The three members of Toronto band Lal — Rosina Kazi, Nick Murray and Ian de Souza — just returned from six weeks in India a few days ago. So even though we sat on cushions around a low table in de Souza’s south-of-Bellwoods home to talk music, specifically Lal’s fourth self-titled record, India continues to resurface.
Trip or no trip, the subcontinent is bound to come up with the trio: they all have way-back ties to the subcontinent, by way of Barbados, Uganda and Brampton. Lal began in 1998 with singer and poet Kazi and producer Murray making music at home, joined four years later by the bass player de Souza. Coating Kazi’s mournful chirp with warm, fluid electronic beats and polyglot percussive rhythms, Lal skirts multiple modes, from trip-hop to world, eliding definition. Deep might make the most sense, since Lal places equal emphasis on message — teasing out stories based on social justice themes — and their emotive, instinctive music.
You guys have been around since ’98. Is it easier or harder to make independent music in Toronto?
Kazi: We’ve always been independent so it hasn’t really affected the way we work, because we’ve always done it super grassroots. I get e-mails about the potential of funding being cut but it seems to be happening on a more national level, because there used to be more money to export Canadian art and music. But also, funding is great but it comes and goes.
Murray: I think there should be corporate structures in place for artists, as opposed to solely government funding. I can make a full record at home for, like, bare minimum $5,000. The funding really just helps us live and pay people and travel.
Kazi: But in this city? Banks are supporting everything now! What I’ve learned is whether it’s bank-funded or not, it’s still traceable to the same bullshit–it’s still blood money at the end. I’ve got a sense the government is trying to back out of funding arts and get the banks to take over. We’re not there yet, but what happens when that becomes a thing? Can you have a critical dialogue? Is a bank going to sponsor something like that?
de Souza: In India we were interacting with musicians who are basically in the same position as us, but in a country where there’s no funding except for selling CDs off the side of the stage. I mean, there’s alcohol and tobacco funding for the elite — people tied to Bollywood — but not for the type of music we’re making. For me that was the big eye-opener this trip.
This was your first time actually touring India. What was that like?
Kazi: We’ve been going to India as Lal every year, or every other year, since 2007. We had some people who wanted to make a tour happen and it was good because we’ve spent time hanging out, finding out what India is to us, and this time we were able to connect with people who have a different idea of India.
Murray: It was good to bring the Lal vibe, this “community-everybody’s-inclusive vibe” to India. This time we connected with like-minded people who can then connect all over India, so it was really furthering the work we do here.
Kazi: That’s happening over there as well: social justice groups to high art, having conversations. It’s not completely accessible because the class thing is really intense. But there are people with that mindset, who don’t want it to be a fancy thing.
Are those conversations a result of the “emerging” middle class? More people have access to information and stuff?
Kazi: The middle class there is still really rich, not like here. A lot of people we met came from money, so we need to be clear about that. In Bangalore, for example, we played at this club called Counter Culture. The owner’s family put their money into a space that’s not very expensive to access, where people can be exposed to really experimental art forms.
de Souza: For a long time there was this attitude that things made in India were shit and stuff from the West was best. That idea of re-evaluating yourself is, I think, being aided by people who’ve gone there who may or may not be Indian but provide a way for India to look at itself in the mirror.
Murray: There are conversations happening about Western culture and what that means within the constructs of India. A lot of people want an alternate space to create their own identity. We hung out with (Toronto ex-pat designers) NorBlackNorWhite in Mumbai, who create clothes from village prints and textiles. People like that are creating an infrastructure based on their ideals.
It’s kind of weird that India is perceived as having a monolithic identity when it totally doesn’t at all…
Kazi: Here we get criticized for not sounding Indian enough, which is annoying because what does that even mean? But in India we came across people who had the same ideas leveled at them, that they weren’t “Indian enough.”
de Souza: This time felt different though. I worked with an amazing South Indian producer from Singapore. It’s becoming cool to be someone like me: born in East Africa, raised in Canada, going to play in India.
Kazi: I did notice people there aren’t interested in seeing this bigger South Asian woman screaming at them, like getting in their face. I got that comment from women who appreciated this other lens, because they see a typical gendered type of woman. We met a South Indian singer in Mumbai doing some really cool in-your-face, queer-positive work so when we connected it was like, “Ahh, there are more of us.”
Maybe we should talk about your new album now! You finished it about a year ago and it’s just coming out now…
Kazi: The last record had over 20 guests and took us a bunch of time. So this was a project where we were like, “We’re going to do what we do together.” Also the cover art is kind of graphic-novel-y, and the ideas here are about imagining a bright future instead of the apocalyptic one that comes up in sci-fi or the media. Like, there’s always been crap, but you find ways to make things happen. And there’s power in communities whether we’re marginalized or not.
The last record, Deportation, had a pretty specific theme. What stories are you telling this time around?
Kazi: Coming out of the activist and social justice scene I recognized there’s fucked up shit happening there that happens in the corporate world. Power really messes with people. So, for me lyrically, this record is about how power plays out and affects people from the left to the right.
Was there something specific which triggered this?
Kazi: Working at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore was amazing and totally transformed my life — but it’s a hub for all kinds of communities, and seeing how things played out in a place that was supposed to be anti-oppressive scared me. Even that the store itself almost went under! I’ll always be political but this was about moving out of that, realizing we all have more in common than differences.
And sonically?
Kazi: We didn’t second guess, like, “let’s add a tabla here!”
de Souza: There were a lot more mixers on this than before, which was a different process and way of approaching community.
Murray: Yeah, I mixed some of it but we also worked with Moonstarr, my brother Stephen Murray, Sandro Perri. Actually, I really like his mix. He arranged most of it, changed the structure a bit, and took it into more of an abstract place that’s not as direct as we intended — it became really otherworldly.
de Souza: That was the one thing that was kind of cool. If the chords and the ideas, both lyrically and musically, are there, we should be able to give it to somebody of our choosing and let go.
Lal plays an unofficial CMW show/release party March 21 at Cinecyle.
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Anupa Mistry writes about music for Toronto Standard. You can follow her on Twitter at @_anupa.
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