SPEAKER_02: Hey there, I'm Kyrie Douglas. I'm a producer here at Overheard and this is the second episode of our four-part series focusing on music, exploration, and Black history. It's called The Soul of Music and National Geographic Explorers will be sitting down with some of our favorite musicians to discuss how history and the natural world inspires their art and adventures. Today's guest is Sampha Timbo, better known by her stage name, Sampha the Great. Sampha is a Zambian-born musician and she's blown up over the last few years. Her song, Never Forget, which you'll hear soon, was used in the trailer for the Marvel movie Black Panther, Wakanda Forever. Pop culture-wise, it doesn't get much bigger than that. Sampha's music is inspired by hip-hop, rock, and the traditional, zombie, and music of her homeland. Her most recent album is called As Above, So Below. On that record, Sampha gets personal, divulging her struggles, her successes, and her self-love.
SPEAKER_05: For me, you know, As Above, So Below, As Within, So Without has a lot of meanings. It just means that your outer world is a reflection of what's going on within you.
SPEAKER_02: Sampha says she didn't always feel like she could show off her inner personality, in part because she spent a lot of time living outside of Zambia. She was raised primarily in Botswana, and in 2013, she moved to Australia to study audio engineering.
SPEAKER_05: Especially in Australia, I felt like I had to put on an ambassadorial role because of where I stood in my community. And I had to make sure, you know, whatever I sang, whatever I put out, represented my community well, because we were sort of the only examples of black music and black culture in Australia. We didn't allow ourselves to be humans. For me in particular, a lot of scars came from it, but I know a huge part of it was perfectionism because any mistake I made, that was an African community mistake, and it wasn't a Sampha mistake, you know? And that's just a huge way to be. And I just didn't allow myself to be the whole range of Sampha. The goofy Sampha, the funny Sampha, the Sampha that loves to love, the Sampha that loves love.
SPEAKER_02: During the pandemic, Sampha moved back to Zambia, and she says she was able to shed the armor she had built up and be more genuinely herself.
SPEAKER_05: And I actually got to show that through this project. I got to show full range of who I am, all the mistakes, you know, all the laughs, all the tears, everything, all the goofiness. Like, I actually got to finally show fully who I am as Sampha Tembo. And I feel like that was my as-above-so-below moment. I didn't have to wear any mask. My outer world finally represented what I was going through in my inner world. It felt like the perfect phrase.
SPEAKER_02: This is Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world. This week, as part of Overheard's The Soul of Music series, Sampha the Great sits down with National Geographic explorer and wildlife biologist Danielle Lee. Danielle has studied the behavior of giant African pouch rats, which are used to sniff the landmines all around the world. And she's passionate about science outreach. We featured Danielle in an episode of Overheard last year.
SPEAKER_03: My whole thing is I like to take pop culture references and then help people understand that they already have a really good comprehension and foundation in science already. Like you already know a lot of science. You already know a lot of behavior. You already know a lot of this. And I use their vernacular and cultural lexicon that is already familiar. And then I relate it to these scientific terminologies.
SPEAKER_02: Sampha and Danielle discuss inspiration through history, the power of language, and mental health therapy through nature. More after the break. But first, fuel your curiosity with a free one month trial subscription to Nat Geo Digital. You'll have unlimited access on any device, anywhere, ad free with our app that lets you download stories to read offline. Explore every page ever published with a century of digital archives at your fingertips. Check it all out for free at natgeo.com slash explore more.
SPEAKER_00: How you doing? How's it going?
SPEAKER_03: Hey, Danielle. How are you? I'm doing great. So for the audience, could you tell us your name and what you do?
SPEAKER_05: Hello, everyone. I'm Sampha Tembo, also known as Sampha the Great. And I'm an artist from Zambia.
SPEAKER_03: Now let folks know exactly where Zambia is. Okay, Zambia is in southern Africa.
