't put a fire in me, I wouldn't have been able to make the right moves. It takes something to light it up for you, to believe you can get there.

Thus, my song, "Fight Am Finish," with the lyrics, "Never, ever let go of your dreams." I'm going to keep running. I'm going to keep my feet moving until I cross the finish line, you know what I mean?

Travel Around The World With The Best Global Music Album Nominees | 2021 GRAMMYs

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Rosalía at the 2020 GRAMMYs

Rosalía at the 2020 GRAMMYs

Photo: Rachel Luna/FilmMagic/Getty Images

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2020 GRAMMYs Backstage: Rosalía, Lil Nas X, More meet-rosalia-lil-nas-x-billie-eilish-finneas-more-grammy-2020-winners-backstage-staples

Meet Rosalía, Lil Nas X, Billie Eilish & More GRAMMY 2020 Winners Backstage

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Watch 2020 GRAMMY winners FINNEAS, DJ Khaled, Elvis Costello and Cage The Elephant talk about their big moments backstage at Staples Center
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Jan 30, 2020 - 8:30 am

The 62nd GRAMMY Awards officially wrapped last Sunday (Jan. 26) after an evening filled with powerhouse performances and exciting first-time GRAMMY winner moments. Let's revisit Music's Biggest Night from a new location by going backstage at Staples Center to talk with some of the freshly crowned GRAMMY winners.

2020 GRAMMY winners Rosalía, Lil Nas X, Billie Eilish and FINNEAS, DJ Khaled, Elvis Costello & The Imposters and Cage The Elephant all spoke to the ever-upbeat backstage interview host Ted Stryker after their big moments. Read on to watch each of the conversations and learn more about their wins.

Watch: Rosalia 2020 GRAMMYs Backstage

Shortly after taking three more Latin GRAMMYs (for a total of five to date) back home to Barcelona in November, Spanish nu-flamenco queen Rosalía earned her first GRAMMY nominations: Best New Artist and Best Latin Rock, Urban Or Alternative Album. On Sunday during the GRAMMY Premiere Ceremony, she won the latter category for her epic sophomore album, 2018's El Mal Querer.

"I can't believe that this happened, I can't believe that the people here are receiving my music with so much love. I'm so shocked and still processing," the Barcelonan star said backstage.

Read More: How Rosalía Is Reinventing What It Means To Be A Global Pop Star

She also made her GRAMMY stage debut last week, stunning viewers with her powerful vocals and choreography during a mind-blowing performance featuring her newest song, "Juro Que," and the EMQ favorite, "Malamente." When asked if she was nervous before her performance, she revealed she was, but was also thrilled about sharing her flamenco-inspired music on the acclaimed GRAMMY stage in Los Angeles. "The excitement was bigger than anything else."

Watch: Lil Nas X 2020 GRAMMYs Backstage

2019 was a wild ride for genre-dancing cowboy Lil Nas X, who took us all to the "Old Town Road" multiverse. From a viral sensation on TikTok to a record-breaking No. 1 run in a matter of months, the 20-year-old now has two GRAMMYs to his name: Best Music Video and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, both for the megahit. He also made his shimmering GRAMMY stage musical debut with a trippy, star-studded performance of the GRAMMY-winning bop and "Rodeo."

"A year ago, I was somewhere online, promoting this song called 'Old Town Road' with barely a nickel to my name," the "Panini" artist said, rocking a fierce hot pink cowboy getup. "Now I'm here at the GRAMMYs, [with] two GRAMMY Awards."

More: 10 Unforgettable Moments From The 2020 GRAMMY Awards

Reflecting on his rapid rise toward fame and global acclaim, he revealed, "The journey has been very spiritually and mentally challenging, but it helped so much. I've completely turned, and I'm going to continue to turn, into a better version of myself."

Billie Eilish & FINNEAS: One-On-One Interview

A few minutes after taking home their final GRAMMY wins (they each earned five!), sibling wunderkinds Billie Eilish and FINNEAS caught up with Stryker backstage. When he asked where all the emotion was coming from, a teary-eyed Eilish laughingly responded, "Dawg, everywhere! Where is the emotion? It's everything… It's coming from the fact that we just won a bunch of GRAMMYs."

