FEATURE:
Station to Station
Part Twenty: AFRODEUTSCHE (BBC Radio 6 Music)
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PRIMARILY known as a D.J. and artist…
PHOTO CREDIT: Bart Heemskerk
the amazing AFRODEUTSCHE (Henrietta Smith-Rolla) has recently launched The People’s Party on BBC Radio 6 Music. On Friday at 7 p.m., she acts as the listeners’ algorithm - with listeners' choices providing inspiration for this collective Friday night celebration; a place where people come together and let loose through a shared love of music. In this feature, I normally focus on those who are already broadcasters and have been in radio for a while. Not to focus too much on BBC Radio 6 Music but, as a new name, I am keen to explore her more. I think that AFRODEUTSCHE is a phenomenal broadcaster who deserves more airtime. Lately, BBC Radio 6 Music have brought in broadcasters like Anne Frankenstein – who I featured in this series last time; she has presented early-morning for Chris Hawkins – and The Blessed Madonna (who is a regular on the station). AFRODEUTSCHE is a guide who is making Friday evenings so much brighter, bolder and bigger. Bringing the people together, you can follow her on Instagram. Whereas the interviews I normally source for those included in Station to Station relate to broadcasting, AFRODEUTSCHE’s are more to do with her D.J. and performance work. I think, by having someone of her experience and calibre on the station, BBC Radio 6 Music have a name that warrants a longer run (let’s hope that The People’s Party gets a wider stay and is part of the station’s line-up for a very long time). I can see AFRODEUTSCHE getting a regular daytime show soon enough. Whether that is on BBC Radio 6 Music or another station, I am not too sure.
There are a few interviews with AFRODEUTSCHE that provide details and biography about an awesome talent; someone whose passion for music is endless. The first of three interviews I want to bring in comes from London in Stereo. They spoke with AFRODEUTSCHE in 2019 – a year where she was busy touring and bringing her sounds to the masses across Europe:
“2019 marks another year of debuts for Afrodeutsche. This summer will see the Manchester-based producer, composer and DJ play her first shows at Dekmantel in Amsterdam and Sónar Barcelona, two festivals right at the forefront of electronic music. Afrodeutsche might be making waves, impressing further still with the adventurous sonic of her recent 90 minute Dekmantel Podcast, but she still gets those pre-show butterflies. “Don’t say that!” she squeaks nervously as I highlight the importance of both brands. “Honestly, I’m still in shock that they’ve even asked me to do it,” she says of her Dekmantel performance. “I’m going to bring all sorts of wonky stuff with me; lots of hardcore, gabber, jungle, rave”, she says, and I can hear her smiling through the phone, “I’m going to have a really, really nice time.”
Afrodeutsche has been busy touring of late, with recent shows taking her across Germany, Portugal and the UK. “I always miss it when I’m away,” she says of her beloved hometown Manchester. Fittingly, it’s a flurry of local names that spring to mind when I ask her about the music she’s feeling at the moment. Space Afrika’s live show gets a shout out, as does Anz and her brilliant recent EP Invitation 2 Dance, and then Croww, whose hybrid live/DJ sets that blend noise with gabber and 90s vocal samples, Smith-Rolla affectionately calls, on more than one occasion, “magical”.
I am interested, having discovered her BBC Radio 6 Music series, what music means to AFRODEUTSCHE and what sort of genres/sounds she holds dear. Listening to her selection on Friday evening, I was compelled to dig deep and check out interviews where AFRODEUTSCHE’s loves and passions come to the fore. METAL featured AFRODEUTSCHE a couple of years ago:
“Henrietta, you were born in Great Britain. Could you tell me where the name Afrodeutsche comes from?
Afrodeutsche translates into African-German. I started looking for my dad a few years back and found that he moved to Germany on a scholarship. He was an artist – a painter –, which made me very curious. What was a Ghanian artist doing on a scholarship in Germany in the late ‘50s? This led to more research into the connection between Germany and West Africa, where the word ‘afrodeutsche’ kept coming back. I just felt an innate connection to it.
Is this heritage reflected in your music, either consciously or subconsciously?
Definitely, it’s very intuitive to me. Being Ghanian and born in the United Kingdom is a big part of my identity and that expresses itself through music. It’s almost like a second way of speaking. It sounds really cheesy but that’s just how it works! It might be that people pick up on that influence, but it’s always been innate to me”.
Do you remember your first encounter with electronic or club music?
I remember when I was about 9 growing up in Devon, I had a best friend who was a few years older. At the time, there were a lot of free parties happening in surrounding fields and hills, which my friend would attend. She’d bring me back all these flyers and mixtapes and I would listen to them thinking, ‘what is this, I want to be there!’ I also vividly remember taking my jungle compilation mixtape to church for show and tell, and somebody stole it! Luckily, I found one of the tracks recently and have been playing it a lot in sets.
Before, you mentioned your affinity with film scores and also wrote some yourself. What’s the difference between creating music for a film and producing for yourself, if any?
They’re very, very close. What I love about scoring is that you have to translate the visuals as well as a certain narrative and structure. There are technical elements to it, but the main part is translating that emotion into sound. You’re also working for someone else, so it’s a bit of going back and forth with different ideas until at some point you’ll just hit on something that fits perfectly. It’s great when you reach that moment when you help lift someone else’s work without words. The scoring helps with when I’m writing my own stuff as I’m using different techniques, sounds and samples that I learn during scoring. Ultimately, they feed back into each other.
