Can you talk about the thought process behind choosing the musicians on this record that helped give these compositions to life?
I trust everyone to bring their own creativity and personality to this band. But the musicians have to be — especially with this project — sympathetic and empathetic to my intentions. Especially with the launch shows and the recording show, I told everyone about stories about each piece of music and the band really got to understand that and gave them some context so that it’s not just some melody and harmony.
Did you explain your compositions to your bands before?
A little. When I put out the CHURCH record and we did the launch. I spoke about the inspiration about some things. But they weren’t personal stories. They were more about things I loved. “Ghaziya” is this North African-belly-dancer vibe, so I’d talk about that. But that’s something where I like the sound of it and I’m interested. I don’t have a connection to it.
That’s the difference to this project. Understanding that I came up loving black music. Point blank. End of the day: I’m not black. It makes sense for Cyrus Chestnut to sound like Cyrus Chestnut. Where he grew up. How he grew up. The music that was around him and what his lineage is.
I was talking to a guy yesterday who was talking about his connection with gospel music to his mom and it’s the same thing. He could appreciate what I was saying about Heritage and what I was saying and we could understand each other on a level of like, “Oh we’re talking about that.” You know what I mean?
These days hip-hop is a fashion accessory that people put on. And hip-hop is some real shit. It’s so much deeper than the latest Supreme top and listening to Migos you know?
[laughs] But people forget that. For me, this has been great because this is all music that I love, but as far as sharing my own truth, it’s not that. My cultural touchstone has nothing to do with Africa. I love that music, but connecting with Japan in this way was kind of a homecoming. It was like fully accepting myself. By association, it was about accepting my mother too. It’s not that I didn’t accept my mother. But I always had a push-pull dynamic with being Japanese. And now it’s like, this is what is and I love it.
There seems to be a newfound modus operandi in the way you make music now. What’s next for you?
Heritage II comes out in April so that’s the second half of the project. It was originally going to be one album, but I felt like it was too long at 100 minutes. People put out double and triple albums a lot now.
Right… but I always question whether people actually get through the entire thing.
Exactly! If people actually want to listen to what I’ve done, I want to give them a chance to digest it. So I cut it in half. It’s also kind of a day and night/yin and yang between the two. They’re definitely the same project, but you’ll see. It’s the second half of the story.
There’s a new project called Ronin Arkestra. It’s a group I put together with all Japanese musicians. Guys from Sleepwalker, Cro-Magnon, WONK, and Kyoto Jazz Massive. It’s a whole crew. The ronin is a master-less samurai so all these guys are like that. We’re all kind of leader-less because we all have our own projects in a way, so I brought everyone together for this new project. The EP comes out on March 22 and the album’s going to be [released] later on this year.
I’m also writing some larger bodies of work that also go down this cultural rabbit hole. I feel like it’s an infinite journey. It just kind of opened a whole door to me. It’s cool, I can just be myself and play around in it. There’s going to be a show for Heritage II at the Aratani Theater. It’s a full band with string quartet and dancers.
Wow. The Aratani Theater is an important venue for the Japanese community.
Yeah. Especially in LA. That’s why I see it as a pinnacle project. But yeah, man. There’s always more coming up and through this project and through Ronin Arkestra I found a lot of collaborators in Japan that I want to develop more with. All good things coming.
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Stream or purchase Heritage here.
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