Go Back And Get It: An Interview with Kelela
Words: Ryan C. Clarke
Images: Dervon Dixon + Justin French
4068 words, 00:13:33
Kelela is an Ethopian-American singer-songwriter from Washington, D.C. Coming up with diasporic yearnings, her father’s jazz collection, pop radio, and underground DMV genres like Go-go and Baltimore Club, her music is a circulatory system of Black and queer dance culture.
Her catalog has begun to behave like a musicological coil; her studio releases (Cut 4 Me, Hallucinogen, Take Me Apart, and Raven) each having its own reworked kindred in the form of the remix album (Cut 4 Me (Deluxe), Hallucinogen Remixes, Take Me a_Part, the Remixes, and Rave:n, the Remixes). It's a simple enough gesture on its face, but when reading liner notes for production and collaborations like BAMBII, BbyMutha, DJ Swisha, Lorraine James, DJ LAG and LSDXOXO, it’s evident how the values of collectivity and sociality are placed inside the idea of return for her. It’s almost as if she’s taken the notion of Sankofa (a west african proverb translated as “it is not taboo to go back for that which you have forgotten”) as a north star for her method.
Her latest record, In The Blue Light, her first live album, is a distillation of these ideas. The song and personnel onstage themselves play on this sankofic notion, with past collaborators such as Ahya Simone and Daniel Aged sharing the spotlight of the jazz hall. But it’s the album itself that's coming home. In college, Kelela was a prominent open mic attendee to various cafés where she sang Jazz standards. Her conservatory became anywhere that would amplify her woodshedding. One turning point in her artistic development was seeing Amel Larrieux at the Blue Note in the early 2000’s. Minidisc in hand, she recorded all she could and trained her vocal capacity against these recordings religiously. Needless to say, joining the history of the Blue Note decades later is quite the moment to reflect on..
This April 2025 conversation goes on its own spiral, travelling at once into past, present, and future conceptions of Kelela and how she understands her position in the continuum of Black social music.
Listen:
Kelela ˇ
‘Better (unplugged)’
Ryan C. Clarke:
There's an internal tradition of iteration within your discography. Almost as if there's an ecological approach to your repertoire; how worthwhile it can be to return to a song at a different angle. As much as your songs are lyrically about the potential in rupture and the possibility of repair, that gesture is also happening to the songs themselves. Can you talk about what attracts you to the standard, the remix, the cover, even within your own music?
Kelela:
That’s useful language, to frame it as an ecology over time. There’s a parallel I see in my work. Building a repertoire of songs by writing a new song is one game. Remixing culture and rearrangement within jazz— you could say standards— is another. Making an old song feel new. That sort of play is something I've been experiencing from two separate ends, but alongside each other.
I grew up hearing new interpretations of pop music through Go-Go, Baltimore Club, and local scenes that have always existed in DC. Growing up listening to jazz music and the sort of practice of rearranging standards is something that I’ve also been exposed to, and the two practices kind of evolved alongside each other over time. It's very much related to the practice of rearranging my songs, even if we're talking about a more stripped-down blue note type-beat.
RC:
The Blue Note is also a space where Black social music thrives, was worked on, and developed. Everything is a juke joint to Black people.
K:
Everything is a juke joint. Every place is a juke joint. There's another parallel where that appears and that's for me as a second gen Ethiopian. My house would turn into a juke joint on Saturday nights or even Sundays after church…my mom would lead the rest of my family members in song while my cousin and I did iskista — Ethiopian traditional dance. No music playing, just voices and hand clapping for the ultimate turn-up. This is one of those threads that ties my personal roots to other Black music traditions, the participatory nature of our music where there's less of a separation between audience and performer and anything can happen anywhere.
There’s also new meaning that can be produced when you rearrange a song. There are songs in my repertoire that made me shed brand-new tears when we slowed them down, stripped them down or put them to piano. Like “Bankhead” to piano! Those lyrics were always those lyrics and they always said that thing, but somehow when you bring it to piano and slow it down it creates a new type of vulnerability.
I can't believe that I am finding new meaning in it for myself after all this time. The same thing I think also happens when jazz musicians reapproach standards for the eighth or 10th time. Trying to find a new way to say that. Trying to recall…and that feeling of knowing where we are, but also not knowing where we're going, is the juiciest part of any reinterpretation.
RC:
On that note of arrangement, I was looking through the liner notes and saw this blueprint of the Blue Note. Can you break down that choice for the image?
