Welcome to the first edition of ‘Dancing about…’, a new monthly blog by our Programmes Coordinator Kenyah Johnson that will feature interviews with many of those who participate in NYJO. The intention of this blog is to be solely based on their gigs outside of NYJO, as Kenyah discovers and explores their original music, how they choose to express themselves when not in Woolwich Works, and find out who and what they truly want as emerging musicians.
The title of this blog is based on the quote by Thelonious Monk, ‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture’, which I guess is quite ironic as that’s what this blog is trying to do. I feel there are hardly any right words that encapsulate what music is, on both an individual and communal level; but I still believe there’s value in trying to peg down and formulate a word or a thought or a sentence to be able to share that intrinsic feeling.
Every month the title of the blog changes to reflect the venue at which the person I’ve interviewed has performed at, and for our first edition I had the opportunity to sit down with Amelia Wilding who performed at CLF Arts Lounge in Peckham. Currently studying at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, Amelia has been on many projects at NYJO, from supporting our Under 18s on Holiday Projects with Ahnansé and SHANTÉH from Steam Down, performing at Ronnie Scott’s with the Latin Collective, to being one of our choir leaders for the Sherard Road Songbirds as part of the work with do with Age UK and the Community Choir.
Her quintet for the night featured Scottie Thompson on Keys, Luke McCarthy on drums and Catorina (Cat) Bourne on the flute. Having seen Amelia perform countless times before, I was shocked to find out this was her original music debut; ‘All of my experience is in session playing, I’ve never really done my own stuff so it’s nice for me to start and be like this is the first time doing it.’
We ended up chatting about how this gig came to fruition, taking risks and what’s coming up for her in the future.
Kenyah: So, how did this come to be? How did you get asked to do this gig?
Amelia: So the guy who runs the event (Gordon Wedderburn) he does one every month and my friend did one a few months ago and I really liked the venue, the vibes were really nice, so I approached him.
And he was like do you have anything released, send over some demos to me. And I worked hard to actually make the demos cause I didn’t have any. I sent them off and he didn’t respond for like a month and I was like they weren’t good enough, whatever and he was like sorry for the late response, the 29th is great etc and yeah, here we are.
K: So then, you got your gig now and you have Luke, Scottie and then Catorina (Cat) who came and played on flute. Are these guys part of your regular band or did you ask them to play for this specific gig?
A: So I play with Scottie a lot, I really like working with him because when I write my charts they’re very improvised, nothing is really scored down section by section, so I give Scottie the melody line that I sing and the bass line that I play and I’m like ‘Here you are’ so he has to like use his brain to figure stuff out. But it also means that it’s really open for him to do what he wants and I think he really likes doing that. I did a Youtube thing with Trinity and I was playing with a different drummer then and I just wanted to try a different sound, so I rang Luke and he was really up for it and he’s an amazing drummer and I think it worked really nicely.
K: 100% it did. Do you want to chat me through the set list?
A: I really like’ Nardis’ and ‘Invitation’ as Standards and I know them really well so I thought doing something that isn’t mine, to sort of relax myself into the rest of the set would sort of bring my nerves down a bit. Then the next tune of the set was ‘Take me to the sound’. It’s quite a new one, it’s not really finished but I wanted to showcase it.
All of my songs are sort of love songs about music, how much music can sort of save you, how much it loves you if you love it, they’re all very much centred around that idea.
And then the tune I did after that was ‘Summertime’ which made my cousin cry which was quite sweet; that was the first thing I wrote like a year ago. And I was like, this is really special, I kind of want to follow this vibe and keep writing stuff like this. I took that tune to like five different musicians in different settings and I was like ‘Right, can we play this? Can we figure it out?’ And the demo is actually cut up clips of loads of different play throughs just pieced together, which was quite stressful. Each tune took me like three/four months to write.
It can be quite frustrating for me to sort of wait to see what my brain comes up with. Like oh I’m a bad writer, I can’t come up with anything and then two weeks later I’ve got something completely finished. So it’s very personal, cause anyone can just write music but like I’m not trying to write music, I’m trying to creatively express myself.
K: And connect with people right?
A: Yeah that’s what’s important to me, what the music does for people. Cause people kept using the word ‘Wicked’ to describe ‘Summertime’ when I used to play them the demos like ‘This is wicked’. Which is quite funny that everyone happened to use that word to describe it. People ultimately liked it and connected with it. A really good bit of advice I got was, when music makes you feel really excited, people will catch onto that, it’s a really contagious feeling.
K: 100%. Summertime was just so beautiful, you had me captivated. I know you felt proud to do this cause I know you haven’t sung publicly before, but you’re also putting out songs you’ve not performed, you’re singing on them, having been primarily a bass player; did you kind of have to psych yourself up beforehand?