SPEAKER_05: So you have South Africa, the lowest point of the continent. You have Botswana right on top of that. And then you have Zambia on top of Botswana.
SPEAKER_03: And you grew up in both Zambia and Botswana, right?
SPEAKER_05: Yes, that's correct. I grew up between Botswana and Zambia. So born in Zambia and at the age of one, one and a half, my parents moved to Botswana. My dad got a job in Khabaroni, the capital city. And we were sort of raised between the two countries. So our Christmases or special occasions or any like family, huge family event was spent in Zambia. And you know, our upbringing, our school primary and high school and everything else in between was spent in Botswana.
SPEAKER_03: So what was Botswana like as a school child spending time there?
SPEAKER_05: It was quite an adventure. It had both pros and cons. The pros were, you know, you got to experience life outside of Zambia, and you got to bring all those stories back to your cousins. And they'd be like, wow, that's crazy. Also, you're not raised around family. So all your extended family is in Zambia and you sort of feel left out, you know, in an experience that everybody else is having. And, you know, it was a huge sort of identity thing for me when I was younger. And it still is in a sense today where you knew that you were being raised in a country outside of the country where you're from, so you didn't quite fit in. And then also when you went to the country where you're from, people were kind of like,
SPEAKER_04: yeah, yeah, but you're being raised outside of your home.
SPEAKER_05: So you're not quite fully, you know, like us. So there's always that thing where, you know, you were neither either of the options, but you were also a middle ground for both.
SPEAKER_03: That's interesting. So I spend a lot of time in Tanzania, which is a bit more northern than Zambia. And I had that experience as a Afro-American, because that's usually the terminology that was used on the continent. Yeah. Visiting, you know, the continent. And I was often called 0.5. You know, what was that? This idea of being half there. Like I was half like that. You know, I was African, you know, historically inherited, wanting to connect, but I wasn't there. And so I was always back and forth. There was there was still this overwhelming Americanness to me, which was you can see it like how I walk differently, how I wore my hair. And you're right. They kind of being in between. It does still hit you. Yeah, it does stand out.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I guess for me, I tried to heal that. But obviously, it's not at the same level as your experience. I just tried to heal it by being in Zambia more, learning more about my language, learning more about even just the inflections in the way we speak Bemba. You know, my my Mwilishani is different than a Zambian who was raised in. And you can tell the influence of English. You can tell the colonisation in my language. So I really tried. And I think it's still passing on through adulthood to reconnect with, you know, all these different aspects of being Zambian and trying to fill that hole is obviously not at the same level. But I do love when my friends of the diaspora do come to the continent and just get themselves involved in language and culture and just seeing, you know, what it would have been like had we been raised in our ancestral homes. Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03: So there's a song of yours that I want to share a clip from. It's the Never Forget.
SPEAKER_04: Who took fabric, made that classic That ain't average, we did
SPEAKER_03: Who did music, made that language African branded, we did Who took movement, spirit included Made it a movement, we did Who took the origin straight from the soul and then redistributed, rooted So can you break this song down for me?
SPEAKER_05: Wow. I think this is an epitome of me and my friends just creating music that we love and are inspired by it, didn't know what it was going to do so well.
SPEAKER_03: So just jamming out, huh?
SPEAKER_04: Just jamming out and whoops, we just created something amazing. We just created something amazing.
SPEAKER_00: We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing.
SPEAKER_01: We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing. We just created something amazing.