K:
I’ve seen liner notes for jazz records that contain an aerial stage plot, very 2-D with the names of the musicians and the instruments they play. I was [thinking] it would be cool to do something like that, but to experience a visual of the interior of the Blue Note as a three-dimensional thing.
I sent my designer Seenahm some references of 3-D drawings of interiors and the first draft she sent over tore me out. I actually cried the first time I saw it cuz this is the type shit that when you're sitting in front of the speakers with your vinyl and you're looking at this object in your hands — there's just this way that it can transport you. What I wanted is to make you feel — through the music and the recording as much as possible — to make you feel like you were there. And I think the same thing goes for the liner notes to make you feel like you're part of the process.
RC:
What came to mind when I first saw it was this Herbie Hancock liner note.
K:
I was interested in the physical space of the Blue Note itself. I wanted you to see the stage but also where the audience sits since the sound of the crowd is a huge part of the record.
It sounds Black and queer, and that for me is another part of the power. There’s a reclaiming space [going on] since the Blue Note is traditionally a jazz venue. The idea of bringing people who have never been in that space or even had the opportunity to listen to music [publicly] while seated. And not seated in a theater because I think most people when they're experiencing music while seated, it's in a theater.
Bringing the club kids to Blue Note was also a dot connecting project for me. For me, it is about people knowing about their relatives. Do you know what I'm trying to say?
If that's where I'm being placed, then I will see it as my job to make sure that everybody knows their relatives and at least has a way in through me. You go to a thing and then you're like, "Oh my God, I really like that. I sat down, I had dinner, I listened, and I cried.” That's so important for everybody to get to experience music in different ways. There's a venue in Berlin called Kwia. Have you ever heard of this?
RC:
Nah.
K:
It's basically like, they have the CDJ set up and it's carpeted and you have to take your shoes off, which I don't know about that, but-
RC:
Berlin with the shoes off sounds crazy…
K:
Berlin with the shoes off sounds crazy!! Make sure you put that in there. I literally cannot, but I will say that the way that they've lit the space... they're playing ambient music and sitting on cushions and shit. It's so important for us to have these other ways that we experience music.
Aquaphoria is a big part of this conversation. Aquaphoria was like an ambient R&B project, and it's meant for me to do the similar thing where I'm connecting a dot and maybe bringing niggas with me and being like, "No, this is your space too." I want to bring you along to show you the relationship between these things that are being presented to us as really disparate and so far away from each other. But it's related. These, too, are your relatives.
RC:
When I was running my own blog, I wrote about Aquaphoria and would love to share it here:
Aquaphoria deserves a place on here for quite frankly being a work that, if I wanted to hear anything else like it, I just wouldn’t be able to. Black chords and ambients over a plethora of legendary Warp/Warp adjacent tracks is a treat and a three course meal I didn’t even think I wanted but now beg for ! Kelela has been slowly showing her hand that the ultimate goal for her is more than a pop affair, but an underground navigation. On her journey if she can throw some gems like this every now and then I have no complaints. Did anyone in 2019 think we’d have Kelela vocalize over a Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2, Oneohtrix Point Never and an Autechre track??? Me neither but thank god.
K:
That's the type of hype I was going for. I wanted Black people specifically who already listened to ambient music first and foremost, to be like: “We up!!” When Warp asked me to do this mix, they asked me to do a normal mix. [Something more beat driven].
RC:
Yeah, we needed that and it's an unsung release of yours. Maybe because it’s not on streaming but the heads know.
K:
It's a clearance nightmare. That's the reason why it was on SoundCloud for the longest time.
RC:
Let it stay underground.
K:
And that’s another example of that ecology over time: I do a reinterpretation of an album track on Aquaphoria over a range of ambient instrumentals and then I reinterpret the Aquaphoria version of that song for the intro of the Blue Note live. That's the meta-ness of this whole thing. That's why it's so fun for me because any arrangement that I ever did — however many iterations down the line we are — is still free game.
RC:
Jazz seems to carry this notion of infinite possibility through improvisation. I know you’ve spoken of your father putting you musically on as a child, but which experiences of listening first took you to the form?
K:
My very first experience of jazz music was with vinyl. I remember sitting in front of the speakers as a little girl listening to Ella and Sarah and thinking I could actually see people inside the speaker if I looked close enough. In reality I was probably seeing my reflection in the shiny hardware underneath that nylon fabric.