He also asked what their biggest hopes for the album were. Their answers make their GRAMMY triumph even more powerful. "I wasn't expecting anything," Eilish answered.

WATCH: Billie Eilish Performs "When The Party's Over" | 2020 GRAMMY Awards

"We just made this album that we liked. I can't stress it enough. We didn't mean for it to win a GRAMMY, you know? We made an album that we loved and that we wanted to make. That was kind of our only goal, to enjoy making it, enjoy it once it was out and enjoy performing it, so this is just unreal."

"One of the only goals we had with it was that we wanted to make an album that we love playing live because we tour so much," FINNEAS added.

Watch: DJ Khaled 2020 GRAMMYs Backstage

DJ/producer DJ Khaled also took home his first GRAMMY win on Sunday for Best Rap/Sung Performance for "Higher." The uplifting track features late L.A. rapper Nipsey Hussle—the song was recorded before his death and released less than two months afterward—along with EGOT king John Legend. Hussle won two posthumous GRAMMYs, also taking home Best Rap Performance for the last single he released, "Racks In The Middle," featuring Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy.

Watch: Behind The Board: DJ Khaled Reflects On His Early Days, Working With Music's Biggest Artists & More

"The day it started off—it was tough, it was real tough," Khaled shared, referring to NBA hero Kobe Bryant's shocking death earlier that day. "[During sound check], John Legend was playing the piano and started singing 'Higher.' It touched my soul. It made me like, 'We gonna go out here, we gonna do it for our brothers.'"

"We come to show love and spread love, for the families," he added, also sharing his excitement for the recent birth of his second son, Aalam.

Watch: Elvis Costello 2020 GRAMMYs Backstage

1979 Best New Artist nominee Elvis Costello has been doing things his own way within the pop space since before 2020 Best New Artist Billie Eilish was even born, and he's still in it. On Sunday, he took home Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for Look Now, his 2018 album with his band, The Imposters. It is the group's first GRAMMY win together and Costello's second—his first was in 1999 for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals for "I Still Have That Other Girl," featuring Burt Bacharach.

Dive In: 2020 GRAMMYs Red Carpet: Go 'Behind The Seams' With Kéla Walker, Nikita Dragun, Tess Holliday, Shaun Ross And Ty Hunter

Introducing his bandmates, including GRAMMY- and Latin GRAMMY-winning producer Sebastian Krys, Costello said, smiling, "We are our own tradition. Being traditional ain't a bad thing… I guess people were surprised because they think of us in terms of one kind of music from 40 years ago, but we play every kind of music."

He also talked about collaborating with Bacharach again on some of the GRAMMY-winning album's tracks and how one of the songs was one he'd written with Carole King 25 years ago. Now, they're ready to share more surprises in 2020.

Watch: Cage The Elephant 2020 GRAMMYs Backstage

Alt-rock favorites Cage The Elephant, who broke through the dense alt-rock landscape of the late-'00s/early-'10s with "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" in 2009, just earned their second golden gramophone. They won Best Rock Album for Social Cues, the Kentucky group's fifth studio album. The amazingly eclectic-dressed squad, with bassist Daniel Tichenor and drummer Jared Champion both wearing Helen Anthony threads, caught up with Stryker backstage to share in the excitement.

More: 2020 GRAMMYs: Usher, Sheila E. & FKA Twigs Honor The Purple One With A Prince-Themed Medley

"I think all [albums] have their own journey, but this one took longer. I think it was exactly what it needed to be," guitarist Brad Shultz said. They also joked about how they felt their acceptance speech went ("second worst" compared to 2017). Lead vocalist Matt Shultz explains how he had typed up a speech with who to thank, along with a poem, but left it on his seat in the surprise moment of the win.

"It's just such a blessing to be able to share something with people and to bring people together, and I think that's the most gratifying thing that you can get out of any of this," Brad added. "It's such a blessing to be recognized by the Academy, and it's kind of confirmation that we're connecting with people."

