Corie Sheppard Podcast
Corie Sheppard Podcast
Episode 232 | Muhammad Muwakil
On this week’s episode of Corie Sheppard Podcast, we sit with Muhammad Muwakil — poet, performer, and frontman of Freetown Collective.
From his early childhood in Carenage to growing up at the Jamaat al-Muslimeen compound on Mucurapo Road, Muhammad shares a deeply personal account of life before, during, and after the 1990 attempted coup.
He opens up about community, and what justice really meant to him as a child watching the world shift.
We explore how Freetown’s music became a vehicle for honesty, healing, and cultural reflection — and why soca, storytelling, and spiritual vulnerability matter more than ever today.
He breaks down the band’s creative process, the importance of balance in music, and the origin stories behind songs like Feel the Love, Take Me Home, and Space for a Heart.
This episode is a reflection on identity, intention, and legacy — and a must-listen for anyone invested in the future of our culture.
I talked to this man. I've talked about this man long enough. I've talked about this man and his band's music long enough, so it's good to have you here in person. How are you going, sir?
Muhammad:I'm good, I didn't know. It's good to have you here in person. Mommy, how are you?
Corie:going. Sir, I really you're good. It was gonna be so dark. Yeah, it's a dark space, you know. Affordable imports is the kyle and chan let me call all the names, aaron and conrad is darkness all around a hundred percent. A hundred percent for that no, they just try to put me in that position, you know. I mean, I think they feel like easily distracted like this on on the.
Muhammad:It don't look so right but jesus christ, I feel like a man gonna come maybe and if, if it does happen, it does happen. It could be kyle, it could be kyle.
Corie:It could be, kyle. I don't think you'll be able to react fast enough for everybody to be dead. But anyway, a man who say the album by the name of born in darkness is telling me the place is dark, it's beautiful, you can script this.
Muhammad:So it's born in darkness and escaping to light the last two lines in our song says I was born in the dark. Now watch me live in the light. I was a child of the dark, but now I live in the light you live and you live before you start.
Corie:You tell me. I know people listen to these songs all the way through. So it proved that I stopped with Born in Darkness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I stopped right there. So again, brother, I came and I saw you all recently and it was the second time that I saw you all perform in an intimate space, tight space this is the name of. I want to talk about the first time, because Freetown Collective was bubbling for some time as a name you're hearing and you don't know what it is. You don't know what Freetown Collective is exactly Right. And I went to a charity event to Habitat for Humanity in Anchorage.
Corie:Ah yeah, I remember Played some performance, pass through and then I get to see y'all. So then I realized, okay, it's a band, it's a group. I'm not sure what to expect at that point, but some people in the venue knew the music and they knew you all. So they're excited to see you guys, and when you all strike up it's something to see, you know.
Muhammad:I never see it. So yeah, I had to tell you about it Live actually.
Corie:Listen, yeah, you've seen it live, for sure. I've seen you perform live. You know you've seen it. I like you're in the audience and on the stage on the first time and I see you running the audience that time too. Yeah, you come off the stage and get closer connected to the audience. So one of the things I always want to ask you about is that really, that connection with the audience, with you? Uh, where's that come from? That's something you're just feeling on the stage and you do it uh, I, I know what music has done for me.
Muhammad:You know, as I used up, there are portions of my life that I remember to the sound of Sizzler's voice or Shadi Soleil, of Love, them kind of things, and so I know what music is doing when people connect to it, and I always want to create the most beautiful experience for people, wherever that could be. You know, if I see that a song is touching you emotionally, how can we do more? How can we make you never, ever forget this? You know, if this is a good memory because we don't get too many adults sometimes in this life how could I make this the best memory you?
Corie:know what I mean? Gotcha, I'm with you, yeah so that connecting yeah, yeah, it shows, it shows. It shows because the performance was going great everybody. But there's a little crew in the back who I can't remember. This song you're singing, but they were rocking side to side and all this that stood out to me that you went and you rock with them and you play with them, and that kind of thing.
Muhammad:Yes, because a lot of times too, the way things set up. They they like to make us feel as though and I used to feel this way that our artist is some kind of special magical creature that is born. And if you're not born with this, you know. I think everybody has the spirit and the soul of artists and it gets taught out of us, it gets beaten out of us, it gets reasoned out of us, and then we become adults in the definition of what this capitalist crazy society want to tell us an adult is, and we forget that we were all artists. So what people feel there many times is a return to themselves. They feel a return.
Corie:The artist is offering you a pathway back to how you used to be so your audience performing for you in a sense, then, when, while you're performing for them, which is all one thing, bro.
Muhammad:I, I come and I offer a way to raise the vibration. If they accept it, then the vibration raise and they can raise it again. So now I feel it, I raise it too. I raise it again. If we do it right, we end up in heaven, right? I'm with you, I'm with you, I'm with you all right.
Corie:So the tight spaces, that's important because I'm gonna look at it. I mean freetown that I saw in anchorage then and freetown now. I guess you'll evolve a lot, the sense of fashion I was looking at, so many style from of the old videos. Everything evolved right, but the tight spaces seem to be something that's still important to you guys as a unit. Getting close to the fans are doing that yeah, in 2018.
Muhammad:we've been doing an album for about two years, maybe more, with sheriff and we decided to drop the album in 2018 and we hadn't done a lot of performances before the album drop, right. So I said to I say you know what we need to do? We need to do a series of mini concerts and kind of pull our people back together, let them know we're doing something. And we were like, well, let's do them in business places, small business places, so the community could also benefit.
Muhammad:So the first one we did was in Oblique, imperative by Corner Chagrita and French there by the gas station okay, I know this one, yeah, and we did it there, you know, and so we did a series of those that led up to the, to the album launch, which we did in Minshel, mars Camp, kerala Company, and it was our biggest show to that point. And then after that, yeah, it just became well. It took us two years again before we did it again, right, but after that it just kind of became a staple. It's just something that we really love to do. You know, they have the madness of carnival and traveling and everything, and then you come back and you go.
Corie:This is the roots, is where we come from, right I saw the connection with some of these songs you perform because, of course, I think at this point, once you'll see y, you all they want to hear the soakers. You all did. But that crowd was intimately connected to a lot of the songs that you all performed. Yeah, you wait time to see any tight spaces. The same kind of crowd coming back all the time you're seeing different faces.
Muhammad:That's the thing, like this particular tight spaces here. When I asked, it was like half the crowd had never been yeah, so you're talking to the newbies too.
Corie:That that was fun.
Muhammad:So Half the Crowd had never been, and that's what we see more and more these days. Like a lot of new faces, people curious. Like you say what is it exactly? They're hearing the soaker, but they're also hearing that or seeing that there's something a little more than that. So what is it? What's happening here?
Corie:I think they're hearing that in the soaker as somebody to songs and um, every song that you'll sing have something happening behind it. It happens to when you meet anyone of y'all from the band, so different though you all, have a bunch of people who, if I had to pick a crew, I don't think I could have picked all you, so so everybody's so different. Yeah, yeah, but when you listen to the music, something deeper happening or an intruder music and I'll just give everybody some advice. I know you said the 20 seconds is the next tight spaces. Yeah, don't reach late because Mohamed will put you on the spot he's not putting you on the spot.
Muhammad:I just say, no late, shaming is what I was saying you can't say that. They can't say that we're trying to sneak in, walking directly through the crowd so I just want to stop, not awkward for you okay, thanks, sir, I appreciate it.
Corie:As I said, man, I sit down in my car. Do you think? Say it's starting eight? I say right, or walking eight. That was a bad idea. You lady at the door say the door just close a sec, okay oh, you reach right then.
Corie:Yeah, you were right and as I open the door, as I open the door, you, you ready, that's like, oh, I should not come here and so gain, get settled. But it's a, it's a hell of a show, something I appreciate as well that you do, because I feel like if our, if I, was just a limit to the carnival space, or even you don't see it anymore. You don't see performances where you could see the performer or be as close to the performer as you are, yeah vulnerability is a dying art among artists, especially in our region.
Muhammad:Here, you know, the way that we approach things is is killing certain parts of us but we don't really realize. And then, when we kill those parts of us in ourselves and we don't manifest them in the art, the next generation picks up the art and, unless they have some kind of an intervention, they create the same type of art in a way you know what I mean and it kind of passes down Um, can I pass this down? Um? The art is supposed to be of the people, supposed to be listening to what the people going through, offering them a reflection of themselves but also offering them a way out, you know, um, easing their pain but also showing them where the pain come from so they could stop the pain ultimately. All of that, and you can't do that if you, if you're always on a stage that's about 20 feet higher than where the people are.
Muhammad:You know, I was talking to somebody yesterday and saying how crazy it is to me. I don't fit generally, right, but as a, as a form of well, you know, research, I would say that I cannot deep with but that too, but liking to get out, but also research right. So you go there and I went to a couple this carnival and one of the things that really surprised me was where the general is. Like it would be any vip stage front thing and then they'll have space behind the large crowd in the vip sometimes and then you look back there and there's a fence. It's kind of dark and then you walk up to them. You realize that there are thousands of people behind this thing. What that doing to us like we laugh about it and bungee said you know, um, you remember when the uptown massive and the downtown massive had no fences to separate? When I hear that I just feel sad in my chest I don't remember that time I never was a fetter in all that right but yeah, we're doing something that we
Corie:don't really realize how dreaded it is I want to go back to vulnerability before I get to the offenses. But when you say vulnerabilities are dying, you've been on behalf of the artists.
Muhammad:Being as vulnerable as this is to perform in a small space yeah, absolutely, because now these people they're looking at all your little micro expressions, they're looking at you know, do you really believe what you're saying? Because it's hard to put on a show in a in that much of an intimate session. It's not a show anymore. You really believe what you're saying? Because it's hard to put on a show in that much of an intimate session? It's not a show anymore. You're just telling you know, it's not a show. This is not a show, an acoustic thing where somebody is literally sitting down six feet in front of you and you have 50 people in a room. You can't escape. You cannot run behind costuming lights, nothing. You cannot run behind costuming lights, nothing. Two guitars, three supporting singers and one lead voice what?
