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about
“Cosmic Shebeen” is a track created by SIRA (the musical persona of the visual artist Zina Saro-Wiwa). A hypnotic dance track that speaks to humanity’s relationship with the end of civilisation as we know it. The track is led by the oja flute, a powerful instrument that is the key to the spirit world in the traditional music of SIRA's Ogoni tribe in southern Nigeria. In Cosmic Shebeen, traditional Ogoni sounds, plus the London club scene and Brazilian batucada find a home in one another.
SIRA says: "Cosmic Shebeen" came through me as a spiritual download. "I am a bit obsessed with the idea of apocalypse so it is hardly surprising that this song chose me to enter into the world. The song built itself around this dizzying little flute phrase that is powered, super-charged by the clapping underneath. This clapping and flute motif was recorded in the rural village where I am from in Ogoniland in Nigeria. It has lived in my archive for years but now is reborn in a new way and for a different purpose."
SIRA understands that many will describe these archive field recordings as 'sampled' but wants to make an important distinction: “I am also a participant in their creation because I am also an Ogoni woman clapping and singing in this group of rural women that are mostly farmers. I also try to honour samples and not behave extractively towards them, stripping the life from them and making this sound robotic. I want the samples I use to feel alive and not appropriated. I don’t want there to be this cultural distance. Because although I grew up in the UK, this traditional music is part of my DNA and my identity. And it is also alive and well in Ogoniland. It just comes out a little different through me."
“I'm still discovering what a Cosmic Shebeen actually is, but I think it is the place that humans have to go psychologically in order to survive the apocalypse. Or even the IDEA of the apocalypse. I don’t know if we are alive in this Shebeen or not. I think the song is telling us that the Cosmic is a tangible vibration. I think the Cosmic Shebeen is a protection against the madness that wants to find us in these supposed End Times."
Cosmic Shebeen is the first release from SIRA's debut EP titled "Indivisible I: Songs for the End of the World" out in September 2024.
lyrics
Lyrics for
"COSMIC SHEBEEN"
by SIRA
This is what was foreseen
For the Anthropocene
The way we live is just obscene
Seek the Cosmic Shebeen
While we stare at our screens
Wondering what might have been
Seatbelt off in the machine
Enter the Cosmic Shebeen
There’s no time to explore
The pattern set and now its war
To the edge we careen
Find the Cosmic Shebeen
Time is short but life is long
We don’t know if we are wrong
Apocalypse is just the Earth’s vaccine
Join the Cosmic Shebeen
Is it the end of the world?
At least it feels like the edges
Are trembling
This is what was foreseen...
This is what was foreseen...
This is what was foreseen.
Swallowed up by Mother Earth
She no longer sees our worth
Deliver Symbiocene?
Join the Cosmic Shebeen
Solastalgia is a bitch
Doesn’t matter if you’re rich
Now too late to intervene
Get in the Cosmic Shebeen
Is it the end of the world?
By wave or fire
Are we dying?
(They're lying, stop trying, stop crying
This is what was foreseen)
Financial plan is just to hope for societal collapse
Trying to digest big facts
Awaiting… debating
Are we awake, Is this a dream?
Inside this Cosmic Shebeen
credits
released November 17, 2023
Written, arranged, performed and produced by SIRA
Percussion: Richard Olatunde Baker
Clapping Chorus and Oja flute: Sira Ogbo Sisterhood
Additional production: Tony Nwachukwu
Mixed and mastered by Sam Brawner at Blue Dream Studios, LA
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