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Africa: Salin Cheewapansri – From Bangkok to Africa

todayAugust 28, 2024 1

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Salin Cheewapansri was born in the mid-1990’s and raised in Bangkok, Thailand. Musically inclined, she tried the piano, but then switched to drums when she heard that the drum teacher at her school was fun to study with. Being into grunge and heavy metal music, the drums were a perfect fit for her. She began posting videos of herself on YouTube, busking on the streets, and it didn’t take long for others to notice her talent. Still in her mid-teens, she began working as a session drummer and side musician with various Sony label artists in Thailand, including “grunge queen” Ornaree. As Salin reached college age, a friend persuaded her to go to the States to study, though she wasn’t yet convinced a career as a musician was in the cards for her. She found herself in Ohio, majoring in journalism, but spending her free time going to drum camps whenever possible, studying with renowned jazz drummers such as Joyo Mayer, Dave Weckl and Peter Erskine. Then fate took her on a journey to Montreal and eventually to perform at this year’s Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (her second appearance) debuting her new direction, exploring the intersection between African and Thai rhythms. In addition to producing her own music, she recently produced an album for Haitian-Canadian duo Bel and Quinn, which was nominated for Best World Album at the Juno Awards. Salin is currently producing an album for Mozambique-Quebec artist Samito. We caught up with her not long after her exciting and exuberant performance at Jazzfest to find out how this drummer from Thailand found inspiration in Afrobeat.

The following interview is editing for clarity and length.

Photos (c) 2024, Benoit Rousseau

RON DEUTSCH: So you started as a rock drummer back in Thailand and even when you first came to the States, right?

Yeah, at the time I was into metal, drum and bass, grunge. I was a rock metalhead. I was a full-on metal head. [Laughs] I had blonde hair. You can still see my piercings on my eyebrow. Black lipstick – like full-on black, yeah. And so this band in Montreal saw some of my stuff online and they’re like, “Hey, we’re looking for a drummer. Can you come up here and join our band?” I think it was like 2010, 2011. At first, I was just going back and forth. I used to drive up here from Ohio. It was like 10-hour drive, And then I met my ex-boyfriend then, so I was like, okay, well, I guess I’ll come here a bit. I didn’t really like Montreal. It was cold. But I moved here to study and got an anthropology degree.

Your first album, Cosmic Island, was more soul, r&b, and even borderline disco. What was the journey that took you from heavy metal to there?

So yeah, when I was playing with the first band here in Montreal, Ogenix, we had a rehearsal space in a building full of bands rehearsing. And next door, it was like a party crew that listened to a lot of soul, funk, you know, disco, and breakbeat stuff. So every time I rehearsed there – I didn’t really have a life then – I was just studying and I was practicing. That’s all I did. So my social life was literally just chilling next door between breaks during practice and that’s where I got introduced to soul music. Back in Thailand – this is before Spotify or anything like that – it was just completely pop radio. So I slowly quit the metal band, and started playing funk and soul. I think the transition was like Prodigy, because it’s all like funk samples but still rock, then to the Chemical Brothers and then James Brown, Al Green, D ‘Angelo, and Erykah Badu.

At the same time, my neighbor where I rehearsed was a producer and he was showing me how he was making records. And so I was getting into making my own music. All this was happening at once. So I started collaborating, making some songs. That’s how I started making my own album. I worked on it for like two, three years. I would write all the parts, and the lyrics too. Then I would send the demos to the musicians I wanted to work with, record them, and then from there I would start to produce a song. It was a very collaborative process. Then I met my husband at the time and he was like “Oh, can I mix your album?” But I didn’t want to work with my partner, you know, but he was like “Please, please!” So I started working with him and we co-produced the album. I think it was well received for the first album. I got to play Jazzfest for the first time because of it.

But then you had yet another “awakening.” Can I call it that?

I was really enjoying having a lot of fun, but then I wanted to do something different. I got tired of the soul. You know it’s like, maybe many people can relate, but my life feels more like different chapters. Like I had a metal chapter. I had a full r&b soul chapter. And now it’s like I’m exploring more my roots. And I’m really into Amapiano, which is like house Afrobeat. It’s like really popular in South Africa right now.

And how did you discover that?

So funny, same thing, it’s here in Montreal. I had a friend and they were like, “Oh, you should come to this show.” So I went to check out Sperlua [a Montreal group featuring Samito with Haig Vartzbedian, formerly of Bran Van 3000] and it was so cool. I’m really into grooves that are not traditional – like not two and a four – but something different completely. So that’s how I got into Afrobeat. Then I discovered this funny thing because at that show I had a Thai friend with me and she said that this was like Mor Lam, which is a music genre from Thailand. And I was already making that connection and mixing it with Afrobeat. Because the upbeat is the same. It’s also kind of like Baile funk from Brazil.

So I was researching about this and I found some roots in the indigenous people in the south of Thailand.

Your anthropology degree was paying off.

Yeah [Laughs]. So they are sea nomads and traveled from Madagascar all the way to the Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, and like Malaysia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. So my theory was, after hearing their music, it was very, very similar to African music. There was this one traditional song called “Ramanah,” and their rhythm and the way they sing is very like “call and response” or chant. They would sing this like before the celebration of the season change.

So I actually remade one of their traditional folk songs with a Congolese rhythm. I worked with Elli Miller Maboungou, a local percussionist, who’s amazing. I wanted to find connections between the two cultures. And then what happened was, I told Elli to play me some drums and he played me a variety of rhythms, like, “Play me an Afrobeat percussion at like around 130 bpm.” He played like five or six minutes of this. And then I went to Thailand to do my research about Isan music and to meet this tribe, Nyahkur, one of the oldest tribes in Northeast Thailand. I met and saw this guy play a pual, which is like a jew’s harp made of bamboo. I was like grooving and vibing to it. And I took that and layered it on top with Elli’s drum and it was like the same tempo. And it just fit and worked perfectly.

I saw this on the first video of your trip.

Yes, that’s in there.

I have another video of the trip coming out soon that I have to finish. We have so much material but I think because you know it takes a lot of time and budget, so there will be one or maybe a third one more, I’m not sure. In the beginning, I was just going to research it, then I was talking to the organizer of the trip and he was telling me that no one has documented this, and like it’s going to be gone. So I said we need to document this, you know, because it’s very important.

And all this new music you’re now making came out of this experience?

So yeah, we released an EP already, Kouta in Siam, but now we’re finishing the album. The EP was something that we just made while traveling in Thailand, made up of the stuff we did there. We made a Kouta portable drum kit and I told my partner I want to film in a couple of different locations in Thailand, in nature. And at first it was just going to be drums, like just a drum track in front of different natural scenes. And then my partner, because he’s also a music producer, he’s like, “Oh, let me just write some stuff on top.” So that’s how Kouta in Siam came about. I wasn’t originally going to release those recordings, but people liked the music so much in the first part of the video series that we did.