Corie:are you doing? Completely exposed? Where are you?
Muhammad:going and now you have to give something else. What are you offering in this space? It's not spectacle. So what are you offering? And really what it is is honesty, but Jesus Lord.
Corie:Sometimes you don't feel to do that. I'd ask him about that, though, because for that, that level of vulnerability and, as you say, that honesty with the audience, soka is a genre that, more and more, is seeing less people like yourselves and more people whose songs are written for when. When a song is written for you, you feel it has the same effect or you could perform it with that level of honesty.
Muhammad:I wrote every single word for Feel you Love right, and a part of me thought that I could progress like that. But when you get to a certain point, one, it becomes kind of almost physically impossible to do if you have other things going on in your life, if you want to produce a certain amount on a certain level. But what I've really learned is if you talk into a nation, there is a part that you have to go in and search in yourself and and give a message. But it's also important to collaborate, because many people feel many different things about the same thing.
Muhammad:So when I sit down on this mevon myself, kit and lou as four grown men in a room who've all experienced take me home, for instance. We've all experienced that in different ways. So I remember we had gotten up to I'll cross any ocean to find it, the one I know, mountain gets in the way um, come across the water into the fire. And we were stuck come, okay, what next? And then lou said I know that my heart will show me the way and I'll always remember that moment. So would we have gotten that line, if you know?
Corie:If you try to do it on your own.
Muhammad:Yeah. So I'm saying there's a level of pride sometimes with artists and I was there where it's like I write all my songs, right, okay, but for who? And if there's ego involved in that statement, they had to be real careful. So I think that someone can interpret something that is written as deeply as it was intended and maybe even deeper If it resonates with them. The problem is that a lot of what is being written isn't being written for anybody. Anybody who wants to really interpret from their personal type of experience. It's. This is what the crowds want. Yeah, so I'll write this for you because I know this could be popular, but, as opposed to, I have a personal experience of this and I'm so sure well, I guess it would come down to song selection as well.
Muhammad:For a space like that, you're really choosing songs that you that's what people who have been successful at having writers that's that has been their thing. You know, um, when you look at patrice roberts catalog, she's good at and embodying it right and also embodying it right. So she have a singing sandra bedrock of energy and a something else on top of it and that's what resonates with us. So she's able to sing um, father, bless everybody in this party. She could give me that and at the same time, she could give us other things, of course. You know, I mean, um, and she has the authority because of how she carries herself, yeah, and so it is possible for people to embed, to embody it on a certain level, but that has to be the intention from the jump funny.
Corie:You say singing sandra. She was one of them who embodied it because, like for, for instance, voices of the Ghetto.
Muhammad:You can't tell nobody that Sandra did it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Corie:The writer, yeah, yeah yeah, doggy Slot, who was the writer. Sometimes it looks like, okay, how did that come together? But yeah, you can't tell. She writes in it every time she goes on a stage.
Muhammad:You can't tell Because she who feels it couldn't sing it. Yeah, I would imagine it would not connect that way. No, when we see singing sandra, we saw mother, we saw wisdom, we saw take care. Here we saw somebody who understood our pain and went through what you know, I mean, right.
Corie:So, yeah, yeah, embodying is something that is down to intention, I think so before I get into freesown and where that started, I was against your early life. I'm a boy born and grown in st james right, and on the other hand, you were born and grown in St James too. You live close to me, a few blocks away from me.
Muhammad:Yeah, St James, you say St James.
Corie:Yeah, I claim it, you know.
Muhammad:I was born in Caranage, oh you were born in Caranage, I'm trying to claim you as a St James man.
Muhammad:Upper School Street in Kailan, Right. My father was born when my father grew up on School Street Right and there was a river Upper School Street and when he got married to my mom I know his brother, my uncle deceased they went up there and they were planting and stuff and he built a board house up by the river. No running water, no lights. One of my earliest memories is seeing this man digging a cesspit by himself, bathing in the river with a fire hose. He was a giant of a man. And, yeah, that's where I was born. I was born in Caranage when I was about four years old. Maybe we moved from there and we moved to the number one Mukurapo Road, St James Jamaat al-Muslimin Muk, and we moved to number one Mokorapo Road, St James Jamaat al-Muslimin Mokorapo Road. I don't know if you can say that in St James, Maybe all I did is say James yeah.
Corie:St James too. All right, I grew up right on the opposite side of that cemetery, that's facing here.
Muhammad:We used to be jumping in that cemetery and picking dongs.
Corie:The cemetery was home. Yeah, a lot of people are. I hear people talking about symmetry and even in this thing that happened kind of symmetry.
Muhammad:So comfortable.
Corie:Later on in life I went Fatima too, so all my friends, other friends. I had to go Fatima St James, like Compre Junior, so it's always a me to walk through this cemetery.
Muhammad:It was, and now it's seen as this yeah, we buy a lot of stories that are not ours and that's not ours, and that's again coming back to the importance of the art. We bought a lot of things that's not ours. It's okay to buy things that's not yours, but when you begin to believe that they are yours, you know what I mean. Like you could buy it, but I didn't make that. That's another man's story. I like it.
Corie:It's a cool story to tell rules and Halloween and all that, that, but I know we should, of course we believe in ancestors.
Muhammad:We believe in life after death. We believe life doesn't end. This is what we believe, the other man's story.
Corie:We buy a lot of them things yeah, and sometimes at the expense of our own things, like I was talking in a marketing class the other day and a student brought up organic fruit, something he's like. Bro, what are you?
Muhammad:talking about organic brother. What are you talking about? What are you talking about?
Corie:they say organic and thing I say alright, I mean mango, we just pick in the neighbour yard and free range chicken, I say come and foul.
Muhammad:I remember somebody when I was younger decided to go to another primary school talking about the same thing and picking dungs in the and be like were you eating that, that tree feeding on dead people? I like cook. Is it best fruit?
Corie:is it best fruit? I always remember a random story, right? But um, uh, leroy Clark, who is his family, is close. There's he was there in the show, matter of fact, there's he and I. There's my son's godmother, my wife's, one of his best friends, you know, when I met him through my wife and so on, and she was pregnant, he told us bury the afterbirth and plant a fruit tree. Yes, yeah, you know what I mean. So that is the best kind of dongs, you know. So, yeah, I guess you're right. Like sometimes we lose some of that sense of who we are and where we're from and those things.
Muhammad:And again, the artist is on the front line of that battle because culture, culture is the border right and the thing that holds you and separates you in a good way from the rest of the world is what identifies you as you. And in this world of globalization and this kind of homogenized culture that we get it from TikTok and all that, what defines you as you is culture, and the artist is on the front line of defining what culture is and redefining what culture is. You know what I mean, of course. Yeah, the artist is the one who's warring on that front line.
Corie:Yeah, yeah, yeah, people don't see it because some of those even in the song. We come in and hear a song that you work on a year before, two years before, you're pushing it forward all the time. Yeah, so One Mokorapo Road, what was life like growing up for you there? Like that's a taboo thing for plenty of people to talk about during that era, you know.
Muhammad:What was it like for you growing up there? Number one, mokorapo Road, was an Afro essentially Afro-Muslim community of people who believed in doing good. So there was a doctor doctor's office at that place. Um, people could come for care, sure? Um, there was rehabilitation services at that place. Every day food was cooked. People used to come off of the street and know you can get food here. Anybody who had any issues in the community, anything that they needed, they could come to that place.
Muhammad:This is the part of the story that isn't told, because when we hear Jamaat al-Muslimin, we think big and bad Muslim take over the country and what have you. But the reason why the Jamaat al-Muslimin had so much power on the ground is because they used to look out for people. Every Friday, hundreds of meals were cooked and we and would go into Port of Spain and hand out food to people. I can't tell you how many community disputes were dealt with quietly out of the courts, you know. So people didn't have to go.
Muhammad:I talk about everything from stealing to murder, where the community would deal with it in a way that's satisfied, because right now, if a man get murdered, the police hold him, they carry him to court. It take 15 years for him to get whatever. He's the breadwinner of his family. How is that family being taken care of? We call it justice, but a breadwinner was removed and now our family is left alone. Who is paying that? Who is filling that gap? Justice is not what we think it is, and so the Jamaat al-Muslimin was a place where justice was offered to people in a different way. When you have an organization like that, it's very difficult for the law to deal with them, because they're operating outside of the purview of the law, which is rather strange. They're offering justice outside of the purview of the law.
Corie:Yeah, defining community, but it goes against what the state wants to define community actually.
Muhammad:My father and they. Some of my earliest memories is seeing my father, you know, put on his weapons and they'd go out in the night and they would go into these communities where they had drug dealers and thing and they would go and you know, they would go before and they would see these men and them. Yo, we can't sell drugs in the community. And my father told me when he was alive he said they would offer them different businesses. You could do this, you could do that, you could do that. If you don't want to do that, we come in for you of, of course, take your drugs, I'm going to take your money. They would destroy the drugs, right. And it got very complicated, as we know, because the way that the thing set up is not just the dealers that run in things. There's many, many layers, and so people began to personally come for people and whatever.
Muhammad:One of the Jamaat al-Muslimin members, abdul Karim, a young man who was going to UWE at the time he was going to St James to buy a roti was held by two police officers and they said that while they were walking him to St James police station, somebody jumped out of a taxi and stabbed him over 20 times, right, yeah, that case was actually won by his wife later on and whatever. But these were things that happened, you know. We were told as young boys, if the police stop you and they tell you to run, don't ever run, lie down or whatever, but don't run from them. You know what I mean, because these were the kind of we were victimized at that point in time. And so living in that community was me understanding that there was a world out there that was troubled and that it needed assistance of good people to right itself in the smallest ways and in the largest ways.
Muhammad:And that's what our community was to me. It was mothers, where everybody is everybody else's child. We didn't make any distinction between families. Nobody would go hungry. If I had something, it was yours. That's how it was. You know what I mean. But that community was also heavily persecuted. Every week the police would raid, you know, and drag all of us outside and everybody lying up in the mosque and whatever. We were so young, you know, we were watching the guns and things and it was a game for us. What kind of age were you then? I was under six years old, you know.