SPEAKER_00: We just created something amazing. Future Asian, I saw someone about to give you information Cause they're brought in a vision Future Asian, I saw someone about to give you information They will never forget
SPEAKER_05: Now your sister's on this song with you, isn't she? Yes, she is. My sister actually co-wrote the chorus, so that was pretty huge. And when I started creating the album, we sort of booked out the studio for a whole month. And all the people involved in the album were all just hanging out together, Literally forced to be with each other within a span of two weeks And just talk about where we are, reconnecting back in Zambia and working on music together. And a huge genre that stood out to me while I was in Zambia was Zamrock. Yeah. And just how huge the influence of that music was And just the knowledge that some people in Zambia don't know how global Zamrock music went. And it sort of mirrored my experience in being a Zambian artist whose career took off in a continent and country away from her own. And more people outside of her country know about her. And I sort of took that as a, well, this may be something that is interesting to explore And just did a deep dive into Zamrock and decided to create this song that was supposed to be us paying homage to all the Zamrock legends who came before us. And just sort of saying a thank you and taking that inspiration and paying it forward. Okay, that sounds, so we're going to come back and talk a little bit more about Zamrock, but I did have a question about, so the second verse of this song, is it Chef or Chief?
SPEAKER_03: Chef. Chef. Chef. Chef 187. So he's speaking in, is it pronounced Bemba?
SPEAKER_05: So Chef is rapping in Bemba and Teal is singing the hook in Nyanja. So you have Nyanja, Bemba and English just all rolled up into one beautiful, yeah. Now Bemba and Nyanja, are those mother tongues in Zambia?
SPEAKER_03: Yes, one of the 62 languages and dialects in Zambia.
SPEAKER_05: So I mean, if you get one, at least you have something. So Bemba, my mom is Bemba, so Chef speaks my mom's mother tongue. And then my dad is from a tribe called Tumbuka and Teal's my cousin and he's speaking in Nyanja. And he's my cousin from my dad's side. So we're kind of bringing both of those energies together, subconsciously. But it was also just really beautiful, again, language to be involved in music more prominently now in this project than in my other projects. Just as a way of reconnecting and again reclaiming that part of me that was lost growing up somewhere outside of my own country. So it was really important to have language be a huge part of it. And also just to have rap being done in a different language and just showing the huge influence that hip hop has had on the continent. And just showing how we appreciate it in our own style and our own art form. So to have it being wrapped in Bemba was really cool. That is really cool. So I use a little hip hop in the work that I do in science communication.
SPEAKER_03: I don't flow though, let me be honest. I know something's deep down. Something influenced a little bit. I know this buzz.
SPEAKER_03: But I love how vocabulary and I love the artistry of it. I've been able to use it to explain concepts to not just my students in science, but to general audiences. And using that to explain concepts. And I've used not just American hip hop, but I've also used some continental hip hop. So out of Nigeria, you know, like my jam is chop my money.
SPEAKER_04: But using that to explain like animal behavior.
SPEAKER_03: And I love how hip hop, which is an is a Afro-American derived art form. But like we acknowledge here in the States that that's part of our call and response culture that we were able to hold on to. So like we recognize that it's continental too. It was a memory that we didn't even know we had. We were able to hold on to it. Right. I think music out of all of it is the one thing that just DNA just seeped into wherever we are in the world.
SPEAKER_05: Like that just kept the connection with the continent strong. That's really beautiful. Yeah. So speaking of no connections and language, when we were talking before the interview, you mentioned that growing up,
SPEAKER_03: you really struggle connecting with your grandparents back in Zambia because they spoke them. But your mother is family mother tongue. But in Botswana, because you lived in Botswana, they don't speak them. So you didn't really get to cultivate that. And and I love that you talk about the fact that you have at least three different languages together on that one. So how do you think language shapes and affects our relationships? There's so much information, so much emotion, codes of DNA that go into language that I just can't express how different it is to hear music in English versus music in your ancestral tongue.
SPEAKER_05: There's so much you miss out on. And I think it's sort of a blessing and a curse to be able to be in this middle ground, especially as a rapper, where you see sort of the impact your verses have and your flow have when you're rapping in English and when you're rapping in Bemba. And for us as an oral people, it's so important for us to be able to pass information and feel through the sounds that are happening in our phonetics. It goes back to just the drums and how we were able to talk to each other through sound. And as well, like English is in our language. It's a colonized language. And it itself has all its sort of bastardizations as well. And I know as Africans, wherever we are on the continent, we make English our own. We put in our own little flavor in it. And I know my brothers and sister in America also do their little thing to it, in phonics. You know, it can't just be, we need to add our own little flavor to it. And also in that realm, I know that the tone that happens when you're speaking in phonics versus when you're speaking English, that's also different as well. It is. Yeah, exactly. Here, an Americanized version of that is like how the word girl can communicate. How you say it like girl.
