I have recently been enjoying the sounds of GonjaSufi and thought I’d share his stylings with Sepia Mutiny readers. You can clearly hear the South Asian influence in his music:

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Gonjasufi (born Sumach Ecks, aka Sumach Valentine, c.1978) is a rapper, singer, disc jockey and yoga teacher from San Diego, California and currently living in Las Vegas, Nevada.Ecks was born to a Mexican mother and an American-Ethiopian father. He has been releasing music since the early 1990s among the San Diego Hip Hop scene, notably with the Masters of the Universe crew. Ecks gained notice from Warp Records in 2008 after an appearance on Californian musician Flying Lotus’ album Los Angeles, where he sings on the track “Testament”. His Warp debut album, A Sufi and a Killer was released on March 8, 2010. Ecks’ voice was described by Pitchfork Media as “a scraggly, scary, smoked-out croak that creeps like the spiritual offspring of George Clinton and Leadbelly”. He attributes his singing voice to his day job teaching yoga when he had to “to project from my stomach more”.[3]… [Wiki]

The notoriously harsh Pitchfork has positive things to say and interviewed him earlier this year:

Pitchfork: When did you realize you had the disorienting singing voice that you use throughout A Sufi and a Killer?

G: That voice came out of me around 2006 and I’ve been trying to channel it ever since. I found it through teaching yoga, straight up. I don’t like to use a microphone around my head while I’m teaching so I had to learn how to project from my stomach more. I would come back from teaching three classes in a row and my voice would be all fucked up– most of the vocals on the album were recorded right after I taught yoga.

Pitchfork: What do you get out of yoga?

G: I found the ability to become still. The hardest thing for people to do is just be still. And in that stillness you create motion. It’s really a form of worship that the West turned it into this McDonald’s shit. It’s the realest shit I’ve learned in this life and it helped me to deal with the outside world by mastering my inside world. [Pitchfork]

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