Corie:So you just was in a country. It was six when they grew up.
Muhammad:once we were watching guns and die my gun it's life, it was only after the coup I realised that guns were illegal. A lot of the things that was happening. I didn't understand that concept. So life was life.
Corie:I understand. I appreciate you going in depth with that because it's something that, as a little boy growing up in St James, all of us who grew up in St James have a different definition and understanding of what that was like. One of the things that is a kind of juxtaposition, and you know David Rattle here the other day he had sung that 1990, followed by well, the two songs, 1990, and then who Say? Who Say? Real juxtaposition for us as children, because on either side of that cemetery is Abu Bakr, on one side of the mosque there, and then on the next side is a hussayat. If you walk through both gates you're coming out right by a hussayat or the corner of clarence street and thing there.
Corie:And I used to I couldn't understand. It's the same thing you're saying as a child, I just don't understand it. But this is muslim people, muslim people, peaceful, they of community. They're giving and loving and kind and they will help you. Whether the help is is is disciplinary or you need a pickup, they will help you. Whether the help is disciplinary or you need a pickup, they will help you and it was the same energy in both spaces, except that you just used to. You know, when you see the news or you see what's happening, because you're seeing police pulling up by one, but no police. How many people say that? It's just a weird thing? As a child, you couldn't understand it.
Muhammad:You see, there's the type of peaceful individual that says my peace is rooted in my ability to take care of me and mine. What happens in the world is not my concern and that person lives. And they live until what's happening in the world comes in and disturbs their peace. There's another kind of peacefulness that says that my peace is rooted in the peace of everybody. None are free until all are free. That type of peace is very threatening to those who create corruption and different things. In the peace of everybody, none are free until all are free. That type of peace is very threatening to those who create corruption and different things in the world. That peace is not the peace that they want. They want the peace of the man who says I don't care what's going on out there.
Muhammad:I handed me and my family and whatever.
Corie:And close ranks.
Muhammad:Yeah, close ranks, but no matter how tight them ranks close, something's going to squeeze in there and cause something. So there has to be some level of concern, at least for the community around you. And when that concern is married to an ideology like islam that teaches us not to fear death, that teaches us that oppression is worse than slaughter, that teaches us different things. It's not that you're going looking for a fight. It's like 50 say I don't want to look for a fight if you bring it to me. Of course you know I mean like and nobody going looking for the fight, but we born into it, you know. I mean, let's say I was born in a system that doesn't give up about you or me or the lives of our little children.
Muhammad:We sit down singing this shit, but it's reality for you is what it is.
Muhammad:That is the reality, and so I was born within a community of men and women who decided right, I see the wrongs, I'm going to talk about them, I am going to act on them. In Islam it says if you see something wrong, you should reach out and try to stop it with your hands, and if you don't have the strength to do that, you should speak about it, and if you don't have the strength to even do that, you should hate it in your heart, and that's the weakest of faith. That's our philosophy. You marry that to the ideology of community and the ideology that peace doesn't exist unless it exists among all people, then you have a problem on your hand. But if you really examine most native cultures and cultures that are rooted in community, that is the idea you'll find those similarities.
Corie:Yeah, yeah, so that's what I'm talking about. For instance, I have many corner dengue street and anderson streets. I grew up two houses from there, so I used to see the jammer used to come up every year in numbers. That's right, go to that spot to pray all the time. So again, just observing it through a child's eyes, you're trying to understand what it is. You know, everybody come up, everybody's so serious, everybody so. And even 1990 was a shocking thing for me because you, just you don't understand everything that happened. All I remember is that I thought it was a parody. I just see somebody on tv the night and they're talking. I say, boy, finally somebody making some joke with the news and them kind of things. But at that point you are child, just experiencing it. You, you only you on in my grandpa when that happened no, my grandmother, we sitting on there.
Muhammad:My mother didn't know, nobody knew. I see news come on and imam on the news. The imam is like a father to all of us.
Corie:He's the imam.
Muhammad:He's like this mythical figure to us right so the imam on the news and he's seeing brother Hassan and brother Kala and people like you know they're on the news so we make it annoying.
Muhammad:My mother, like, hush, shut up, go inside, like what going on, of course. Then all of a sudden the whole, the whole atmosphere becomes tense. What's happening? Like? What is actually going on? You know, my mother, I remember so. In in islam, you, you get buried in a white shroud, pine box, white shroud. It don't matter if you have a billion dollars or whatever. So my dad had his burial shroud. He gave it to her. She had it right. I don't know when she got it, I don't know how they, but she didn't know what was happening. But she had it and she washed it and had it hang up on the line in the back of the yard. And I remember when the explosion went off in TTT.
Muhammad:Hmm didn't expect that way, hmm hmm, yeah, corey, you're digging up things, not on purpose yeah, boy, when the explosion went off in ttt she had it washed and I was hanging up on the line and it was like I was only six. But it became real real. It came real real at that point in time like yo shit so your granny?
Corie:then the whole scene is where so yeah, you're hearing that bro we see in the fire of course, st james was the same experience.
Muhammad:We're seeing everything we're hearing everything TTT's right there on Maraval Road as I walk across the savannah no boy. And so it's like all of a sudden, as a child, it become real, like shit we in danger.
Muhammad:You're hearing that the police on top the Hinton snipers and they're looking for all of the families. So I remember we realized at one point we had to leave from Belmont and my grandfather. We got a place to stay in, maraca, st Joseph. My uncle had a place with a bush in the back and he was like you could come up there and pick up Uncle Larry, and my mom had to take off her hijab and we were in the car.
Muhammad:I remember she was, we were in the back seat and she was lying down behind the seats there we were going up, you know, and as a child you kind of still don't have a sense of what it is. But yeah, we were basically in hiding for like a year and something of.
Corie:Of course, for younger people who might not understand what was happening in the coup. The armed forces at that point was any Muslim, so the hijab would have been dangerous.
Muhammad:Yeah, I mean, there are stories of families who got taken down to Tetron. You know, boys who were older than me and things questioned and had guns put in their mouth and all kind of thing. You know. It was a real dread time and I understand what. What was happening, what we were doing, what did you matter muslim did? It was dread so the response had to be dread too.
Corie:I'm not saying that it was you know, but, man, what a time yeah, of course, of course of course and we had a point where you know you hope that more and more people tell these stories a moment, because every july 27 there's a expose, a documentary or whatever is here. It's only time where people come and tell. But I do feel as if sometimes, as a boy grew up in st james, I always feel like if, okay, I mean again both sides of this story and sometimes all right, so cooler heads prevail. Plenty years pass, plenty people not here who was involved in that? No, no, it is a good time to start to explore.
Muhammad:Yeah, it's funny, like I, that we should be gay. I didn't think, for whatever reason. I didn't think we would get here, which is fine, though, but last night, or night before, I was thinking to myself that I have to. I need to go on my Instagram and I need to curate some stories about this and get some of the people that I know to talk about it as well.
Muhammad:Just from perspective right because this is a part of our national treasure, it's a part of everything that we have to go back and review the tape and see what we did or didn't do, because I don't think, I'm not sure that we learned the lesson, I'm not sure that we learned the. There's always the possibility of it being repeated and the problem with that is that I doubt that it would be that organized if it happened again yeah, yeah, yeah Well, at least you're not seeing any.
Corie:There's no movement, at least not visible to people. No, and that is not the answer. No, of course it's not the answer. Yeah, well, I mean, you do a great job on your Instagram. Them a stories. I mean, granny, you have granny granny's a whole superstar more famous than I am she gave me a famous attitude and thing like she let me know she's on charge. She's a star she don't know what instagram is no so she wait, she have no idea.
Muhammad:Really, all she knows is that when she go out, people just, and sometimes she's just like why. All these people know me, of course, what's happening, you know why, but, but I'm real happy for that?
Corie:Yeah, of course I never thought of it from that standpoint, Like she not consider what happened on the next and she just know you recording To her. It's just you and her.
Muhammad:It is fun People on the camera and she's lighter.
Corie:Nice, nice, nice. That's why I'm giving her some attention.
Muhammad:Yeah, right talking to her and thing whatever she just said you know.
Muhammad:Yeah, it's nice to live through a era where we could document these things yeah, well, that's one of the main reasons that my nieces I have two nieces that real young, you know, and they she's not gonna live into a part of their consciousness for them to really store who she is in a certain kind of way. So I've captured these things for me, for my sisters, for my family, but those two little ones you know, and the ones who may come, who might not be there, might just never know. Her, yeah, of course.
Corie:Yeah, of course this was our person. Yeah, it's only the blessings of social media.
Muhammad:Like we could come up Again. It's come like when you say if somebody could interpret the song as well as it was narrated, who wrote it? It was the intention.
Corie:I got you.
Muhammad:When you approach Instagram. It was the intention.
Corie:Now you're documenting that, just to step back a little bit and that almost, like I would say I don't know if it's natural or not, but it feels very natural, like storytelling ability. I wonder how much of it carries through your writing now because it's something that I feel like I was telling you before we started. I called lucas here and he was talking about dollar wine. Right, it's by far biggest, one of the biggest songs in socal and I was talking to him about how much of a story he told you it had a thing she wanted to learn to dance. He's thinking to send five sentences all the way to the end of the song where she's teaching him how to wind up.
Corie:And I feel like listening to your music or the band's music over the last two weeks or so, just preparing for here, there's a sense of story that lives in your music and I feel like now we miss some of it. It feels like Colin described this as we have songs where people put five hooks together and you love this song and you're fed to it, but you can't remember nothing about it. So deliberate for you, or this is just part of who you are the storytelling part.
Muhammad:It's well so. Lou and I started off as spoken word poets. Okay, a poet is nothing without a story, like if a poem not telling a story, what is it doing? You know what I mean. A poem have a beginning, middle and an end, unless you are purposefully trying to do something else. And so when we transitioned into music, we were storytellers from the very beginning. I love to transition was the first song that we ever wrote, you know.