A: I’m normally fine before I do gigs and then like 5 minutes before I will be wanting to throw up. But we kind of had a situation with the snare at the venue, it was broken, so I didn’t have like much time to stress about myself. It got sorted and I calmed down from all of that and then got on stage. So I didn’t have that much time to get in my own head cause I was trying to sort out this broken drum kit. Aside from that I had a lot fun, the band had a lot of fun, yeah it was a nice low pressure gig.
K: I feel like now you can kind of say I’ve done this and you can go to the next bit. Like have you caught the performing buzz?
A: As soon as I got the recordings and videos back I just put them onto a file and sent them round to loads of venues being like hey, please can I have a gig? I heard back from two on the day so that was really nice. So yeah that’s to come. I have another gig with my band as part of the NYJO X Steam Down, YolanDa Brown show at the Summer Sounds Festival. So I’m going to be doing that. Now that I’m done with Trinity for the year, I just want to focus on trying to rest, not stress about stuff and just keep writing and keep exploring some new things cause I’m aware I don’t have enough for a full set so I just have loads of ideas that I haven’t finished yet that are still in the starting phases and didn’t make the cut for this gig; I just wanted to ease myself into it a bit.
K: Yeah, just make sure you feel comfortable and just not give everything, cause you don’t have to give everything coming out the gate.
A: I also want to just enjoy it a bit cause I’ve not actually got a boss. Normally I’m answering to an MD but I am the MD. And then I’m sitting in rehearsal and I’m like I really want a break… Wait I’m in charge everyone take a break! It’s a funny thing.
K: How’s that feel actually? Being the MD, everyone is essentially looking to you to set the pace and set the tone of everything.
A: Yeah well it’s my stuff, and I think sometimes when I have taken my stuff to various other musicians they’ve acted like it’s their stuff and what I really liked about the band I played with was that they played so selflessly and they served the music and they’re not thinking about themselves but rather how can I help and not how can I make this about me. That’s why it works so well. Ultimately it’s music, so it’s going to change around depending on who’s playing it cause it’s open, that’s the point of it.
So if Scottie gets ill or can’t make a gig, they’ll be another piano player who comes in and will do their own thing with the music. It also it takes the pressure off me to know what I want cause the only thing that I know that I want is for it to be able to change.
K: I imagine being a musician can sometimes come with that feeling of not wanting to give over certain bits but you have to cause you can’t hold on to everything; especially when like you said, you’re doing something you want to enjoy and want other people to enjoy too. But having your mentality means, at least in my eyes, that you create from a place of expression and not necessarily meeting deadlines or anything as strict or as concrete as that.
A: Yeah, you just can’t grade art, I’m a real strong believer in that. I haven’t given myself a brief, or a mark scheme or anything like that. I’ve just written and done what’s come out and I think that the way education runs in the sense of like… just feeling like you get put down if you’re not good enough, I don’t like. Everyone’s actually good enough, regardless of if they’re self taught, which I am, or if they’ve had amazing teachers growing up. I’m never going to crap on someone for original music cause a lot of people won’t do it, and there’s bass players who’s careers are based on playing for other people and they do write but they’ve never done their own show. I think it’s a bit of a curse cause you’re quite easily roped into always playing for other people and never yourself. I’m taking a bit of a risk at the minute, I’ve left a few things that I didn’t feel like were serving me enough so I could spend more time focusing on writing.
K: It’s a brave risk but I feel like you’ve pulled it off really well.
A: I think a lot of bass players tend to be really amazing writers, but they just tend to never do it. So I just wanted to take back the control and feel like I can run my own band as well. And it just felt like the natural progression of, what do I do next? Do I keep playing for other people doing really bad straight ahead gigs? Or help my friends out when they need me and do my thing? I feel very fulfilled pursuing what I am pursuing.
K: That’s good, especially cause I feel like me and you have this conversation every time we see each other about the scene and female bass players. So for you to feel like you’re now in a space where you feel fulfilled, having essentially gone on your own path is really nice.
A: I do feel like it is quite lonely. Cause no one else is doing what I’m doing and I’m even unsure of what venues to ask cause this is a pop venue and this is a straight ahead venue and my music doesn’t really fit into either of that. So I’m just like… it feels risky but I believe in the music so much, I’m just going to keep trying.
K: And lastly, you said earlier on about music saving people. How do you think music has saved you?
A: Yeah, music is great. I’m very lucky. It’s gave me like a purpose. I think it gave me something to aim towards, like a dream to follow as I think my upbringing was quite tough to be honest. I felt that I was always quite different to other people, especially being neurodivergent and being diagnosed with that at twenty, it’s quite hard. It’s like ‘why don’t I fit in with this group of people, why do I feel like this space doesn’t represent me? Why do I feel to one side?’ And I think that when you come from a different class background as well, my peers sort of just don’t… we’re living in two different worlds in the same space. But when I go and pick up my bass and just play it all just goes away.
Catch Amelia’s band on 25 August opening for YolanDa Brown at Summer Sounds Festival, Kings Cross.