“I wish I was one of your sheep / only because I wouldn’t have to kill to eat”
-Sheep
Following the pack has become an unspoken musical paramount these days. As everyone with a soapbox pens the music business’ obituary, countless ‘artists’ scamper for the nearest crumbs of commercial success. Thus, it seems the true artistic anomalies are found not within this herd…
If you’re reading this and have yet to hear the strains of Gonjasufi’s music, it’s best to to play A Sufi & A Killer now, as nothing written here will sufficiently communicate the extraordinary depth and strangeness of the man’s music. However, be warned, hearing it is bound to create just as many questions as answers about Sumach, the individual singing it.
“Gonjasufi is more prayer…my prayer music, my worship music. Sumach, that’s more of my killer side – walking down the street cocking a gun.”
The initial sonic hallmarks set the bearings for the listener, a palpable hauntology cut with disfigured strains of psychedelic soul, reanimated hip-hop and the shadow musics of too many countries to list – not layered on each other, but stitched together like a living cadaver of no longer forgotten music. The longer you listen the more you realize it’s the only place these songs could ever exist…exactly where they are. The first stabs of Gonjasufi’s voice on Kobwebz seem to lurch from dark corner, as if just awakened from a deep trance, but they waste no time in aligning their cryptic context.
“I came with hearts while you came with weapons / I came with God whom you are forgetting / don’t aim your problems in this direction / don’t blame Allah for your misconception”
-Kobwebz
One thing that is apparent from even the first tracks on A Sufi & A Killer, that the personality behind it will not be easily defined nor easily deciphered. A voice of the streets to be sure, but no less one of a much more mystical place. A definitive Yogic presence, in thrall to his practice of the art. A child of the sea as well as the desert, but also a careful father.
In the middle 2000’s, young California DJ and producer The Gaslamp Killer connected with Sumach when he heard the first collection of self-released, embryonic Gonjasufi songs. Igniting the collaborative ember that would eventually grow into much of A Sufi & A Killer, it also drew Gonjasufi from the badlands of Nevada into the nascent Los Angeles music community and some of J Dilla’s associates, namely Mainframe and ajdm. This proved to be a perfect fit for Gonjasufi’s music sensibilities…
“I was really looking for an analog sound. I didn’t want any computers, I wanted the least amount of microchips involved”
As sessions with Mainframe and The Gaslamp Killer got underway, Sumach made a link with another young Los Angelino with whom his hypnagogic music had struck a chord – a rising star called Flying Lotus. This meeting of minds resulted not only in the brilliant “Testament” from FlyLo’s now-classic Los Angeles, but also in the tense, epic “Ancestors”. Over the long process that was the creation of the album, Sumach dived into introspection and drew on a lifetime of experience in order to balance the duality of his existence as Gonjasufi.
“In order to get the conviction behind the words, it took 30 years of a lot of frustration and despair…continual tests of faith. Day to day struggling, ya’ know. Bottled-up energy, then all of a sudden, the way it came out seemed perfect…it kept flowing. Continually flowing out of me now, ya’ know?”
No doubt there’s much to uncover in Gonjasufi’s songs, and given their very nature, listeners will surely speculate and comment on both The Sufi and The Killer, but there is still much about Gonjasufi and his music that has yet to reveal itself. As with anything steeped so much in the light as in the shadows, in the negative made positive, in heaven and hell, this will demand much more than simple observation.
“The easy part is expressing it. The hard part is dealing with it, dealin’ with what I have to go through to come up with…the words. If I didn’t live it, and wasn’t going through it, then it wouldn’t come out the way it’s comin’ out.
I hope people that are going through the same emotions I’m going though, and went through…I hope it’s a way for them to channel their energy, and realize there is hope, there is a way to use all this so-called negative stuff that comes around in their lives, and turn it into something positive.”
This biography was provided by the artist or their representative.