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2020 GRAMMYs: Clive Davis And The Recording Academy Celebrate Sean "Diddy" Combs With Industry Icon Honor At Star-Studded Pre-GRAMMY Gala

Angelique Kidjo

Angélique Kidjo

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

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Angélique Kidjo Wins Best World Music Album For 'Celia' | 2020 GRAMMYs

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Angélique Kidjo takes home Best World Music Album for 'Celia' at the 62nd GRAMMY Awards
John Ochoa
GRAMMYs
Jan 26, 2020 - 4:13 pm

Angélique Kidjo won Best World Music Album for Celia at the 62nd GRAMMY Awards. This marks her fourth win in the category and fourth GRAMMY win overall. 

During her acceptance speech, Kidjo celebrated a new generation of African artists coming up to represent the continent while thanking luminaries who came before her for their contriutions to world music, including Celia Cruz.

"Four years ago on this stage, I was telling you that the new generations of artists coming from Africa gonna take you by storm and the time has come," Kidjo said. "Celia Cruz, for me she's the goddess of salsa. She's the queen of salsa. She is one of those artists that taught me at a young age that my gender cannot define who I am, that I can do everything I wanted to do."

Angelique Kidjo Wins Best World Music Album

Kidjo beat out fellow nominees Altin Gün (Gece), Bokanté & Metropole Orkest Conducted By Jules Buckley (What Heat), Burna Boy (African Giant) and Nathalie Joachim With Spektral Quartet (Fanm D'Ayiti). She also gave an audience-rousing performance of "Afrika" during the 62nd GRAMMYs Premiere Ceremony. 

Check out the complete 62nd GRAMMY Awards nominees and winners list here.

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Ranky Tanky

Ranky Tanky

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Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: Ranky Tanky meet-first-time-grammy-nominee-ranky-tanky-lasting-influence-gullah-music-and-being

Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: Ranky Tanky On The Lasting Influence Of Gullah Music And Being Global Genre Ambassadors

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The South Carolina quintet is making GRAMMY history and bringing the genre to the international mainstage at this year's awards
John Ochoa
GRAMMYs
Jan 22, 2020 - 6:00 am

Over the past three years, Gullah music, a centuries-old sound from the South Carolina Lowcountry region, has entered the mainstream. That's largely thanks to Ranky Tanky, an effervescent quintet hailing from Charleston, S.C., who've become global ambassadors of Gullah music and culture. 

For those unfamiliar, Gullah music is part of a wider culture rooted in the Lowcountry along the South Carolina coast. The Gullah people, meanwhile, are a tight-knit local community and descendants of slaves from the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. Through art and music, they’ve preserved and honored West African traditions and culture for generations.

Ranky Tanky first brought Gullah to the spotlight with their 2017 self-titled debut album, which topped the Billboard Jazz Albums chart in 2018. The album is composed of covers and arrangements of Gullah folk songs and classics. 

For their 2019 follow-up, Good Time, Ranky Tanky broke the mold. Released last July, Good Time features Gullah standards and, for the first time ever, brand-new original compositions, which are informed by the Gullah tradition yet modernized through Ranky Tanky's contemporary lens.

The approach paid off: In 2020, Ranky Tanky are nominated for Best Regional Roots Music Album for Good Time. With the nod, the group and release are also making GRAMMY history as the first-ever album of Gullah music to receive a nomination, now bringing the genre to the international mainstage.

For founding member Charlton Singleton, the group's trumpeter/singer, Ranky Tanky's nomination is a massive honor for both the band and the wider Gullah community.

"We’ve been very fortunate and blessed to have the support of the Gullah community," he tells The Recording Academy. "Gullah is something that everybody is all in on… So any sort of celebration that can take place is something that everybody is just all in for."

Ahead of Ranky Tanky's big night at the 2020 GRAMMYs, The Recording Academy caught up with Singleton to discuss the lasting influence of Gullah music and the group's newfound role as global ambassadors for the genre. 

What was your reaction when you first heard Ranky Tanky were nominated for a GRAMMY?