RC:
I love this phenomenon that so many people hold a relationship with music early on… there’s a physical moment between you and whatever the technology is that you initially engaged with. You're talking about the speaker and for me, my mom had a record player, but no speakers. My brother was really into MF DOOM, and we’d listen to the samples my mom had in her collection. There's this one, Doobie Brothers, What a Fool Believes, and you know how on a turntable you can hear the record playing without the speakers. There's no amplification. I was so interested in being able to hear the record that I kept my ear to the needle. I feel it’s this kind of focus that certain people carry with them through their life’s work.
K:
The constraints for niggas. The constraints of real life, they create some shit that you can never…
RC:
That's a fact. Pause beat tapes. Tape edits just off pausing the tape deck. That's what J Dilla used to do. He would just pause tapes to loop the beat.
K:
That's a black technology and that's another whole conversation. Black technologies of freedom through constraint.
It’s interesting you say that cuz I often work in loops. I'm a loop singer and a big reason why I can sing live in the club, especially when it comes to creating live vocal transitions from track to track. That's what I do during my raves. I am using this sort of improvisational muscle, but applying it to the live remix and when we're mixing from one track to the next, I'm thinking about the loop. How many times do we need to hear that vocal repeat? How should we freak the delay? There's an intelligence to the way time works in all music but dance music allows for repetition, which means club audiences are down for build-ups and breakdowns in a way that pop listeners might not have the patience for.
I don’t play a chordal instrument, so when I first started writing in Garage Band, I was writing to my own voice, looping myself in layers. I know it's affected my way of doing music, so I love to hear about other people's constraints.
There’s so much joy in this music, but when we sum it up, so much of it is emoting about suffering— Black sufferings specifically. And even if it's not all about that, it comes through in the delivery, performance, arrangements.
RC:
Your practice of iteration, recursion (when the definition of a concept depends on a previous version of itself), comes up when considering the lineage of Black femme vocalists you reference in the album: Betty Carter, Sarah Vaughan and Amel Larrieux. However heavy, there seems to be a cosmic weight of how joining that lineage of performance carries with it a chosen responsibility to transmute Black suffering into song. Something that ultimately is a healing thing.
Do you see yourself in the continuum of Blues singers that have gone through minimization, tokenization or complete erasure from the historical record? Can you share how you've made sense of going through similar hurdles to get to where you are now?
K:
That is such a good question, and it's one that brings a cry to my throat. To be considered in that lineage is beyond an honor. There’s so much joy in this music, but when we sum it up, so much of it is emoting about suffering— Black sufferings specifically. And even if it's not all about that, it comes through in the delivery, performance, arrangements.
Makes me think of the framework that Angela Davis lays out in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. The story of blues singers, the tradition and what that figure means in our society, what it allows, it gives permission for people to feel around ways of being. It also implies a certain type of erasure even when there's so much visibility, the erasure of our interior experience. The full permission that is allotted for white women to be however is not given to us. The job is you're showing other people their permission. But you don't necessarily have that permission yourself and that's the tragedy of it. That dynamic creates an emotional response in my body because that's the job. Providing a safe space for others when I don't necessarily feel safe myself.
There is a responsibility that comes with that and makes me feel like my values have to be aligned with my choices. For some of my peers, maybe they're not engaging in some of the material or reading in the same way to create a conscious, everyday interpretation of what they're reading and how it's manifesting in their own realities.
it's important for me to note as a 2nd gen person, so much of this for me is learning from a Black American tradition. I guess I have critiques of [my own reflections?]. There's something also about my privilege that I do have to note and there are all kinds of underprivileges and disenfranchisements. There's all kind of marginalization happening alongside that. I'm clear that while I am talented and believe in myself, I don't think I'm the most talented person. Do you know what I'm trying to say? We're not seeing the people who are the most talented. We're seeing the people who are the most talented, who have some access and privilege. That is what we are seeing on the worldwide stage.
RC:
I know you also brought up White people, so I'm going to jump right into this one. There's an album inside the album in In The Blue Light. You chose a particular sequence of songs that includes a variety of social histories and perspectives that complicate a linear history of music. For example, your choice to include Joni Mitchell's tune, Furry Sings the Blues, problematizes the entire project in a really exciting way, embodying a sort of anthropological viewpoint away from the White subject.
It's a subtle highlight on the invisible systems of extraction that hover over beautiful works of art like a fog. Did you pick that track to disturb the depoliticization of the jazz lounge scenario?
In the middle of this there’s also the recirculation of her in blackface, this whole big controversy. There's a slow cultural reassessment of Joni Mitchell, but what is undeniable is her pen, her flow. Her flow is unmatched.
K:
You can't fuck with the pen. You can't fuck with the phrasing. Amiri Baraka's book, Blues People. You read that?