SPEAKER_03: I think I saw an SNL skit with Megan Thee Stallion and that was the girl skit. And I was just like, that is actually really perfect.
SPEAKER_05: So we've been talking, you mentioned very briefly about Zamrock and how you're a big fan of it. Now, Zamrock is a very special Zambian design, a Zambian-grown genre of music. And it became popular in the 70s.
SPEAKER_03: And it's this combination of traditional Zambian music with psychedelic rock. What are those traditional elements that differentiate Zamrock from that psychedelic rock that was popular back in the day?
SPEAKER_05: Man, so in Zambia, we have this music that's called Kalindula music. And it's sort of, I guess we could say Zambia's folk music. So a lot of our storytelling happens through Kalindula music. A lot of sort of the traditional sound of the guitar happens in Kalindula music. And so I guess the kids from the 70s heard psychedelic rock and were like, this is insane. We love it. But we're also going to infuse it with the style of where we're from and just spark something different, which I think is really inspiring, especially for a conservative country like Zambia to have psychedelic rock be your inspiration to me as well. And so they infuse these two sort of genres and still kept the art of storytelling as a center for it. I imagine rock also is rhythm and blues and blues is also sort of that folk storytelling thing. So you have folk from these different continents and sort of the feel of these distant relatives that is coming through this music, which is really beautiful. And so, yeah, you have these young kids who are inspired by this music. They fuse it together. And it sort of became a huge phenomenon in our country and became our national music. Like Zamrock was the Zambian sound. And then unfortunately, we had this huge AIDS epidemic that sort of killed a lot of our legends. And so Zamrock started to sort of die down.
SPEAKER_05: And we saw other music take center stage on the continent. So you had your Afro beats at that time, which was huge. You had your Congolese sort of rumba music that was huge. And we sort of adopted that music, which was really beautiful, but we sort of lost the essence of our own folk telling music, our own folk story music. And as I deep dived into Zamrock, I reimagined the Zambia where we still had our own music. We had our own musical identity. Just the way Afro beat is influenced by West Africa and the stories that surround West Africa and the storytelling that surround West Africa. I thought Zamrock was that for us. And what would it take to go back to that? And I sort of saw the similarities again with Zamrock being known outside of Zambia, much like myself and my career. And then I stumbled on some huge information this year, which was my uncle was part of one of the huge Zamrock bands called The Witch. And he was part of the founding members of that band. Which was like information that was wild to me and information that I needed when I started my career, because it was like so lonely doing it alone. My dad nonchalantly says, your uncle was part of that. Your uncle was part of that era. Just out the blue. Oh my goodness. So who are some of your favorite Zamrock artists?
SPEAKER_04: Okay, I'm going to be biased with the first choice. It's The Witch. That's because my uncle was part of the founding members of The Witch.
SPEAKER_05: And then also Pauline Gosling, who's really huge. And again, one of the leaders of Zamrock was huge to me as well. So I'd say those two.
SPEAKER_03: One of your other big musical idols is Angelique Quijo. Tell me about her and why is she one of your favorite artists?
SPEAKER_05: Angelique Quijo. How do you express how important she is? Angelique was like not to compare like our Madonna. You know, she came into sort of the music sphere, brought being African and showing our culture to the world, to the conversation and made it cool. Not only that, but showing our spiritual side as well, which was often and is often demonized. And so to me, one of the founding members of Afrofuturism before Afrofuturism was a thing visually and artistically. To me, I saw Angelique Quijo do that. And as a young African woman, you're like, oh, cool, we can do that. We can show that part of ourselves and that be cool. And that was what Angelique Quijo was to us. A huge inspiration and still is a huge inspiration. Where did she hail from?
