The Music Producer

There’s something so great about being up close to live, acoustic music, you can’t help but leave feeling on a complete high.

I was interviewing David Muthame (AKA Blackman) for Monocle about his youtube venture, Nairobi Sessions. You can listen to the story here. The idea was to get different African artists to drop into a location around Nairobi when they’re in town - a cafe, a music shop, the sofa in his apartment, and they all sit down, jam together and upload the tracks onto youtube. It’s so simple, but such a slick, direct route to get African urban music out to a wider audience…and the results, well you can listen to them for yourself on his channel. I loved watching the process - the mistakes (which I barely noticed) and then how these guys just came together, sat down and pumped out their tracks, all seemingly effortless.

David let me quiz him about getting into music production, he’s been a producer for 10 years now – the ups, the downs, the influences, his dedication to the trade. You can read a bit of the interview below:

DM: I’ve been into music pretty much all my life. I used to play guitar as a kid I started off at maybe 5 or 6 yearsold. I used to bug my parents every day to get me a guitar. We had a guitar at home but it was a cheap nylon string guitar – it wasn’t very good. So I would practice on my cheap nylon string guitar and then I’d beg my dad to buy me abook so I could teach myself some lessons – because he taught me my firstcord.  And between him and my mum theytaught me a few basic cords.

Growing up who were your main influences musically?

DM: I grew up in a Christian home so we listened to a lot of gospel music. We were actually not allowed to listen to music that was not Christian music growing up. But then I would sneak in – I loved r&b and I loved funk music, pretty much all African American music was interesting to me.

Some of the music I listened to growing up – 90s r&b and hip hop really really helped to shape who I am as a music producer now. And some of the influences of musicians around me – people I used to play with and jam with.  I’ve done everything  - I used to be in a rock band at some point – and all of that comes into play now when I produce music.  Now I can pretty much retrace my steps, every little thing I do. If I’m working with a new artist and they say they want a rock feel in their song I can go back into my history and tap from that and pick up something that I did in the past. So every little musical experience I’ve had growing up plays a major role in who I am now as a music producer.

You don’t mention Kenyan music at all?

DM: To be very very honest the thing about Kenyan music, until the 90’s we didn’t have much of an urban music scene. Most of the stuff we listened to was like benga or rumba -  music that carried over from 70’s rock & roll and when it got into Africa it got a twist. So if you listen to some of the older musicians like Daudi Kabaka or Fadhili Williams, they have a sound that almost sounds like African Elvis and so that has been carrying on until the 90’s and the infiltration of hip hop and r&b began to happen and then we started to have our own version of urban Kenyan music.

How did you know you wanted to be a music producer?

DM: Actually interestingly I wrote it down in a book. We had a career day at some point in high school and this guy came and gave a talk and this guy asks all of us if we knew what we wanted to be when we grew up – classic question.  I actually remembered this a few years back and I thought wow that’s really interesting, some of the things you think when you’re a younger person. And now I’m in the profession and I hadn’t really thought back to that time – so I guess I knew as far back as 14 or 15 years old.

Spending a lot of time around musicians and knowing a lot about music I guess I knew that somebody had to make the music. I guess with hip hop and r&b being famous and growing up in the 90’s when there was a huge american hip hop war of the east versus the west,  and the musicians were not the only ones who were famous – the producers behind the music were also really really famous – I remember names like Dr Dre, P Diddy, and I admired how they were able to create and make beats like they used to.

Is it tough getting into music production?

DM: There are different ways of getting into music production. I have a friend Blinky Bill from the group justaband, he’s a music producer as well. His process of production - he listens to about 5 to 10 times the amount of music I listen to but the reason he does that is he doubles up as a dj, so that’s one route you can take some producers start off as djs. So he likes to sample music. So he’ll take a guitar sample from an old classic and then add to it.

I like to create from scratch. I find a melody in my mind, I play a chord and then this chord transforms into a progression and then transforms into drums and bass and that kind of thing. So people have different processes. I would say it definitely helps to play an instrument. It doesn’t matter what the instrument is – it could be drums, piano, guitar and if you can play all of them even better. And it helps to have a diverse knowledge of music. It helps to be tech savvy these days.  So there’s all this stuff you need do know but all that is secondary about being passionate about music and having that creative eye and coming up with new content musically.

Did you go to college?

DM: I usually advise, especially young Africans, if you can, go to college. It doesn’t matter what you study it just sets a foundation for you to be able to think through stuff in life and come up with solutions for stuff. And it opens your mind to a world of possibilities you get to interact with people from different cultures and you get to be able to interact in any space globally. Regardless of whether you’re going to a local college in Kenya or you’re flying abroad to a school, it instills a certain sense of problem solving at a whole other level. For me that education set a foundation for how I’m able to transact on a daily basis, do my business. I still refer to lessons I picked up in college. But I would say the biggest lesson I picked up in college was I was able to socialize on a global scale. So I can interact with different kinds of people at different kinds of times and be able to fit in because of that basis.

Making a living from you music has it been tough?

DM: I’m still running a business, its not just about making beats. There are so many different facets and it’scalled the music business for a reason. I still have to negotiate with companies. For example I don’t just record music with musicians releasing albums, I do documentary music, tv ads and that’s the stuff that pays the bills initially when you start off – jingles and ads.

You still sound pretty passionate after 10 years in the business.

DM: I don’t think there is anything else I could be doing with my life. Every single day is a challenge, is different. I meet very interesting people, I get to travel the world, I’ve been everywhere, it’s a lot of fun plus I get to be my own boss. There’s this general assumption about people in the arts that all we do is sit around and laze – no we don’t as we don’t have a guaranteed salary at the end of the month. You have to work for every single opportunity, every single set you make, so it’s a lot of hard work but it’s a lot of fun as well.  

Is there a moment so far that has really defined your career?

DM: One of the coolest things that happened is I just came back from LA a month ago and I had a chance to meet one of the most famous urban pop music producers in the world. His name is Rodney Jerkins commonly known as “Darkchild” – he’s worked with big names like Michael Jakson, he did Michael Jackson’s Invincible album, he worked with Whitney Houston, and a bunch of other huge musicians. And I went to his house and we had an interesting conversation until like 1 in the morning about music and where its going globally and for me that was probably the highlight of my career up to this point. For me it was a dream. It was my in my 10 year plan. I said by the time I’m 10 years in the music biz I want to meet Darkchild…and then it happened. I’m still having a hard time believing it happened ..its surreal to me.

He’s a huge role model for me I used to literally, when I started off, sit with headphones in my room and dissect his tracks and listen to every single element he put in the music and for a while I pretty much copied his style as I was trying to establish my own way of doing music I copied a lot of his style as I just admired and loved the way he put together his music, it’s always been really interesting to me.

I got to play him some of his music…I listened to some of the stuff he’s working on now…and his advice to me, he said listen, you definitely have something, keep going and if you want you can send me some of your stuff and I’ll keep listening and I’ll keep giving you advice and if its really good I can find you musicians over here, over there in the states and we can record some of my tracks.

So it was really encouraging to hear somebody say, “I like your stuff”.