Subversive Music, Infused With Joy
EDINBURGH, Scotland — When members of the Scottish band Young Fathers were writing their new album, “Heavy Heavy,” Graham Hastings, known as G, played his brother-in-law a song called “Rice.” The track features cascading drums and bouncy, booming bass, as well as lyrics like “These hands can heal.”
“What are you doing?” Mr. Hastings, who sings and plays keys, percussion and synths, recalled his brother-in-law asking. “That’s far too happy for Young Fathers.”
Over the past decade, Young Fathers — which also includes Alloysious Massaquoi and Kayus Bankole, who both sing, rap and play percussion — have made music that juxtaposes gospel, hip-hop, electronic music and punk. For years, the group’s music has been labeled abrasive or forbidding. Despite winning the prestigious Mercury Prize in 2014, their songs rarely get played on pop radio.
The trio met when they were 14 at a club in Edinburgh. Mr. Massaquoi was a refugee from Liberia’s civil war; Mr. Hastings grew up in a working class home in the city; and Mr. Bankole lived in a Nigerian household where he was expected to become a doctor or a lawyer. Mr. Massaquoi said that on the club’s dance floor, their connection was immediate.
Soon, they were making tracks in Mr. Hastings’s bedroom. They performed upbeat rap songs, complete with dance routines, at the club where they had met. They secured a manager but spent a decade writing songs that were never released. Frustrated, their music took a darker turn. Once they started putting those new tracks online in 2013, they had the industry’s attention.
“Heavy Heavy,” the band’s fourth studio album and first in five years, includes “Ululation,” in which the band hands the vocals to Tapiwa Mambo, a friend who ululates joyfully in Shona, a southern African language; and “Drum,” in which the group urges listeners to “hear the beat of the drums and go numb, have fun.”
“Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is create a sense of community,” Mr. Hastings said, “to get people together and to dance.”
Young Fathers have been known for taking a disruptive approach to their art. In 2015, they released an album titled “White Men Are Black Men Too,” hoping to encourage discussion about race and identity (Mr. Massaquoi and Mr. Bankole are Black, Mr. Hastings is white.) Two years later, they made a video for Scotland’s National Portrait Gallery. As Mr. Bankole danced in front of paintings of white aristocrats from centuries ago, Mr. Massaquoi pointed out that there was no one like him “framed in gold” in the museum.
“Sometimes we’re consciously subverting things,” Mr. Hastings said. But as a multiracial group working across genres, “we’re accidentally subverting things by just being.”
Their new album shows there is nothing wrong with happiness, though. “There is a lot of power in joy,” Mr. Hastings said.