Catching up with Sequoyah Murray
The singer and improv artist talks about his influences and learning to articulate his musical ideas
At 20 years old, Sequoyah Murray is a singer, composer, improvisational artist and multi-instrumentalist who has spent a lifetime immersed in music. The son of percussionist Kenito Murray and vocalist Treva McGowan, Sequoyah’s fearlessly creative role in Atlanta’s young D.I.Y. jazz, indie rock and experimental music scenes has fostered a gently cluttered and transcendental sound steeped in heavy rhythms and abstract musical textures. Influenced by Manhattan-based cellist and composer of the late ’70s through early ’90s Arthur Russell’s expressive excursions into proto-disco, minimalism and the avant-garde, Sequoyah transforms his cue into communal vibes for gallery spaces, underground haunts and other music locales that encourage a level of artistic, musical experience that exists outside the traditional rock club. Before taking the stage at 529 on Fri., July 21, for the Irrelevant Music Festival, Sequoyah took a few minutes to talk about his parents’ influence on his life as a musician, and his drive to more clearly articulate his musical ideas.
How did you become a musician?
My mom and dad opened that door for me. They met through music in Atlanta in the ’90s. After years of friendship, they had me, so I’ve been exposed to music my whole life, even while I was in the womb. Before high school, I was singing with some bands. I knew a drummer who lived in the same neighborhood as me, on the Westside. My dad paired me up with a drummer and a guitarist, and from out of nowhere, I started singing. And my mom is my biggest inspiration as far as singing. Basically, I wanted to sound like her, I wanted to sing like she sings.
When I feel like I have nothing else, I have music. It’s always with me. I can carry my instrument my voice anywhere I go. I can sing in hallways and in stairwells. When I record something, I’m creating something that I want to listen to.
I’m also putting together a band. I have my friend Akete Jahla on bass and Dariush Mirsajedin on drums. I’m still looking for a third member on guitar and maybe a keyboard player.
How would you describe her singing style?
Her voice is like dark velvet with air wooshing on top of it, or something like that. It’s different from my voice, but sometimes it’s the same. It has a maturity to it that I can’t imitate. Not that I’m trying imitate it, but it has a sound that is a part of her body that is different from my body. It’s beautiful. She was singing a lot of dub and reggae. She was with this band called 3052. She also sang with my dad and a lot of musicians around Atlanta. By the time I was in eighth grade, she stopped being in bands and was taking care of me. My dad has continuously played music, every day.
Do you think of what you’re doing now as pop music?
Right now I’m trying to make something a little more like pop music. My second album, that I’ve been working on intensely, is finished and I’m in the process of getting it mastered by a friend, and I want to make it a more accessible clarification of certain sounds and ideas that I was playing around with on the first album, True Fun. Be it collaborations with my dad, collaborations with my sister, Saharah, different ideas and inspirations, and using music as a diary or release, or something that I turn to in times of hardship.
Is there one song on the first album that you think of as your favorite, or as the seed that’s growing into your second album?
You know how artists change and their production values change? If I strip it away from the productions and focus on the song and how it feels to sing it, I think it’s “True Fun.” That’s the name of the song and the name of the album.
What’s your second album going to be called?
I don’t know yet, and it’s not going to be called I Don’t Know Yet (laughs). I literally do not know what I’m calling it. I had an idea, but I don’t know if I should say it because I might go with something else. I’m going to Georgia State’s Clarkston campus, and I’m thinking about releasing it after the summer semester.
You recently went on your first tour with Pamela_and her sons. How was that experience?
It was a lot like any tour is. It was the most endurance I’ve ever had being outside of my personal comfort zone, for like a month. Staying at different people’s houses. Different people’s venues, meeting different people every single day, doing my job music has become my job and my passion at the same time every single day. I struggled through moments of not wanting to do that anymore, singing the same songs, learning to find new joy in those same songs. And I learned how to improvise with Allie Alessandra Hoshor to combat our boredom with doing the same things, and to express ourselves as we actually feel, which was difficult to do by singing things that we wrote a year or maybe even two years ago.
Her material is somewhat darker than your material. How did you complement each other?
Yeah, it is dark and it’s logical, but you can breakdance to it! When we were in Baltimore, these people started breakdancing to her music. In big cyphers. It was so spontaneous and we didn’t say, “Y’all should dance to this!” We didn’t ask for it. Baltimore was so lit and amazing. The way that people reacted to our music, and were standing around me, and were singing the songs with me and encouraging me, there was no other show like that. It was a very different place.
Sequoyah plays the Irrelevant Music Festival on Fri., July 21. With Boy Harsher, Lord Narf, Cube, Pyramid Club, Pamela_and her sons and Ian Deaton. $12-$15. 8 p.m. 529, 529 Flat Shoals Ave. S.E. 404-228-6769. www.529atlanta.com.