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Interview
Nicole millar - 1 January 2017 2.00 h

'I am an eclectic person'

Magda Mbande Every Friday evening on El Punt Avui Televisió, Nicole chats with an English-speaking expat. For this month's interview she had a conversation with musician, Magda Mbande.
- Nicole millar
Where are you from Marga and what a beau­ti­ful name!
I am from Equa­to­r­ial Guinea. My name Marga comes from the name Mar­garita. Like the pizza or the drink or the flow­ers. My grand­mother is also called Mar­garita.
Most of my guests on the show are born out­side of Cat­alo­nia but you were born in Barcelona and raised here.
I have three broth­ers and a sis­ter, and I am right in the mid­dle. And my role in life seems to fit the mid­dle of every­thing. My par­ents came here from Equa­to­r­ial Guinea 40 years ago and stayed.
Do you feel like you are more from Cat­alo­nia or Equa­to­r­ial Guinea?
That is a dif­fi­cult ques­tion. I re­ally feel like an African born in Spain. At home my mama was al­ways talk­ing and teach­ing me about Africa, and I speak the lan­guage. I have also been there, just once 12 years ago, and it felt like home. It was dif­fi­cult grow­ing up here as a child. A black girl in a white man's coun­try and that can be hard some­times. As a young girl I no­ticed this and didn't un­der­stand why for ex­am­ple peo­ple where point­ing their fin­ger at me. It was hard to find ref­er­ences and hope, but in the end you can make life what you want it to be.
What do they speak in Equa­to­r­ial Guinea?
The of­fi­cial lan­guage is Span­ish and some speak French. The cap­i­tal is a lit­tle is­land and then there is a con­ti­nen­tal part, but it is a small coun­try.
You are a singer, am I right in say­ing a soul singer?
You can call me a soul singer, but I just call it music. I love soul, I love jazz and reg­gae. I find con­nec­tions be­tween these styles.
Did you have a mu­si­cal up­bring­ing?
I have been lis­ten­ing to music all of my life; it is part of our cul­ture. My par­ents aren't mu­si­cians. Yet, they lis­ten to every­thing, from hip-hop and soul to African music.
When did you re­alise you wanted to be­come a singer?
I have been singing all of my life. But there was a time when I found a vinyl record and it had the lyrics on the back. They were in Eng­lish and I didn't then speak Eng­lish, in fact I am still learn­ing. That was a good start­ing point for me. That was about 10, 11 years ago.
How did you learn Eng­lish?
I began just like that, read­ing lyrics! I learnt at school of course and went on to study tourism at uni­ver­sity but re­ally is was from study­ing lyrics.
Your first album was in 2003. Tell me about that?
It was when I was in a band and I was re­ally into R&B. I wanted to be like Des­tiny's Child! Be­tween 2003 and 2012, we did three al­bums and then we went our sep­a­rate ways. When I left I started to col­lab­o­rate with many dif­fer­ent artists and cre­ated dif­fer­ent sounds.
You say that mu­si­cally you are very open. What does that mean ex­actly?
I see my­self as an eclec­tic per­son. It isn't that I don't know where to put my­self, it is just that I don't want to put my­self with only soul or jazz be­cause I see a con­nec­tion with all of the sounds of the music. So when­ever I hear a sound that in­spires me, I go there!!
Your boyfriend is a mu­si­cian, too?
Yes, a very good mu­si­cian. Marc Ayza, he plays the drums, he mainly comes from jazz but is also very open. We work to­gether in a band called Cypha Ses­sions, and it's mainly hip-hop. We start the ses­sion and then leave the mic for the pub­lic, it ends up in a party where en­ergy flows every­where. I also col­lab­o­rate with reg­gae and Afro-beat bands from Barcelona.
Where do your in­spi­ra­tions come from?
There is no mys­tery; they are great lead­ers of soul that every­one knows like Angie Stone, Mary J. But every­one knows these greats and I am in­ter­ested in oth­ers like JoJo Abbot. She is very new this girl; I think she also de­signs clothes. Ben­jamin Clemen­tine, he is self-taught, very deep and not afraid to show what is in­side. This re­ally in­spires me. An­der­son Paak, he talks about styles in one of his al­bums. I want to see my­self like this. And I look back and re­search peo­ple who aren't new like, Franco Lu­ambo and Brenda Fassie.
You de­scribe these artists as peo­ple who have every­thing every artist should have. What do you mean by that?
No lim­i­ta­tions and to be able to con­nect with the pub­lic. You shouldn't be afraid to show what you have in­side, to be free and open. Touch­ing dif­fer­ent sounds.
What are you work­ing on right now?
I am ex­cited to be work­ing on my new EP. I can­not say much, but I will tell you when it is ready. It mixes elec­tronic, soul sounds, and more. Hope­fully, the first sin­gle will be out be­fore the end of the year.
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