A topic that has been mentioned in the electronic music industry a lot lately is the representation (or rather underrepresentation) of women. Do you have any personal experiences with this?
I can only go from my own experience, which has honestly been really positive. I’ve had such nurturing people around me, opening their homes and allowing me to experiment on their equipment. Of course, there are moments, not necessarily bad ones, which require you to have some understanding and empathy. I’ve worked alongside some older sound engineers for example, who will be very surprised that there’s a female live act showing up. But you have to understand that that’s unusual for them. In contrast, younger sound engineers won’t be surprised at all. And, of course, there will always be people that are dicks, but I don’t blame that on my gender. Men or woman, we all have bad days”.
To round off, I am going to bring in a more-recent interview. SHAPE conducted a rather interesting interview with AFRODEUTSCHE at the start of last year. This would have been pre-pandemic. For someone who is used to bringing music to clubs and crowds bonded together, it has not been easy for her. Luckily, with shows like her BBC Radio 6 Music slot, AFRODEUTSCHE is able to connect with an audience in a different way. Growing up, international success must have seemed far-fetched for her:
“You grew up in a rural area of the UK. Did you feel like you were searching for something else?
As I’ve got older, I’ve realised that it was very much about searching for my identity. Having never met my biological father, there was a huge part of my identity that I didn’t have any understanding of. While I was looking for my father, the word “Afrodeutsche” kept on coming up and I had an innate sense of connection to it. Through Afrodeutsche I’ve been able to get a hold of my own identity and I’ve realised it is a lot of other people’s identity as well. Having gone on this journey myself I’ve kind of almost facilitated other African Germans to find a way to their own identity even if they weren’t looking for it. I do believe it’s been an avenue for a lot of African Germans who listen to the type of music that I make and come to shows I play. I’ve met these three women of Ghanaian descent, born in Germany, who’ve been to three of my shows. It was almost like a reunion. We know we exist but we haven’t felt connected with each other. It’s not just me, it’s not just my music, it’s the reality of it. We exist.
These histories are often forgotten.
I had to be quite brave when I took on the name Afrodeutsche because I knew that it wasn’t mine. I couldn’t own this. It was meant to be for African Germans. I had to think about it and be brave about it because it’s an untold history. I wanted to talk about it with my music.
I guess there is also the connection with Detroit. The Afrofuturism of Drexciya, the Germanism of Dopplereffekt and the whole spirit of Underground Resistance that have influenced your work.
All of the 90s Detroit sonics very much spoke a language which I feel I understood. It’s very cosmic and I feel very connected to the music. It’s overwhelming how connected we are.
Do you have a hypothesis why this whole electronic music culture fascinated you even at that young age?
It was quite a mysterious thing to me. I’d go to my friend’s house and we’d pretend that we were having a sleepover. She’d leave the house and I’d stay up in the bedroom as if we were both there and then she’d come back the following day and have all these flyers and experiences and tell me how amazing the party was. It was this unobtainable world that audibly was just brilliant. Imagine listening to all these parties and MCs. There was something about the music that just got me. It wasn’t necessarily that I wanted to be there, I just had a connection to it. Not being classically trained, I used to emulate the stuff that I would listen to. Something that I realised was that a lot of the melodies and basslines were like one-fingered basslines. I would be emulating it on the piano and thinking how brilliant it was that I could actually follow and be part of it.
The world is not a happy place these days anyway.
There’s a lot going on for everyone. It has always been this way, but it’s also about whether or not people feel they can share how they feel or what they’re going through. People are starting to understand that it’s OK to share the dark side of their lives rather than it being a wonderful Instagram “great day”, “what I’ve seen, where I’ve been” kind of vibe. People appreciate and respond to honesty and vulnerability because it’s relatable.
Music can also be a way to decompress.
Music is so important. It’s the language that we all speak, especially instrumental music.
Do you feel that you’ve found what you set out to search for when you were growing up or would you still like to continue the search?
I don’t know what it was that I was looking for other than my father who I’ve not found yet. That search for him has kind of come to a halt at the moment. My brain and my emotions can’t handle it right now. I thought that was going to be the body of work that I was going to do for the live show. I thought it’s going to be much more about the search for my father, but actually it’s turned into something else. I think I’m always going to be searching for that thing. I don’t think I’ll ever arrive at any certain point with music because it’s always changing. I guess my motives will remain the same in that I can’t do anything else. I’ve tried every single job there is, from landscape gardening to working in bars to making clothes. I’ve really tried everything but the only thing I’m really fulfilled by is making music. I think it’s going to be an ongoing search. This piece of work will help me with that”.
If you need a pick-me-up and party on Friday evenings, go and check out AFRODEUTSCHE’s BBC Radio 6 Music show. It is full of terrific music and gems you might not have heard before. I am not sure whether The People’s Party is long-running and will keep going. I do hope that Henrietta Smith-Rolla gets more time on the airwaves. She is a fabulous D.J. and artist…and, as it turns out, a very natural and…
SUPERB broadcaster.