SPEAKER_05: She's from Benin. Benin? OK. She is from Benin. And yes, she just infuses her culture, the spiritualism of where she's from and her language into her music, which I think is really amazing.
SPEAKER_03: So I really love this song and she's featured on your song, Let Me Be Great. It is a first of all, it's a dynamic song. And the video is just visually just jaw dropping. So we're going to play a little bit of that.
SPEAKER_04: So what was it like to collaborate with her?
SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh, I'm still shocked because I'd say that's the only feature in the album that was super unexpected, but fit in as if it was planned.
SPEAKER_05: So we were in the middle of making our album and we had just done our NPR Tiny Desk in Zambia, the home version, because we were in lockdown at the time. And I remember that being released and we sort of did it and wanted to infuse our whole culture in it. We were wearing our Zambian attire. We were like, yeah, we're really going to show them.
SPEAKER_04: And we were just really proud of it. And I remember getting a DM from Angelique Chijun.
SPEAKER_05: I remember seeing that on my phone and just like screaming, wilding out, showing my cousin and my sisters that Angelique is DMing me.
SPEAKER_04: Do you understand? Because again, like legends DM. I don't know. I'd never had this encountered before. So it was so wild.
SPEAKER_05: I just remember opening the DM and she was like, the NPR performance was so beautiful. I'm working on my album. Don't tell anyone. Do you want to be a part of it? And just still being in shock that Angelique Chijun is DMing me. You're like, yes Aunty. Anything you want. I'm going to do it. Anything.
SPEAKER_04: And that was just, I don't know. It was just really insane.
SPEAKER_05: And I remember doing the verse for her song and just knowing that we have just worked on the song called Let Me Be Great and her vocals would be exquisite on the song. Angelique has these vocals that we call ancestral vocals. I think these are like the way we sung before we were influenced by classical music or any other sort of way of singing because this has that spiritualism inside. I think that her voice is just, it carries so much history and so much, it just sounds spiritually connected to ancestral music. So to even just have her there is just a huge honor. And I remember sending her back the song that we did on her album and just sneaking Let Me Be Great in the email as well.
SPEAKER_04: And being like, here's the song for your album. Here's my verse. But I'm also working on my album and just trying to do two things at one go.
SPEAKER_05: And luckily enough, she was gracious enough to be like, I love this song. I want to be a part of it. What is it about? And me just expressing to her, you know, as a young upcoming artist, you face so many doubts, so many fears. You don't know whether you want to do this path anymore. You're influenced by these huge legends. Some of them you meet and they don't quite live up to your expectations of them. And then you realize that they were supposed to be examples that you could do it. You know, they were supposed to be reflections and representations of someone who looks like you doing what you've dreamt of doing. But you were not supposed to be a copycat of them. You were not supposed to be the second version of them. You were supposed to take that inspiration and sort of manifest who you want to be through that inspiration. And I think that's the beautiful thing about being able to interact with your legends and people who created these paths for you. So that they able to sort of pass the baton and give you these stories and show you how you can pay it forward.
SPEAKER_05: And it'd be this healthy conversation between different generations on what they went through to be able to give you this path that you have now. And she just seemed like the perfect person and it just felt like perfect timing to have her on that song, especially for what it meant. And I was just so happy and lucky that she was down to do it. But not only was she down to sing lyrics that were already written. I mean, she's Angelique Kijo. She can write whatever she wants. She was like, I'll sing this chorus you guys wrote, but also add her language to the outro of the song. And just that more passion and more spirit involved in this song and this message. And we couldn't have jumped off a better track.
SPEAKER_03: Now, being a touring artist is a pretty stressful job, I can imagine. But when you're taking time off from touring and making music, you like to hang out at your family's farm in Zambia. Tell me about that. What's the farm like?