Corie:So the band started with just two of you meeting and connecting. It was abroad because I hear you talking about writing songs in London. We all met on Zoom it very quickly went abroad.
Muhammad:So we started the band in early 2010. We kind of started talking about doing something and we wrote a song together. I had a song that he jumped on and then we wrote another song together and we realized something was happening. And then, by August of of the same year, we were invited to go to london and, yeah, the rest is history based on the song performing as a band, based on, yeah, two songs that we had. That people saw us performing these songs and they were just like yeah, there's a group of us that went over myself, lou keegan maharaj, who was one of the original members of freetown collective as well, and then Taharaka Ubika, who is in parliament now yeah, he was there yeah he was a poet.
Corie:I see, I did see him do some spoken word on a podcast recently.
Muhammad:Yes, I see we all went over and we did a show and over there Lou and I wrote about three more songs and we made the decision to try to do something with this. When we came back home we didn't know what that was gonna be, but got it.
Corie:Here we are and when you say you're saying, write songs, but you're a poet, so you're singing and thing at that point, or you're just delivering a little expo.
Muhammad:Okay, yeah, lou was. Lou was playing guitar and learning and I was there to sing learning to sing.
Corie:So where does that? So it was naturally like growing up singing and all that kind of thing.
Muhammad:I I grew up reciting the quran and I grew up singing in the choir in primary school. I see, um what primary school is this? Um st joseph tml okay, gotcha and then I had an experience, um with some, some boys in the area I was living in in curie boys.
Muhammad:The men unbended knee was out and I had a real high voice and the man was like jokingly trying to sing the song and me as a boy of nine years old, closed my eyes and real singing because I was singing, leading the choir, and when I opened back my eyes, these fellas who I was looking up to new you know, new crew was having the time of their life, laughing at me. Done sing, laughing, done sing. I done sing, bro, I done. That's it. I tried to sing again in secondary school but I developed such stage fright that I couldn't. I couldn't make it. Yeah, when I was in CIC I tried to sing in a calypso competition and right, a calypso about being bullied and whatever, and go up on stage there and choke out. Yeah, and that was the day for the career. Seriously done. Did not sing again until. Did not sing in front of people again until Free Town, until I was 20, 26.
Corie:So what? What caused it to trigger where you could get over it to do it?
Muhammad:A couple of things, but one of the things was I used to drop brothers and sisters and them to school. Sometimes I would take them to the hike and thing and when I picked them up in the car and I put on the radio, they singing all of these songs word for word car tell and thing, and that bothered me alright, because I realized yeah, they would like my poetry, but I didn't have the access to them that music had.
Muhammad:So I said, right, well, that is it a, and I wrote a few songs not very good songs and poems kind of mixed in, right, and I I don't even remember what those songs were because I didn't. It didn't stay for a while. I just kind of wrote that for them and I put it on a cd and I probably was like two or three songs I recorded by Corey Corey-san and I gave them on my CD and she played it in the car and sing, and within two weeks they were singing all these songs word for word and that kind of.
Muhammad:I didn't, I didn't think to pursue it at that point. But then I wrote a song called Love Trans transition and then lu, who had love transition and he was like I want to be on that song and that's so how y'all connect?
Corie:because when they say he heard, we're all his friends at the time yeah, yeah.
Muhammad:So we had met in 2005, right um, at an open mic that I was hosting, and he came in and just blew me away. I was like yo, this man, amazing, and we set up and talk all night, and then I didn't know he was from Tobago we didn't exchange numbers or anything like that, you know.
Muhammad:and then he disappeared for like four years I didn't see him 2005. And in 2009 I went to Tobago to perform and I performed this piece and when I was done he walked up to me and he had an Ethiopian cross on a red, gold and green shoelace around his neck and he took it off and he put it around my neck and he watched me. I said use that guy. I said use that guy. We've basically been inseparable since then.
Corie:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, sometimes you watch your favorite band and you just kind of hope that the members is really friends. But you know how it does go sometimes. You know people just do our job sometimes.
Muhammad:It seems like, like you all are genuine, a genuine connection. Yeah, no, no, no, that's my brother. Yeah, that's a soul mate, yeah for sure.
Corie:Yeah, destined to find one another? Absolutely, yeah, it benefits us a lot. I could tell you that benefits us a lot. Good, good, good. And I was listening to I don't want to lie to you. There was an album I pulled up here, yago and um, it was funny when I saw the intro to it being a nancy, because I felt like you know the whole storytelling thing. And then I hear Anansi, so the spoken word, it makes sense, yeah yeah, yeah, I mean, that's who we are.
Muhammad:The music should carry something. The intention shouldn't just be I hope they like it. You bury things in there that they will find after you go on. You know people will dig up and they will talk about they will write theses or theses, I don't know they're right.
Corie:Yeah, I don't know the answer.
Muhammad:Yeah, feces sounds so close to feces. I don't know why I say that, but I feel like it's that because english real messed up sometimes you just have to say more than one thesis, more than one thesis will be written about. How about? But you know, like, because a song has the potential to live forever and it also is a library in itself. Yeah, you should. You should create things that have a level of depth that people could draw from all the time.
Muhammad:You know all the time you know all the time they could just draw from there's. There's something about a song that is perfect in the sense of words are in and of themselves, failures. All right, if you say water, yeah, what is that? So, when you say water, there's a library that opens up in your head of all the things that you've learned about water. What we learn in more and more is that all of these things that science has said, science is also a progressive discovery of our own ignorance, right, so it's just moving on. Okay, that's not true. That's not true, correct? But water as a word is a library in itself, right. So when you say water, your brain opens up and it offers you all of these things. Right, it offers you all of these things. But we know that the word is a failure. Probably the greatest failure of a word that we have is the word God.
Muhammad:It totally fails to describe anything you know masculinity, femininity these are all failures that are trying to describe things that have extreme worth to us and value and meaning right. But when you marry the words to a melody and the artist now kind of embodies their lived experience of it, you have all of these things happening, lived and embodied experience. The word that is in and of itself a failure but allows you a certain level of lexicon, and then the melody that ties it to your memory. Something happens when you mix all of those three things together that does things to human beings who are essentially flawed themselves. But there's something that happens there when you marry those three things together that are all just trying to ascend, trying to to give something more than themselves. If the intention is correct and it's all mixed together in the right way, it does something to the human being so you're, you're, you're right and like, even listening to the albums, there's not, it's not.
Corie:It's hard to say okay, freetown is this genre, because I hear things that's something like heavy rock. I want to know who plays some of them guitars and them things something like heavy, like rock dark scatter oh, that's what it is on human.
Muhammad:Go, listen to the end of human form. There's the most. Go and listen to the end of human form. Yeah, there's the most amazing guitar solo played by Dark Scatter.
Corie:Yeah, the solo sounds like Everything throughout the song.
Muhammad:I mean the solo sounds like a man who has been lit on fire and is running through a forest to go and jump off a cliff.
Corie:Well, there's so much happening in that song we can't tell you. Like I'm walking around the savannah and I say I want to immerse myself in what your guy's doing, I want to find that space. And boy, a song starts and I hear dogs on the back.
Muhammad:I nearly take off, yeah yeah, yeah, it's so real, it's visceral, right. Yeah, the mastermind, sheriff and lou, really masterminded that album, the whole album. Yeah, I did a lot of the writing on that album and sheriff and lou in terms of the music but, sheriff really took us under his wing at that point in time and, yeah, I I believe that what we did with that album, yeah, it was a contribution to the history of philadelphia yeah, does he feel it right in the dreadful place at this point?
Muhammad:You know we can always judge and say you know this didn't get what it needed or this didn't, or people didn't, but I don't like to dwell on that. When we released that album, space for a Heart went to number one on iTunes for two weeks. That's unheard of. Space for a Heart is not a song that goes to number one on iTunes in Trinidad that doesn't happen. So we're real grateful for that. And many things happened through the course of that album and what that music was able to do, that we're real, real grateful for. What that album will do in the future. Will it reappear in some child's hands 5,000 years from now?
Muhammad:so they could understand that Caribbean people had more depth than what was sold to them by the world. You know like I don't know, but we made it.
Corie:It's there and that was important yeah, so you are in in approaching that album. You're not. You're staying away from anything, anything that's tiny, down to anything, because space for us was also unexpected when it reached the end of the album is like who is this? Yeah you know and I saw sheriff talking about you all deliberately wanting to close the album there- yeah.
Muhammad:So we had all the songs and they were like we need a love song, we have to close the album, we need something you know because the album started off on one, it started aggressive, it started on one, yeah, yeah and, um, I had this song that I had written on guitar and I thought it was real cheesy.
Muhammad:Yeah, I came to the, I came to the studio and I say, fellas, I, I had. You know, I feel in real, I had something I know what. And again, this is the vulnerability, right, this is like a space that offers you the chance to to be this way, because I have two brothers here who not gonna laugh at me, right, I come, you know this love song and I, you know, I was with someone at the time that I really love I can't say loved. I love this person. And I actually saw her two nights ago and I came with the guitar and I sat down and I played this and I was so shy to play it.
Muhammad:I closed my eyes and I was singing it, closed my eyes and I played something and when I opened my eyes, sheriff had already opened up the session on Logic. He started to record and and thing. And when I opened my eyes, sheriff had already opened up the session on on logic to start to record. And how we recorded it was they took the lights off or they put the lights low in the room, they put a stool and they put the mic down so I could sit down and they left the room and most of that song, other than the chorus of course, was freestyled. So all of the verse I was born to be a storm, all that those things were freestyle at that point in time, which is crazy to me when I listen back to it, because of the depth that it carries and what it means to me.
Corie:But, um, love will do that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you were saying you didn't expect it to be a wedding song, like you didn't know where it was going. What?
Muhammad:again. It's like you don't know what people are gonna do with what the music when you put it out right we had never performed in weddings before that, because we just had music that was like real revolutionary. And then here's this song coming along, bro, every time wedding season comes around. Now it's like three tongue in about five.
Muhammad:But oh nice, yeah, every year it just the song just resurges every year around a certain time and then it's quiet, you know, and then somebody will find it, and it's a real beautiful thing yeah, of course, of course.
