By Alison Roh Park
I’m late to the concert. I arrive just as Sudan Archives begins plucking the violin strings of for one of my favorite songs: “Nont for Sale.” Afro-futurism, space travel, She-Ra, Barbarella – these are the words my brain computes as I walk into the venue packed with Sudan Archives fans, glowing in alternating purples, pinks, and greens from the stage on a balmy January night in East Austin.
I push my way through the crowd until I reach downstage right. There, I see Sudan Archives strapped with her angular violin in all her magnificent glory. Throughout the set, she moves across the stage, actually, a ring of mini-stages where she becomes a storyteller for each song’s distinct vibe, palette, and story. She is a masterful production artist and every instrument and piece of equipment plays a role in the narrative, setting the stage for the next song.
There is definitely something rave-like about The BPM as an album, and Sudan Archives’ stage persona, which reminds me of my youth sneaking into clubs like The Limelight (which people called Church) in New York City in the 1990s.
“Church and rave culture intersect because you go up to the altar, you go up to the dance floor, and by the time you leave, you’re supposed to be a different person.” Sudan Archives, The BPM Documentary
Sudan Archives has been in my algorithm since 2017 when I first heard “Come Meh Way” on her self-titled album. Parks describes The BPM as a sci-fi rom-com starring a persona that she proclaims is “the real me…sensual, nerdy…all of it.” Some tracks are outright raunchy, like two of The BPM‘s crowd pleasers she performed at Radio East, ”Ms. Pac Man” and “Freakalizer”.
But even her raunchiest tunes feel raunchy for a reason, including challenging feminine archetypes associated with pop culture. Parks says in an interview with NPR: “And the reason why there’s a lot of pop-style songs on the album is almost to make fun. For example, “Down On Me” sounds really pop – it sounds like a Disney song, almost, but the subject matter is very evil. It’s a twist on pop music in this Disney fairytale. Pop music sounds like fairytale world to me, and this world that I’m in with this relationship is definitely not a fantasy, it’s kind of f***** up. I’m using an aesthetic and format and structure of song to tell an emotion.”
Parks’ songs seem rife with hat tips to past generations and messages to future ones, from “Nont for Sale” – a title “inspired by a sign she saw on a Ghana hillside” – to what often feels like gender satire in her lyrics. Then there is how she counters the European classical whitewashing of instruments like the strings, instead elevating them as truly African and Black musical traditions. There is something inherently political about her music in a take-it-or-leave-it sort of a way:
My strings propagate through space and time
Here and there at the same time
Hand dimensions and basic rhyme
You ain’t gotta be mad
Look deeper, go higher when you climb
But stay out of my path
But stay out of my flight path.
“Nont For Sale,” Sudan Archives
Sudan Archives has always been consistently set apart from other artists in my algorithm because of the way she uses strings and synth, old and new music, historic and contemporary imagery and storytelling, fast and slow rhythms, taking you back and forth through various realms and regions.
To call a live performance a mere one-woman show is insufficient. Parks’ is her own band, her own director and show runner, and her own hype woman. As told in a profile by Music Tech, Sudan Archives unleashes her inner Gadget Girl: “a valkyrie of technology who has soared to the pinnacle of music with her trusted machines by her side. Her Roland SP-404 sampler, MacBook Pro, Cantini Sonplus MIDI violin, DPA4088 CORE headset mic, and Sennheiser wireless transmitters have become her best friends. After an arduous heartbreak, she has receded into her laboratory, immersing herself in colourful wires and blinking lights. Finding solace after this separation, she moves into her next phase – one marked by creative technical mastery and fierce independence.”
From song to song and album to album, you hear Sudan Archives’ tremendous repertoire that fuses R&B, electronic, folk, classical Stravinsky, jazz, fiddling, and hip-hop elements. She also cites her sources that span from traditional West and Northeast African music, to Sudanese fiddling (yes, as in Sudan Archives) and call-and-response storytelling. She credits the album African Electronic Music 1975-1982 by African Cameroonian musicologist Francis Bebey as having changed her “whole perspective on incorporating your instruments with electronic music….It was so cool to me how [Bebey] made things danceable but kept the sound of traditional instruments.”
She grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and gives tribute to her parents’ hometowns – two midwestern cities that originated Black American music that would forever change the world – Detroit House and Chicago House. She co-created the album almost entirely with family members who layered the tracks with regional influences. As Parks says in The BPM Documentary – a behind the scenes doc about the album’s making: “We got the Detroit sound, you know, we got Eric with the beats and, like, now we’re unstoppable cuz now we got the weird stuff, the hip-hop, the R&B…everything we have together.”
She is indeed a powerhouse. As as a performer, Sudan Archives was consistently energetic throughout her set and portrayed a showmanship that belies her years. She has been working at it since picking up the violin at ten, moving to Los Angeles on a wish and a dream (and an Instagram friend’s crib) when she was 19, and dropping her first album with Stone’s Throw at 23 years old.
It was my lucky night and Sudan Archives as she performed another one of my favorite tracks at Radio East, “A Bug’s Life.” I like this song for its crescendos and soulful vocal loops, and the string quartet accompaniment. But more importantly, there is a depth to both the lyrics and her performance that paints an honest picture of what real-life liberation can look like for today’s woman, replete with the loneliness that comes with being at the top:
Boss b*tch but she want a better half
She don’t need a man she don’t need a man
She don’t need a plan she gon’ try her hand
Don’t forget the past when you check
‘Cause she never looks back
And she can’t go home
‘Cause she never looks back
And she can’t go home
In the video for A Bug’s Life, Parks’ character transforms from a stiletto-wearing bag lady struggling in the desert to a freer self who maybe can’t go home but has transformed her lonesome path into a runway to one’s own liberated self. I identify with The BPM and the cyborgian performance as a modern independent woman trying to live my best life in a world that has changed drastically through technology within my lifetime. In The BPM Documentary, Parks elaborates on this hybrid, enhance-or-die existence:
“There’s a definite theme of the album. It’s like about the digital age and how to like stay as human as possible but enhance yourself as much as you can with technology….I’m addicted to technology….Sometimes I just feel like a cyborg on stage because now I have all these wires on me and it’s all connected to the mic. People say that technology can be so inhibiting, but for me as a musician, it’s made me better. I’m more free.”