SPEAKER_05: So the farm is immensely quiet. There is nothing that goes on around there. Really, all you can hear are the birds, the wind, the people who are in the background tilling the land. And you can actually be present with life. I feel like when you're touring, you're going from one place to another. You're changing time zones. You're talking to all these people. You're exchanging so much energy. You're in rooms that are not your own space. And you're really going through these different spaces at a huge speed. And you don't actually have time to yourself. On top of that, you're not getting any rest. And it can be a huge punch on your mental health. On top of being an artist who expresses music differently to mainstream or commercial artists, you're doing that every night. You're connecting with people who've been inspired by the music. You're exchanging stories. You're exchanging traumas. And that can be a lot to bear for a huge amount of time. And I was finding that every time we were off tour, we'd get two weeks off. And then we were back to the same sort of strenuous cycle. And it just isn't a normal way for humans to live and interact with each other. But also, as the artist, you find that you don't have time to fill in your cup again. You don't have time to recoup. You don't have time to replace the energy that has been exchanged or exerted.
SPEAKER_05: And a lot of what I express through my music has a lot to do with grounding yourself. As a person who started off with major anxiety, I started meditating really early in my career. I knew what I wanted to do, but it was so huge and so grand of a dream that it scared me to even want to pursue the dream. A friend of mine explained anxiety as you being in the future while your body is in the present. And you sort of create this rift in your chest of trying to be in these two places. And I really had to practice being present and just growing my confidence for knowing what I wanted to be as an artist. And that has sort of stuck with me throughout my career. So when you're adding touring to that equation in order to exert all of this energy, to exude the confidence that we do on stage and share these stories, there also has to be time to self to reflect and to grow. And I usually do that by connecting to nature and being sort of away from everything else. Grounding myself in the actual ground, in the actual grass, being able to reconnect and hear my own breath and hear my heartbeat. And just be in a place of solitude and stillness, which is what nature gives me. It reminds me that I'm alive more than any stage could, you know? And I feel like that's one of the beauties in nature that we've lost with technology, buildings and everything else that is in the middle of it. So when I finally have some time to myself, my remedy, my medication is to be able to go back home and connect with the land and actually be involved with sitting in nature and bringing myself back to ground zero. And so that's sort of how I deal with everything.
SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much. This has been a pleasure. This has been really beautiful. Thank you for taking me down memory lane.
SPEAKER_05: That was Explorer Danielle Lee in conversation with musician Sampa the Great.
SPEAKER_02: If you like what you hear and you want to support more content like this, please read and review us in your podcast app and consider a National Geographic subscription. That's the best way to support overheard. Go to NatGeo.com slash explore more to subscribe. Learn more about Sampa the Great at her website, Sampa the Great dot com. That's spelled S-A-M-P-A-T-H-E-G-R-E-A-T. And follow her on Twitter or Instagram at Sampa underscore the underscore great. Learn more about Danielle Lee at her website about dot me slash D.N. Lee. And listen to a full interview with Danielle in the overheard episode, The Wonders of Urban Wildlife. You can also follow her on Twitter or Instagram at D.N. Lee five.
SPEAKER_02: That's all in your show notes right there in your podcast app. This week's overheard episode is produced by me, Kyrie Douglas. Our senior producers are Brian Gutierrez and Jacob Pinter. Our senior editor is Eli Chih. Our manager of audio is Carla Wills, who edited this episode. Our executive producer of audio is Devar Adalan. Our photo editor is Julie Hao. Ted Wood sound design this episode and Hans Dale Su composed her theme. The Soul of Music series is produced in collaboration with National Geographic Music. Special thanks to Hannah Grace Van Cleave, Jennifer Stilson and Brittany Greer. This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners. The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, funds the work of National Geographic explorer Danielle Lee. Michael Tribble is the vice president of Integrated Storytelling. Nathan Lump is National Geographic's editor in chief. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
