By Rae Wiltshire
“I avoid [a] 9 to 5 like the plague,” says Akeem Adams. “It doesn’t feel right. I can wander where I want to go. It doesn’t have to give me money. I just feel happy to wander wherever. I don’t want people restricting me,”
For Adams, a self-taught violinist who has been steadily playing gigs in recent years, restriction is the enemy. In his younger years, he had a traditional Christian upbringing. He now burns incense and invites in his ancestors. He told me that years ago he would have been ashamed of doing this. He isn’t anymore. He has accepted a ritual that is meaningful; not one which is restrictive.
This feeling of restriction was also the cause for him failing music in school.
“I was a dunce,” he says.
“That’s a strong word,” I say.
“I know, but it’s true. I got 0 out of 100,” he explains.
In school, they taught music with numbers to count notes. Akeem does not like numbers. He could not understand so he taught himself using language and utilized syllables to understand rhythm. In addition to the violin, he now plays the recorder, flute, cello, guitar and piano. The restriction to numbers caused him to feel music was out of reach. It was not his element; in some ways he feels Guyanese society is also not his element.
Guyanese culture and musicians are known for the genres of dancehall, soca, chutney, soul and more recently hip-hop. Akeem’s favourite musician is the Icelandic singer Björk, who sings music that feels like it doesn’t belong to earth or it’s for the future.
He said he would love to create music like her but expressed fear of this. I, of course, was intrigued but not surprised. Bjork is an idiosyncratic Goddess. Akeem is also a self-professed oddball. Actually, that statement is incorrect. It was the people around him who made him feel odd.
“To me I was normal. Other kids or family members made me feel different. People just tried to make me feel odd,” he says.
I ask how he dealt with that. In his younger years it affected him, but now he doesn’t believe that it does.
He said he shoves that at the back of his head. Refusing to work the drudgery of a 9 to 5 job is testament to him cultivating an alternative life for himself. However, he cannot fully escape the expectations and fear that society brings to an artist.
Akeem has written an album called Human Child; it has melodies but fear traps its production. “I think you like to know when you do something it is appreciated. Because we all just don’t make art to keep to ourselves. You want to share it,” he said. “Playing it (his songs), whether I accompany it on a guitar or a piano…I am like okay, this is different. Is not pretentiously different, it is different. And I know what happens to different.”
I tell Akeem he should not worry about the reception and if it is pretentious. Risk in art is always 50-50. If it is not produced however, then that risk is zero. He knows this but being different in a society has caused fear and restriction in him. The parallel does not convince him. These songs for him are his babies.
He told me that no one wants to hear they have an ugly baby. But, what is ugly?
The concept of ugly varies from person to person. Each generation might find beauty in something that was once considered ugly. I am thinking of artists who were considered inferior in their day, but have considerable influence now – Vincent Van Gogh comes to mind. I asked Akeem to tell me some of his lyrics. He scans his brain. “Pakaraima burgeoning wound greets celestial bodies, the matriarchal forest weeps for her first children,” he says before asking what I got from it.
“It’s a lot to unpack, can you repeat it for me?”
He repeated. I didn’t have any meaning for it, but I said what images the words conjured for me.
I see glowing limbs and stars that form celestial trees. It is because of this fantastical scenery that causes the forest to cry. It was not his intention. But he liked my interpretation and reassured me that it was okay. He likes when people see things differently from his original intention.
His intention was far more beautiful and meaningful. He said the Pakaraima Mountain range represents a woman’s pregnant belly. It is high and greeting the sun, moon, stars and smiling at these celestial bodies. They are friends.
The matriarchal forest weeps for the indigenous people. The first people are forgetting the ways of nature and what it means to take care of her.
I ponder and can see he has ambition but is scared of it. His lyrics have to soak in. I can feel where the lyrics come from. It is his love for nature.
The lyrics were a reflection of what he values; not what’s trending. We were about to wrap up the interview and I asked Akeem if he knew Nina Simone. He said yes and said she was crazy but brilliant. I told him I saw an interview with her when she described what it means to be free.
“No fear!” she had said. Freedom is an absence of fear. It is a thought that keeps popping up in my head.
Is any human being truly free? Some might have more freedom than others, but if fear is how we measure freedom then none of us are really free. Everyone (barring psychopaths) is fearful of something.
But if any art is to be produced then we must embrace fear, confront it and make the art anyway.
Some people might disparage his babies for being different, but sheltering them will not allow them to experience life. I believe that having an alternative sound in Guyana is needed and he can tap into other oddballs like himself. It is one of his life’s purposes.
I would remind Akeem of his own take: “I think I am here to show people different is good. I am here to be myself and to inspire and to share and to be a good person, but more so being different.”