Oh, it was just sheer joy. It's something that I think every artist appreciates and wants to be recognized for their contribution in the music world and with the highest honor that there is: a GRAMMY. I jumped on my bed for a little while and yelled. There was nobody else at the house at that particular time, so I kind of ran through the house a little bit, just yelling and screaming. But it was an amazing thing to see it posted right there on the screen, saying that we were in this final group of talented artists and other great recordings. It was a great, great moment.

There seems to be a rise in awareness and listenership of Gullah, largely thanks to Ranky Tanky. But at the same time, this is likely the first time a lot of people are learning about the genre, through your GRAMMY nomination and through your various accomplishments. How do you describe the Gullah sound and its associated community and culture to first-timers?

When we're on stage, I have these moments where I start talking with the audience in between a song, and I tell them about certain things that they have either seen or heard of in their lifetime that are uniquely Gullah… Then I usually graduate into things that people would know. For example, have you ever sung "Kumbaya" before?

Of course.

"Kumbaya" is a Gullah song—uniquely Gullah. I know there's [probably] not a whole lot of people on the face of the Earth that have not come across "Kumbaya." And as a matter of fact, sometime last year, it was finally recognized as being a song composed uniquely from the Gullah community.

Music-wise, the Gullah rhythm has a distinctive beat to it. I think with some of the other music that is out there today, you can really put a strong debate on the fact that Gullah, especially in music, has been an informant to a lot of different genres like jazz, folk music, rhythm and blues. There are so many similarities in those music [styles] that it's inevitable that you would get back to Gullah because Gullah predates all of those things.

Read: Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: Black Pumas On Their Breakout Year, Creative Process And "New Chapter"

Gullah is also part of a wider culture and a regional community. Do you need to know about Gullah culture as a whole in order to truly understand the music?

It helps to know where things come from, but not really. There are some groups out here in the Lowcountry and Gullah communities that are still singing some of these songs in the purest form. So when you hear people singing some of these spirituals, especially the gospel spirituals, that's probably the truest form of the music that people would recognize.

With us, adding drum sets, basses, standup basses, a trumpet player, electric guitar, that's where you get the contemporary assessment that we do with Ranky Tanky. If someone were to be down in the Lowcountry, in the Charleston area or the Beaufort area or some of the islands that are in our vicinity, they would definitely be quick to understand just the whole atmosphere in some of these Gullah communities.

Ranky Tanky | Meet The First Time Nominees

Gullah music is a centuries-old sound. As Ranky Tanky, do you update the sound for contemporary audiences? Or do you try to stay loyal to the original sound?

Well, just because of the instrumentation of our band, that's automatically going to make it for contemporary purposes. But you can still hear and feel the original spirit of the music when you listen to Ranky Tanky onstage or on record. I think that we have caught lightning in a bottle with regards to having it right down the middle where we're still paying homage, in a respectful way, to the traditional Gullah sounds, but at the same time, giving it that contemporary assessment and contemporary fresh coat of paint to make it so that when audiences of today listen to it, it's a special blend and mix.

Is it a challenge to introduce and educate audiences to a sound that is considered to be so traditional and that's been around for so long?

I don't think it's a challenge. Our music, the way that we present it, it's been very universal. The crowds that we've played for have been a really wide variety in age, in ethnicity. But it really hasn't been a challenge for people to understand what they're listening to. There are so many things on our album that you can listen to and you could say, "I can play that on this particular genre radio. I can play that on a bluegrass radio station, I could play that one on a jazz radio station, I could play that one on a R&B radio station, I could play that one on a pop music station." The way that we have been performing and how we have crafted the sound of the band, it's pretty easy to introduce it to everybody.

Read: Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominee: Nathalie Joachim On The Haitian Musical Roots Of 'Fanm d'Ayiti,' Community Building & Standing In Her Truth

What is the role or significance of Gullah in relation to the wider roots and Americana genre and community?

Geographically speaking—let's take folk music, for example. Most people put that [genre] with like the Appalachian Mountains and that region: North Carolina, Western North Carolina, the upper parts of South Carolina, West Virginia, all of those areas. Now geographically, that's not too terribly far from the Gullah region. So it's easy to have those two blending over, if you will, when you listen to some of the [sounds].