Corie:I mean the lyrics of the song is touching. If you ever feel love or you want to know why it's a good song, like people should listen to it. You know, space for heart, yeah, space for heart, yeah, powerful, powerful song. The very surprising, because I met you outside um by ozzy herself, by ray's bar, when they were doing some performances, and I remember, uh, talking to you about soca somebody. So you're doing at the time cassandra being one of my favorites and he's saying, well, maybe you're only doing soca like three, four years now.
Muhammad:You know literally, 2020 would have been the first year that we really entered into the foray, with, with um feel the love.
Corie:I wonder if that's the only business. Surprise when you say that it feels like you've been doing it forever just because of how long the name has been around and that kind of thing well, we, we man, we've just been successful at finding our, our, our space.
Muhammad:And, you know, give god the praise for that, because I don't have a formula for it. No, your formula is be yourself. The formula is when lu say he feeling this go. Go with it, and something in Lou belly flip-flopping, then we have something. I could feel like we have something, but I don't fully just trust that alone, because I didn't get here on my own and there's a feeling that that happens Right. So, man, if God say we going, we going, there, we go.
Corie:So what was that? Is that a choice, like you're saying, um, we should do soca because we're from here, because it seemed as though the initial albums it was not. It have a few songs, I feel wanted to head to soca a little bit, but um, is that deliberate choice at that point saying we trainees, we should be doing soca, we did a?
Muhammad:song called where I am and released it like in the middle of january or something like that, because we don't know nothing about carnival and releases or whatever right. Um, and that was the first time we had like an intention of trying to do a soca. Okay, how do we sound as soca artists? Because carnival is a space where, you know, it's like our largest cultural connection. Everybody comes there to feed, to come to get something. That's when we listen to ourselves the most, it's when we are most ourselves, it's when all of the culture just kind of comes together. Nobody should miss out on that. If you are Trinidadian, if you are Trinbigonian, that is a time when you should access something, because it is a swelling of ancestral energy, it is a heightening of our sense of self and the world sees that as beautiful and we see it as beautiful. It's a time when we are open to ourselves. And, yeah, so we made a decision to not, you know.
Muhammad:And then ryan came along at a real opportune time and he had a rhythm, um, that nyla was supposed to be on and and kes eventually came on and I wrote this song for his soca brainwash that year, which was supposed to be entitled wonderland. So the idea was to write a song that could encompass the thing and the song was called wonderland. At first, when you see the original demos and yeah, it feel the love came out of that. And once feel the love hit, it was like well, you don't get that gift. And then turn away and say no, I don't want that and yeah, no you know, we saw how we could be ourselves in that space, and that was the problem.
Muhammad:Before we didn't know how we could go into that space and not become something else right that we didn't want to be.
Corie:Yeah, you know so when you said it become something else you didn't want to be, in terms of the ban on the identity or the ban you mean, I mean terms of the message, in terms of what it seems or what it seemed.
Muhammad:You had to be in that space, Okay, you know. So over the years we saw Voice come up and do his thing. We came up. Now you have Mikal, now you have treasure sorry you have mccall, you have kutin.
Muhammad:I think it's showing younger ones that sukkah is not just bam bam, rag, wave pen over whatever. It's more than that. That is a part of it. So we're not down crying that. There's no self-righteous of course, sermon, this is just, there's this and there's that right. You know, I mean, back in the day we had balance, a beautiful balance. You had aloes and you had baron, who was the crooners, of course, and we need crooners because you're speaking directly to the hearts of the women and the family and when you're cooking your food sunday morning, and that's a part of the nation that needs to be handled in a kind of a way. So you have your crooners and you have men like sparrow. You know your your ultimate man.
Corie:If you want to put it that way, any?
Muhammad:direction. Yeah, you know that, that, that shango energy. Right, you have that and there's a balance there. Then you have on the outliers of that, now you have your andre tankers and your nappy myers. You know the wistful souls, the Travelers and Returners. You know those who live in a kind of an in-between space but affecting the culture. Then you have your Shadows and Stalins and Valentinos.
Muhammad:These men refused to go through any other door than the door of spirit. This is the door they was going through. So you have men coming through the door of. You know the crooners and shadow and spiral, but you have now the spiritual men. Yeah, you know the shaman of your time. You need all of these things to balance. Somewhere along the line we lost the balance. Somewhere along the line we lost the balance and there are many stories as to why, but I believe that the reason that this year in particular felt the way it felt to everybody it was unanimous that 2025 there was something about this kind of yeah, for sure, that felt satisfying and it's because we had the balance well, you think is the.
Corie:I was talking to somebody and I was asking them if you know if it's just the first time we come back out since covid in full, but you see it as a young brother gave us greatest Ben over, and that energy he's defining himself in that space because people, as hackers, though, we don't need steam, but we need the steam of course, of course, we need that energy, and you have Teja existing in this kind of spiritual space as well.
Muhammad:You have Kutain, who is the rebirth of the kruna and kes so we have our krunas back.
Corie:We didn't have krunas for a while. I'm with you.
Muhammad:I'm with you, you have fritong, in a kind of space where we're somewhere in between the krunas and the spirit, but really coming through the door of spirit and you have your heavyweights, then you have your marshals and you have your bungees holding down certain aspects, it starts to feel balanced again, like your culture breathing. You don't know what you're going to hear from Kuti next. You don't know what you're going to hear from Teja or Fritong, or from brother. Anything can happen in this space, because remember brother went in Calypso Monarch.
Corie:Yeah, and hold it Impressively. I watched that man on Skinner Park stage which you talk to some of the bads who sit down right where you are here now and they tell you what Skinner Park really is and I watched that youth he was in this life before that man walk out to the edge of that stage and give that song and say goodnight Skinner Park.
Muhammad:When you call your calls and when you decide to answer the call, everything in the universe conspires to make you achieve what you want to achieve.
Corie:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He achieving it in in a space. I like the. I like the conversation about balance. It's something to contemplate because I always say the audience tells you when we lack in. So I remember early 90s when it was heavily dominated by preach writers like preacher, but super blue runny them first and then dominating the space, but it gets to be a jump and wave time. All these songs are similar kind of code structure, similar kind of message and you know, the instruction era was born in Soka and people kick up a fuss. The audience love it. But I like the way you put it. That's balance. You saw it with the Bajan invasion too. The thing went so far in power Soka. That term didn't exist then. But people wanted that Balance, balance, balance, and. But you know that people wanted that balance. Yeah, and now bungee calling back for that balance.
Muhammad:Nowhere, power seemed to be missing a little bit from the yeah, we all have to look at the culture as a tapestry and we are all pieces of the fabric of this tapestry. And when it, when it's hard to go over, you see a little hole here, you say, well, all right, do I have the power to fill this space? No, can I inspire somebody to go off. Where you see a little hole here, you say, well, all right, do I have the power to fill this space? No, can I inspire somebody to go and fill that space? Because we need, we need more engineers, we need some. Yeah, we need some writers. Boy, how come? How come we don't have as many female writers as possible? What cause in somebody who do we need to talk to? How do we get into the like? You know, that's what. That's what it is. As an artist, I think you have this bird's eye view, and anybody really. You look at it and it's just. You go okay, their space is to be filled. Where can I fill this space? You?
Muhammad:know I have a random question for you know because of this, but the space for youth you see in it emerging more in soca, like I wonder sometimes, like you do see a whole lot of young artists coming out all the time we have a problem where there's, there's, there's and I don't have the exact description of the problem, I don't have the exact prognosis, true, but there's a meeting place of fets, promoters, culture, money, something inside of there where no one wants to take a bet and no crowd has been nurtured to want to listen to the new Right, right. So where's the space? Not just some random tent on the edge of a forest Right? Where's the space inside the culture for the ones who are coming up? I'll tell you one space Welcome to Freetown. Over the last how many years we were featuring Kootenai before Trinidad realized what they had Right. Jimmy October has been there, annalie Prime has been there.
Muhammad:So we need spaces that are in the mainstream, or at least close to the mainstream, that feature the younger ones and give them a real opportunity to come out to show what they have, to show that they're able to take the bigger stages and, if they're not, at the point in time to give them the opportunity.
Muhammad:You know what I mean. It can't just be. We have to realize that it is us that have to replenish this natural resource, and a part of the replenishing of the natural resource of artists is giving the ones who are not quite there yet, the opportunity to gain some experience. You could see it, they right there, and that one performance in fatima, that one performance in, in, in, in veil, vibe or wherever, might bring them out. They just need a little thing to turn and realize oh right, this is how you, you know, and I've been there for sure as a new person into soca, I could tell you, my turning point was fatima this year, do you mean this year? No, no, in terms of performing in front of soca audiences right as a whole different beast.
Muhammad:My turning point for performance right in front of soca audiences was fatima this year. I don't know what happened, but I developed something that I feel gave me a lot more confidence than I had before. Okay, so there's a space for them. You know, they need to feel unafraid to reach out, and then those of us who are in a position to assist need to. We can't answer everybody when they call, of course, but there are those like when I met Kutin, I knew immediately. I was like. When I met Jimmy, I knew. When I met Annalie, I knew, you understand, they have a youth called Kilu right now coming up. Yeah Right, they are youths. Sharifa Salman.
Corie:Yeah, sharifa, salman Salman.
Muhammad:It's very simple and easy to see. There's a youth called Tuflas. There's a youth called Mahestiz. There's a couple of them coming up who are doing things, and it mightn't be directly in the vein of what you know.
Corie:There's a youth um a girl.
Muhammad:Her name is ella, real amazing voice. She needs some voice, you know. But balance.
Corie:Yeah, of course, so with you balance.
Muhammad:We can't all just be concerned with our own careers. Our careers are fed by the culture. Culture is fed by our careers in a symbiotic circular relationship. Every now and then, as that circle continues to draw itself, it must be a kind of a centrifugal force pulling others in. Of course the culture continues to be fed. Otherwise what you'll have is a monopoly where you have 10 people were hired by everybody and the circle among the successful.
Corie:Yeah, it against the form.
Muhammad:Those people not necessarily even wanting in our way to work as circles go.