RC:
Yeah.
K:
You can hear the echo of history. The clarity that that book brought me is the relationship between minstrelsy and pop music. It's a oneness, and I knew that intuitively but it was so helpful to have someone articulate a timeline of the white tradition of stealing from Black folks from the early 1800s to 1950. It’s always been happening, specifically white people doing Black. Black face, Black art, Black whatever. That's the implied point in choosing the Joni Mitchell cover. There are layers to it. The first layer is I sincerely think this song is a banger — compositionally, both phrasing and instrumentation — it’s just something I’ve always enjoyed singing. The next level is the subject matter and how exploitative it all was…the very white thing of pointing to the injustice Furry Lewis experienced while exploiting him…
The last layer of meaning is produced when I sing it cuz it allows us to talk about appropriation, exploitation and Black face. There's some chat that I did not include in the album, but one of the things that I talk about is what happens when a White person sings a run. The Black American vocal tradition carries different weight when it comes out of a White person’s mouth and body. It’s always presented as more valuable. We see a white person do a run and we're so impressed.
I’ve always seen white audiences embrace the white option of a Black thing but it feels like we’ve entered a different era where it seems like a lot more Black listeners are embracing white runs and white interpretations of Black shit. What does it mean for all of us to feed into that? Makes me think of the unambiguous Black woman who also does that — who’s sound inspired the white person, mind you — will never get that shine. That cycle is what I wanted to point to. I don't have rights to the song, so I can't actually exploit it in that way, but I get to exploit it to make this point.
RC:
Right, exactly. That needs to be a part of the historical record. This conversation happening through song.
K:
For me, I did the song so that we could have this conversation.
RC:
It almost also begins to feel like alter work or placing flowers at his grave. It's like, "Hey, I'm sorry this happened to you," but now yeah, instead of Joni kind of putting him on a map, making him some kind of cartographic object. You bring him in the room.
K:
Exactly, it’s about making sure he’s not just an object in her story. He wasn’t flattered that she wrote about him, making it very clear in interviews that he felt used. She and her estate will cake off that song forever while he — an originator of this music — and his progeny receive nothing. That is the story of so much Black art. So it’s a critique about Joni but it’s really about white people’s relationship with Black shit. I was very close to cutting the track because I didn’t want to prop her up anymore than she has been. But I thought it was important because it really gets at my own dissonance as a person who fell in love with her music at a formative time in my artistic development and also what this phenomenon means for me as a Black artist. That is the exchange inherent in American music.
RC:
Talk to me about the Blue Note experience as it's behind you now. In your liner notes, you spoke to the full circledness of it all. I'm also thinking about yourself joining the circulation of inspirational artists. I'm fascinated by the concept of healing. Many of your fans often share how much your own expression has helped them or guided them through tough moments in their own lives.
Similar to Larrieux with you, at Blue Note with the mini disc, I'm certain that there's numerous cherished voice notes of your shows changing another life we've yet to hear on record. Can you share any reflections on assuming the shape your mentors once held for you?
K:
First and foremost it’s a privilege to have this thing that I can do with myself that makes me feel instantly better, safer, whole and content. A practice that reminds me of who I really am and my real capacity as a person, and I guess I think about this as the sort of second perk of this practice is one of having influence. Presenting power and safety for others through finding myself.
Something that I've had to learn over time is that the vulnerable thing for me to do is usually the part people are gonna connect with most, so confronting my own discomfort creates freedom for myself and others. That is the juiciest part. It creates more and more courage over time. That’s how I've been affected by my idols and mentors, whether they knew they were doing that or not. That is really my north star.
The other night, I went to see Ravyn Lenae at the Blue Note with a friend. After the show, we were standing outside and a fan walked by with their partner. One of the first things they said to me was something like, "Well, first of all, I'm from Altadena and I just want to say thank you so much for your song, because my family is going through it right now. That song has provided me with a lot of solace. My grandma lives in Altadena and our family has been there for generations. Your name means protection, right?” I nodded and then they pulled their sleeve down to reveal a tattoo of my name in Amharic just above the elbow on the outside of their arm. Their grandmother's address was tattooed in the same spot on their other arm. They were like, “That’s exactly how I feel when I’m listening to your music — protected. My grandma’s house and your music are the two things that make me feel safest.”
RC:
My God.
K:
I immediately burst to tears. You know what I mean?! It touched me so deeply. The safety that I’m hoping to create for others, and then this very literal representation of it at the end. After they dropped that last line I turned to my friend and I was like, "Man, I love my job. That's my job."