It's kind of hard to explain sometimes, unless you're listening to a couple of the [genres] back to back or side by side and you can really get a sense of how Gullah has influenced these other styles. When we're onstage and we're talking to our audience and engaging with them, it's a little bit easier for them to get it and listen to it when we speak about it and then we play right immediately after.

Your new album, Good Time, is split between covers of traditional Gullah songs and, for the first time ever, brand-new original Ranky Tanky compositions, which are also in the spirit of the Gullah tradition. How did you go about creating new Gullah songs for the album?

In the Gullah community, especially in church, there is a term that is called "raising up a song." Basically, somebody is going to stand up and they're going to start singing something that probably nobody knows at the time. And so nine times out of 10, they start with that song and they'll "raise it up." Maybe about a minute into it… somebody's going to pick up on whatever they are repeating, someone's going to harmonize to it. And then about a minute or so later, you've got the whole church and they're all in on this song. At the beginning of it, they didn't know what the song was, but they're just going off of what that person started.

Now, to carry that over to the creative process for us, there have been times when we were in soundcheck and somebody would just do something. There's a song that we have called "Freedom." [Vocalist] Quiana [Parler] was just standing at her mic… I think she was on her phone and she had read a text or something like that and she was a little frustrated and she went, "Ahh Lord, I need freedom." [Singing]

She was just sort of wailing it out, and it was comical. But she did it a couple of times and I just joined in with her, just to be funny, and I harmonized with it. And the next thing you know, [guitarist] Clay [Ross] started playing something, and he joined in and we made it a three-part harmony. And it sort of gained some traction that way. I pulled out my phone, I hit the voice memo, I put it down on the ground and everybody was sort of singing there. Next thing you know, [bassist] Kevin [Hamilton] was playing a little bassline, and the song just sort of was born right there. 

That's pretty much been the nucleus of our creative process with regard to the new songs that are on the Good Time recording. You had to know the beginnings and how they would do it with the Gullah community to get to how we would do that. 

Read: Meet The First-Time GRAMMY Nominees: Tank And The Bangas' Leader On 'Green Balloon,' Chilling With Michelle Obama & Quitting IHOP To Make Music

The group's members come from a predominantly jazz and gospel background. Do those genres lend well to Gullah? Are there sonic and stylistic similarities?

Definitely. Gullah has been such an informant to so many different styles of music, especially jazz. The rhythm that's in the Gullah rhythm… you can incorporate that in any sort of swing pattern, you can incorporate that into a shuffle, which are two of the primary rhythms that go in jazz. So that makes sense on how you can take that Gullah from way back when and then shift it into what we think about as jazz music today. Same thing with blues, same thing with rhythm and blues. When it comes to us and playing that music now… you're going to find those increments of what we listened to as jazz today in what you hear from Ranky Tanky.

Your nomination is a big recognition for Ranky Tanky as a group, but also for Gullah as a sound and as a community. What does this sort of honor mean for you individually as well as a representative of the wider Gullah community and scene?

It's a huge honor. We’ve been very fortunate and blessed to have the support of the Gullah community, as well as our family and friends. Everyone in Charleston has continued to love and embrace and push us and encourage us to keep doing what we're doing. The city is all in. 

Any sort of positive recognition, any sort of positive experience, any sort of positive event that highlights the Gullah community is something that everybody in Charleston, South Carolina, and the surrounding areas of the Lowcountry—they've just been ecstatic for us about it. Gullah is something that everybody is all in on… but we got to remember, this isn't something that was always celebrated. So any sort of celebration that can take place is something that everybody is just all in for.

Aside from the GRAMMYs, what are some of your plans and aspirations for 2020?

Continue to tour, continue to entertain and enlighten. Just trying to go forward. Everything is forward. Positive, and forward with the music.

The 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards, hosted by Alicia Keys, will be broadcast live from STAPLES Center in Los Angeles Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020, at 8:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT on CBS. Learn more about where and how to watch Music's Biggest Night.

2020 GRAMMY Awards: Complete Nominees List

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