Corie:If you continue that way, the circle starts closing in on itself, it closes in on itself and then it dies.
Muhammad:But also it loses context and it closes in on itself and a wider circle happening around it. It loses connection with what is actually happening. So there's nobody in Channel Island Tobago who is in culture, who shouldn't know the name Kutain, but some people do.
Corie:And some people who are very important in the culture too, didn't? It's crazy. Nobody should not know who Annalie Prime is. Nobody should not know who Sharif Asal is yeah, but it happened, but it happened.
Muhammad:You walk into the offices of these people and they're like, wow, who is this? Well, they've been around for like six years.
Corie:People are doing shows, selling out shows, seasoned performers, but it's funny and my unsolicited opinion. But when I heard Feel your Love, so when you all release songs, it's almost confusing. You don't know what to think or what to feel. You know you like, like it, but it's hard to box in. It feels very different. Feel in love was the first time. With that and even the connection with Private Ryan, it seems strange because you see you start seeing Free Town as a brand, as almost a sort of bohemian group who do in this kind of you know, and then all of a sudden you hear Private Ryan for a fet like Brain, which was as commercial as it gets, but the song and I feel like there's an opinion coming in this more than creating spaces for youth, I feel like that song in particular and what you've all been doing since then giving youth permission to be themselves in the space, the whole point, brother.
Muhammad:Okay, good, that's been the point from the very beginning. You could check back a million interviews. The one thing, lou and I always say, the whole point of this, is to give people the permission to be themselves. Okay, good To realize that there are people out there who are successful at being themselves. I am not a party goer. I am not by nature an extrovert. Anybody in my family. If you tell them, if you told them 20 years ago, that Muhammad Muwakil was going to sing and be on big stages performing, they'd be like that quiet, no, quiet. Little youth, you know, didn't want none of this. But what is wrong with that? I will go up on the big stage, sing, share along, as they say, or whatever, make something happen in people and I will very quietly go back in Belmont in my little months you know, and I will go on a little hike and I will be in the forest for a little while and I this is me, but it doesn't mean that I don't have something to say.
Muhammad:Of course I don't have to be the embodiment of wildness and the embodiment of our fat culture and drinking and liming all the time and all. I don't have to be that to touch the souls of our people, our gri, griots and bads, people like shadow and Stalin and things.
Muhammad:People was recluse real plenty times, you know brother says, so you know he says a man in blanchettures, when people feel like sitting down here, listen, I just trying to buy a piece of land build a little nice little board, place on it a little wooden house and be in my place painting and writing and being inspired, and to come out from there and to deal with the world. But I don't have to be the embodiment of the world. As a matter of fact, I don't want to be. There's no desire in me to be the embodiment of what the world is right now. It's like Leroy Clark used to say all the time. He said to lead them you have to leave them. He said it all the time as a young guy. I don't really understand, but if you want to make a change in the place, you cannot be like the place. And to not be like the place you have to be outside of the place a little bit and observe it. You know and observe it.
Corie:So you're expecting that reaction when you did Soka the first time. When you finish your song, you know you have something you don't know nothing. Yeah, you keep saying that.
Muhammad:Yeah, it's like praying. You know, you believe that there is a God and sometimes it's difficult with the senses that you've been given. I know that this table is here because I could feel the table, I could think, but you believe, you know. So it's like praying. A poetry song and you do your best, you know you do your best, you write it, you try to listen to what is existing and lean some into that, while not totally excluding who you are, and I'm a poet. So I want to put some poetry in the song, but I know if I put too much.
Muhammad:I'm going to lose people because I'm a man reading, you know Kamal Braffet and Wilcox and whoever, and didn't you know, come out braffet, and yeah, we not wherever, and you know people not. But that's me. I enjoy that and I'm not going to be shamed for that. I like that. Yeah, my brain real like that.
Muhammad:I love imagery and metaphor, complicated sentences and words and thing, but I can't get people out just so. So there's a lean in, you know, and lou definitely helped me to strike a balance, and when we go in these rooms it's important for the collaboration because that's where I find the balance too.
Corie:But, um, you never know, yeah, you never know yeah you hope, you know and that's what all the songs you, yeah, yeah yeah, I thought midsection was gonna blow up you know, every man alive, without question.
Muhammad:When I listen back to it now, I see where I might have um gone wrong in certain areas okay, not gone wrong.
Corie:Yeah, but you could have done differently balance of things. Okay, okay, you know again, balances you with your passion with you and the visual nature right, and from poetry to when he say a laughing flame and them things so Second Star asked me about that line one time and I thought that that was like a literary term.
Muhammad:Yeah, I think I remembered hearing that somewhere like a laughing flame. Okay, so I went and I googled it. It's not, it's nowhere.
Corie:Yeah it stands out so what the hell?
Muhammad:I can't put this, but I don't know. I showed somebody a picture of it yesterday. Fili Love was written on a piece of paper this morning.
Corie:Well, you have it.
Muhammad:Yeah, I keep saying I need to frame it.
Corie:Yeah, please, yeah.
Muhammad:But yeah, it's like I remember sitting in my room in Belmont and sometimes I feel like if I breathe too hard, that house will mash up and I just feel like the energy just spilling, you know, and that first line came this city can't hold me, like this whole town, this whole place. And I thought about all of you two studying in different places and have these big dreams that come from small places. A small place can't hold a big dream. You have to shatter it. You know, this city, literally it was this place, port of Spain it can't hold me anymore.
Muhammad:My vibes too high and in that moment and my heart it told me jump right now. You're going to touch the sky, not later, not before. You will touch the sky, feel my love unfolding, because that's what's going to happen the expanse of my love that I feel for this place and for the world and wherever you will feel that unfolding like a laughing flame. I don't know what that is, but I do remember there's this cartoon, like a real old time cartoon, and there was this little flame that was laughing and everything it touched it was lighting up fire in this whole little room. You know, maybe that's where the imagery came from in my mind and everything I touched it was lighting on fire in this whole little room, you know, and maybe that's where the imagery came from in my mind, in my subconscious, I don't know, like a laugh in flame.
Muhammad:And then I had a little bit of a debate with myself over that next line. I didn't know what the line would have been and when the line all who did not?
Muhammad:know me when I done the gomun kind of cocky, and maybe I shouldn't say that, but it ended up being prophetic in a way and it made me realize that you have to speak yourself into existence, especially when you're dealing with music. There's a you that you want to be and a you that you want other people to be, and how you want to be seen and how you want to be received, and you have to speak that into existence.
Corie:Sometimes you know I was wondering if that was where it was. Like freetown has been there all the time and now you'll know the name. It was a bit of braggadocious behavior.
Muhammad:It was like yeah, if we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this.
Corie:All who did not know we when we done, they gonna know we name my experience with that song was playing mass with you the morning and as I was reaching earlier, if mass starting 10 o'clock I recorded to 10 a 10, I'd be like it's a job to me and I remember each truck, one by one, starting off with that song in the morning, because it's an awkward time. People still very self-conscious, you know they don't come out of your house, you know they say Adam and Eve, they recognize your nakedness. I think that's what is happening, that awkward time in the morning and the song. I mean you hear any song, whole, kind of all at that point in time. But when it play on the trucks on the road, that like that morning it's like where's this? And that feel he loves.
Corie:So when you said the city care home, I always envisioned it as a mass thing, like you're going through certain parts of playing mass. I like St James because it's spacious when you get to St James, because it's spacious when you get to St James, but when you get close to the Savannah it gets so tight. It's just what you're describing in Belmont. I also want to ask you how are you capturing what a mass player is going through? As a man who's not in that, but I understand now you're coming from a different place.
Muhammad:Mass is a metaphor for life, right In some of the greatest of ways. Because of right in the, in some of the greatest of ways, because of the reality that has been created for us, we suspend our true selves. For the majority, most of us, for the majority of our lives, and in their infinite wisdom, our ancestors created festivals like pagwa, like carnival, knowing that the human being needs these things to express themselves. We go now and we make um, what we call it, these um, the, the angry rooms where he's going. But there were festivals. Mass allows us to be our full self, whatever that means. So don't think bikini and beads alone. Think the dragon, of course. Think the moko jumbie, think these are all expressions of the human soul.
Muhammad:Why do some people want to walk on stilts? What is it doing for their spirit? What call them to do that? What call a man to make a dragon costume every year and go out on your and and and? What call a man to be a bat? What call a man to be a sailor? Something in him. And so when I, when I write and I know that I want to put the music in that space what I want to do is really show people. This space is life, and if we could find the middle ground to understand what it is, we are actually enacting how rich. This is what this is supposed to be for us. It's not just a street party. You cannot say it all the time. This is what this is supposed to be for us is not just a street party. You cannot say it all the time, minch. You say it all the time. This is a living ritual. What is your intention? Going into this ritual?
Corie:I'm with you. I have a hundred songs to ask you about the moment. I end up keeping you here all day. But they bring up mass. So I want to talk about that because I always say it's unfortunate that we can't roadmatch by the stage and the whole scene that goes into that, with a man wanting to win a roadmatch for legacy's sake and so on. I wish they could check everybody's serato and see what was played most on the day, because everybody I know who played Mass say it was Mass. That's it Right. It played the most on the road as Masqueraders. And I know what it felt like when the song. You know what it felt like so, so Feel. You know what it felt like, so, so feeling love felt like. You know, like can you feel the love? That's why masquerade will feel the morning like. I just love these two yesterday.
Corie:Just be free or for me, but mass felt like it reset every single time it reset the day. Yeah, every time this song came on it's like all right, good, yeah, it's a refresh. So you that, that idea, mass, come again. You met some full for life going into the writing of that song too well, I can't take credit for that full song.
Muhammad:I went by Tano to record something and we were recording and I went to the bathroom and I was coming back from the bathroom I heard Tano playing something on the piano and I walked in and I said yo, what is that? He said I just have Tisha working on. I said, no, that's why we come here today, what is that? So he started singing it for me. I have a distant melody. I was like, yeah, what was the reason? No, I was like that song, me and Tisha are going to sing that song yeah.
Muhammad:And so they had the majority of the lyrics written, but they needed to be tweaked in some ways. The time a lot of the writers was a little bit more carnival based. There was a lot more, you know, and so we pulled out some things and you got lines like um, give them, the drum is thunder now and that kind of stuff, you know. And then they had everything up to the woes. So we were singing right up to oh. And then I said, right, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Muhammad:Something wrong with this spirit? Boy, that song went, listen, I I remember. So they did a, we did the recording and then they did a kind of a remixed it. And they didn't really know me at that time so maybe they thought I was a bit more kind of fundamental and like purist, right. So they did a remix and teja was kind of like he didn't know if I would like it right, and we went to an event together. They sent it to me when I was leaving and I'm listening to it driving home and I knew that they were staying at the event longer. I just was going home. Man, I pull up in front of my house, listen to this thing and I jump back in my. I stayed in the car. I listen, listen. I drive back and meet them. Fellas there. I say yo, that is it, yo. I come out of the car, pull up party song, blah, I do. I ignore really that spirit like that sometimes but that song did something to me, boy.
Muhammad:That song, that song, yeah, and it just very, very calmly and quietly work it way into the culture and take a little place there, and it just forever music forever in them.
Corie:Yeah, that not everybody knows the song yeah, it's just an amazing yeah must ask masqueraders, but the feeling on your road was again I always try to figure out like this man was playing mass in her life before.
Muhammad:Something like how you connect that they've done you know I have had to play mass my whole life. I have not always been able to be who I wanted to be, so I've been masking and I've I shouldn't say I've been playing mass. I've wanted to play mass with you, or mask.
Corie:I've wanted to play mask my whole life. Oh, it's you, oh it's you.
Muhammad:I've wanted to take the mask off, so I know what it feels like to wear the mask for a long time and I know the desire of wanting to release that, so I know the desire of a masquerader, even though for a long time I was not a part of this.
Corie:Yeah, I like that. Mask is life. I had to tell my wife I don't play mass next year.
Muhammad:I'll make sure that she knows, you know.
Corie:So Teja is another one who has been tapping into something that, again, people who to me here in some other lives before, because he's found a like I consider why, doing here a bridge, like I deliberately try to space out when I bring people here who comes next so I could go men from a certain era, men from a certain era, so that hopefully some young people start to listen to some of the older ones and some of the older ones start to listen to youth. You know, and I feel like Teja taps into that in a way that is amazing to me. He sings songs so reminiscent, sometimes in his words, sometimes in his feel, like Lorraine people have tried to do remixes for Lorraine before it's hard.
Muhammad:You can't interfere with it.
Corie:Yeah but he do one and that'll make lauren live forever again. You know we're explaining that and I always you kind of listen for what he's doing. As you say, carne culture forward.
Muhammad:Yeah, if you could manage to get out of the way, meaning your ego is a block, your idea of what should be is a block, all of these things. You are made for a purpose and you don't know what the hell that is, but you're given gifts and as those gifts flow through you, if you could get out of the way and allow this stuff to happen, if you could purify yourself in a certain type of way, then you will get flown away. If you tell yourself I want to make music to make money, you may make money making the music you're supposed to make. You know, but you also could not make money making music you think will make you make money.
Muhammad:Just make what you're supposed to make. Let let what is coming flow through you, fulfill its purpose and it will provide for you, it will take care of you. But you had to be sincere and that's what Teja has. Yeah, teja has a purity about him that he's not trying to impress anything on the music, he's not trying to impress anybody. He loves music and therefore music loves him back. Oh, it's you. And it doesn't always work that way, and I'm not saying that people who didn't succeed was because they were pure or none.
Corie:of that, Of course yeah, I'm.
Muhammad:That's a big part of, for me, what the approach has to be. Kutena's the same, yeah, same, yeah yeah.
Corie:I don't know where he's come up with that.
Corie:Yeah, he's living in the bush and ground so young, you know, but Feeling Love is one of those songs that tapped into that too. That was reminiscent of a song, dave Rudder. He said there's magic chords. He said those chords is a magic chord. You see, when you play those chords, people feel something, and I was talking to you about it before we started, in terms of approaching it, and you're telling me that you know there's some people's people have things to say about the song. My audience was saying hey, that's just a high mass remix. Take me home, is what I mean? Yeah, sorry, is this is that just a high mass, uh, remix or just what was your thoughts on it? Approaching it I?
Muhammad:I mean, we sat in the studio. We didn't know what we were going to come up with. Lou started playing some chords and very quickly we realized, oh, this is high mass chords. So we had a decision to make at that point Do we abandon these chords and start over, or do we keep going? No, this is what has come. That's good.
Muhammad:But what we were sure to do once we realized that there were high mass chords was none of the melodies in that song are borrowed from high mass in any way and I challenge anybody to go through that song and try and find a melody in high mass. That thing. Yeah, I challenge anybody to go through that song and try and find a lyric that is close to high mass. We just realized that it was the same chords, which was beautiful for me. Yeah, I was like yo.
Muhammad:This is how you build on legacy. Every other place does it and has no problem. Yeah, you understand, but for some reason we like to be like. I am very proud to be living in the legacy of David, rudder and Attila and Radio and all of them, stalin and Shadow. God rest their souls. I am very, very proud to be living in their legacy. So if you happen to hear their music and my music, thanks, and if it sounds deliberate to you at times, it is absolutely. They will not die as long as I am alive they will live on in the music that we create.
Corie:So, yes, but it's not a high mass remix and if you're saying that honestly, you're either lazy or you're looking for raps. Well, yeah, I guess that's part of the thing I had to pay attention to. Sometimes people just want another rap.
Muhammad:That's okay.
Corie:And that's cool too. No raps by me.
Muhammad:Because I am not answering you in the comments. I'm not answering your DMs.
Corie:I'm not answering your reels.
Muhammad:I don't know raps man.
Corie:So even in the like, when I listen to the two songs, because again I just felt familiarity when I heard it, and familiarity because again, playing a little bit of music myself, I said, but this, this chord's feeling, you know. And then I realized I said, wait, these fellas do that. And one of the things I always find beautiful about High Mass is the song almost have two different themes. So you sing the and he said he was writing it from just being in the Catholic church and knowing it have something there. And then in the midst of it he started to say, oh yeah, hell of my country, you know what I mean. And when I listen to, take Me Home, it's such a like nation building.
Corie:There was some things that you and Lou were doing with the little drone fly out thing. That thing was special, yeah, and the song just continued to build and build and build and build and some. There's some powerful lines in the song in terms of just connecting us to who we are that could or will connect to any generation. But I always wonder, like as a writer, how he has write all that. And then the most popular line in the song is ruby the beam, bim, bim, right there, you know, I mean it's feel that way about us all. Right, like that's what everybody.
Muhammad:It has so much lines, but then everybody waits until here because, first of all, as far as ruby bim, bim, bim, bim yeah, you haven't written down people that was our placeholder when we recorded the demo. Serious, there was supposed to be words there, um, and I was playing this song for a friend of mine, chandra, and I was like, yeah, I need to don't worry about this part. I need to say, and she's like, nah, see that, leave that. There is Chandra.
Corie:Maraj yeah, she said leave that there.
Muhammad:I said alright cool, um, and then we all agreed that it should stay. But it wasn't meant to be that. No, it funny is like when they say it about rhythm deep down inside me, if you are from Trinidad and Tobago, you understand that immediately. You hear the pan, you hear like it is an unexplainable thing necessarily to anybody else who's not a part of carnival culture. But if a man say, right there, like that is the rhythm inside of right, so it is beautiful to me actually that people leave all the words I just told you. Words are failures. This encapsulates something that people you know. I mean that people feel it's not trying to tell you. Well, you know, if you move this way, you go, do this. It's just saying this expression has collected emotion and all is there.
Corie:Yeah yes, you see them, school children sing that in belmont. Yes, bro, but they're waiting for that line. Yeah, that energy behind on your right, that rhythm means what it means to you as well. I like the cultural context you put it, thanks the one that's called hot fries.
Muhammad:Like you could have all the poetry and all the nice parts of the song, but hot fries is what is sell when it comes to business and food and things. You had to have hot fries. A man coming by here just for the hot fries. So don't give people all the you know ting and spirulina and whatever cool, no problem if you want the thing, and I mean I understand.
Muhammad:Hot Fries pay any bills you can have releases. A man like me. I go and listen. I want to listen to Jose whole day. He don't have no Hot Fries, but if you're writing me a song, you'll remember Kit and Lou and MC and Nevan giving me Hot Fries. Alright, hot Fries, I like it and everybody shouting out because up until that point it's a nice song. But then that offers you what you want the release.
Corie:It offers you the space to jump out yourself yeah, you know, and sort of forces you to listen to the second verse, which is powerful, absolutely powerful, powerful. So, um, affordable imports and them. Go pour you out there and are going into selfish time now, because when you're talking about Conrad, come now where Conrad, come now when Conrad, yeah, let him come in, let him join. But selfish question for me again, that Lightman as a song. You're telling a story there about any artist or anybody who ever tried to do something Artist, business, person, know what that is. So the theme behind the song is you basically saying Weak joint are closed.
Muhammad:I make no money. My grandmother watching me, my wife watching me, my wife watching me, my sisters, my brothers watching me. Kind of funny. She say I know it's music you like, but, son, we have groceries to buy and we can't pay the light man with a song. So I start to weigh out my choices. I try hard not to listen to the voices in my head when they tell me give it, give it, give it up. It's so easy. You could get on nine to five and do something good with your life, but all the while I hearing you could be okay well, that's some coming from boy, just real experience bro, I feel an emotional, let's say, and then we'll get back to you.
Muhammad:My grandmother, literally, I'm seeing her open the door to my room, sticking ahead in my room, seeing me lying down as down as a young man, in the middle of the day. I know you already like this music thing. It's not, this is a real conversation. I understand that, but it might be time for you to think about. So how are you going to eat? You understand, I'm not going to be around forever. You understand the thing You're not going to be in your twenties forever. You're not going to. You're not going to be in your 20s Forever, you're not going to. You know, and my grandma and me like On that bed going, it's going to work, yeah, yeah, because God not going to lead me To this place, and and Nah, it's going to work. I have a mission. I know I have a mission. You want to bear with me. You know, granny, yeah, you, yeah, oleg, gotta bear with me, boy, I don't know. Yeah, oleg, he's gonna suffer. Trust me, he's gonna be alright.
Corie:So said so done, so said so doing, so doing, yeah, even better, even better. So said, so doing. That song Resonates. You know, I always remember my father Leaving corporate world To go and start business and my grandmother Telling him Boy, rudy, you have to look for a pension. You know You're changing from Job to job.
Muhammad:To just A very Trinidadian thing, trinidadian thing, it's a world thing, you're trying to save you, trying to protect you, but then they'll tell you that you should admire People like Malcolm X and you should admire Martin Luther King and Steve Jobs and whatever you know, but don't walk in their shoes, god forbid. Do not do what they did, however, look at what they did.
Muhammad:Don't do that Don't do what they did to get there, because we don't want to watch you sacrifice yourself. That is could be shameful, but also it'll hurt our hearts to see it. You know so much potential. I was in civil engineering. I do science my whole life, right.
Corie:So I was destined to be that that you know doctor or something. Yeah, here we are.
Muhammad:Yeah, and they're saying it out of complete love. It's love. Yeah, love will tell you, do not follow your destiny out of love. But then you know what, when love begins to see the destiny unfold, love has be so happy man. Love does lose its mind when it realized, yo, we bet on this and it's working more are you happy?
Muhammad:all right, there we go, it's abundance time jesus all right, we need yeah, you know, I mean to see my family now, how they are, my sisters, my yeah, because I know that at one point they were very worried about me yeah, I'm sure they feel proud now.
Corie:I mean they, they might, they're here for the journey. Good good.
Muhammad:Free time for life.
Corie:Oh good, congrats on that. That is good, because I think most it's so easy to listen to that voice, sometimes the voice coming from within, much louder than granny voice, you know, saying groceries are to buy.
Muhammad:Nah, boy. I'm grateful that that voice from within never told me it was difficult. And there were times when it said you're mad over you know. But it never said stop, it just questioned my sanity, yeah, but it never. It never say nah, yeah, give up on it.
Corie:It never say go and look for something else yeah, you know, culturally we have a little bit of a finished product syndrome. You know, people see it when it's done.
Muhammad:The only time I ever considered, the only time I ever considered going to find a work, a work. I had read this girl. I was going to get married and my father had connections with Wassa. I used to work Wassa. I resigned Wassa to go UU at 21. I was always mad. Even that's something like. You know what I'm saying?
Corie:I resigned up to work in WassaA to go uni and pursue other things because. I wasn't in my life.
Muhammad:Yeah, that was the only time I ever considered going back to get a job, because I was like boy, I could drag me on this journey. I didn't want to drag nobody else on that journey, which is probably one of the reasons why I'm not married.
Corie:I see, I see, yeah, yeah risky journey, but what's it? I mean, if it paying off for you and it paying off for us is win-win, you know is is all there now, soca and that kind of thing is something that, as you say, had the calling for it and it's inside you, is something you're thinking of continuing doing and you're gonna continue working on yeah, I mean again at this point we have an opportunity to influence the culture in a way.
Muhammad:What's dangerous is it has a way of sucking you into its cycle and then putting you on the track to perform at all these carnivals and whatever, and in doing so, if you're not careful, an artist like myself, um, you could lose some of your depth and your substance.
Muhammad:You could lose some of the love you have for the art form, because when you start to see the side of the business side, that's not very pretty. And so the prayer really is you know, father, allow us to, to, to be a part of the culture in the way that you see fit, in a way that continues to honor us and honor our ancestors and those who came before um, to make the statements that we need to make, to talk about the things that we need to talk about and to continue to inspire next generations, who feel as though you don fit into the mainstream idea of what it is to be a Soka artist or to be an artist from Trinidad. You know we still want to write Space for Hearts type songs, and Hoshun type songs and when I Am type songs and you know, expand the borders of what?
Corie:already exists. Yeah, you were telling me.
Muhammad:As we wrap up, you're saying that, uh, the reaction to that in performing in europe and so on, is yeah, I mean, it's a song that just is just dive into your chest and start swimming around looking for memories and things. You know, it's just one of those songs.
Corie:It's yeah, I'm very proud of you writing on that song as well yeah, the completeness of the song too, because I saw, for some reason, something had happened when you were doing the tight spaces and there was a song that you all said you were going to do, and then you kind of skipped the song yeah, and then you did it in the end and it turned out to be a show in the end. I saw it in that space.
Muhammad:It's something else. Yeah, very, very proud of it song. I have a goal in my head I want to perform motion and affect. This is what I was gonna ask okay, okay I want to be able to create a space where people know that when we come on stage, I'm going to give you an opportunity to feel something you're not going to feel in from anybody else. I'm going to give you an opportunity in this mad space here, and I think I, man, I want to do it so bad?
Corie:yeah, glad, glad to hear that, though. Yeah, glad to hear that, because you talk about young brother. When I get him here, I go ask him, but his caliber is so, so powerful. I wondered why, and maybe it's just his fat space. You know, you don't have the time, but if he had performed that in some fat, that would have rocked them fat Again. Going back to men talk about Haiti. They used to sing Haiti, I'm sorry, not fat, fat.
Muhammad:So the space is there, the space is there, it was there and it's still there, but it just we don't even know that it's in us, right? You know, like Take Me Home, it hasn't really been a song like Take Me Home for a very, very, very long time For a song like that it does. It says something about us as a people. We're ready.
Corie:We're missing it. We're missing it. You talk about the balance when we start off. We're missing the balance. We're ready.
Muhammad:Yeah, we're beautiful. You know, we've been told that we're one thing, but we're so many different things and we're ready. We're ready for more.
Corie:As you talk about different things. How uncomfortable are you, if I right? But when I compare you to David Rodd as a fan, what's your comfort level with that?
Muhammad:I mean, who doesn't want to be a giant? Who doesn't want to be able to stand and say I represent these people here, they're proud of me and I'm proud of them? You know what I mean. Like, yeah, who doesn't want? And to be compared to a giant? Yeah, I don't have any, I'm proud of that. It means that I have done a certain level of work internally and externally and that I have now the opportunity to continue the legacy of a giant, because he left the work at a certain point. Now we have to pick it up and realize that we should still be sorry to haiti and it's still a madman ranting all over the place and calypso music still needs to be honored and sung about and it have about here, gill, they waiting for somebody to sing a song about you. I understand.
Corie:So, yeah.
Corie:You're cool with it. I saw a guy talking to me once from Seattle Washington and he said he went to this show in a little cafe and it was an early artist performing, you know, similar to what some of the spaces you created in the concert during Carnival. And he said, you know, he was really there to see this guy who was big in Seattle. Everybody wanted to get in. He had one of the hundred tickets that was there and he said well, do you have an opening act for them? A little group from Jamaica named Bob Marley and the Wailers Bob Marley, peter Tosh you know what I mean Bonnie Wailer performing in a little cafe with a hundred people. How comfortable are you when I compare Freetown to what they're doing? When I see trinity and I see the eye trees and I see what you're all doing um, it's not.
Muhammad:It's not a comparison that I don't know. It does not that I have done it before. There's a lot I could say about it. All I know is I. I know I have been brought to do a job. I'm getting some idea of what that might be. I don't know what it is, but I'm getting some idea of what it might be. It has something to do with telling stories. It has something to do with inspiring people. It has something to do with me aspiring to be the best version of myself. It has something to do with dealing with governments and the way that they deal with people supporting communities. There were a lot of things in there, and bob was able to achieve a lot of those things in massive ways.
Muhammad:I think we get caught on the idea of being remembered forever. That's beautiful. We get caught, maybe, on the idea of all of your songs being sung by the entire world. That's also beautiful. But to fulfill purpose wherever that is, that is what. That is why. If so, let me. Let me see where it is. Yeah, I will continue to do my best. Me and lou will continue to do our best. The team will continue to do their best. We will continue to put out the music that we believe in and that we love, and we hope that the people continue with us on this journey that we're taking.
Corie:Yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate you all continuing to do that and finding a way to stay true to yourselves. It sets an example for people. I feel you know, I feel like you're also teaching the audience in a sense. We've had to.
Muhammad:Yeah, I guess you would, you would.
Corie:Yeah, we've had to train our audience from the very beginning of course, because it was something new and you had to train the effect audience now to accept our shooting.
Muhammad:You know, it's some work, but we needed me to love mass and take me.
Corie:I would imagine I heard you talk about it when you performed the other night because you were saying it's such a big difference when you go on these stages where tens of thousands of people, you do one or two songs and you leave and you know, versus that intimate space where you get to, you get well, be yourself, your complete self, but also maybe try out new songs, put out these songs that people want take requests.
Muhammad:They had to know. You, like, the Fats now feel like the tight spaces audience to me and that's that's a big, big step right. But it feels very similar. It's because people now kind of know in here and they know these songs and once they realize, oh, them sing, feel the love, they, they want to hear what's next, um, yeah, and so I think that the opportunity will present itself very soon for a ballad in the feds.
Corie:Well, I hear for it, I hear for it, I hear for it. Whenever, whenever it start happening, we will be there. We will continue to support. I appreciate you coming through. We will.
Muhammad:We've been so bad with time.
Corie:But I have to tell you how bad I performed on my list today. Right, because the conversation is so interesting. I have about 20 songs here we didn't talk about, so I appreciate you taking the time and sharing some of yourself with us.
Corie:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think once you start releasing on that kind of thing whenever I mean, I hear, I hear, and these things tend to build on one another, you know. Yeah, so I appreciate the risks that you guys take and I appreciate what you're doing this is important, what you're doing as well, yeah. I appreciate that. I appreciate that it could only remain share some of the stories, which good appreciate.
Muhammad:That man thanks a million Conrad, or it's a poo. We all Conrad. I be like why I keep going through this boy. I tell her anytime, thank you.