Sakina Abdou is a saxophonist, flautist, and visual artist. She studied recorder (early and contemporary music) and saxophone (classical, contemporary, and jazz) at the Music Academies of Lille and Roubaix. Since 1998, she has been active in various bands from the Lille area, working across jazz, improvised, and contemporary music. These include Bi-Ki?, the La Pieuvre Orchestra led by Olivier Benoit, Vazytouille, Eliogabal, and the Toc Compulsive Brass Band. She has also collaborated with the Dedalus Ensemble and artists such as Satoko Fujii, Eve Risser, Jean-Luc Guionnet, and Raymond Boni. With her debut solo album ‘Goodbye Ground’ (2022, Relative Pitch), she established herself as a distinctive voice in contemporary music and improvisation, and reinforced that reputation with an intense, goosebump-inducing solo performance at Summer Bummer last year. For this year’s edition, she’s not only part of an all-star quartet with Farida Amadou, Heather Leigh, and Ava Mendoza, but will also unveil a new project in collaboration with Kobe Van Cauwenberghe and Mariam Rezaei.

Music and work

You’re not only a saxophone player, but you also play the recorder, and you even have a degree in early music if I’m not mistaken. Was the recorder your first instrument?

Yes, it was. But I always wanted to play jazz because that’s what I heard when I was young at our place.

What age do you mean when you say young?

I have my first clear memory of that when I was five. We had a room dedicated to listening to music. My father was listening to a lot of African music and jazz. Because of that, I had a desire to play music from early on. That was my first impulse. After that I had to wait to be seven until my parents were allowed to enrol me in music school. I really enjoyed drawing as well and I remember the moment my mother asked me to choose which class I wanted to attend, because I couldn’t do both. I have a clear memory of the room we were in and the exact feeling I had because often I’m not so good at making choices. But this time the choice was obvious, I wanted to play music.

So when I became seven, I went to the tiny music school in my neighbourhood in Lille. But because there was no saxophone teacher, I began with recorder and early music. The second year, I started playing clarinet as well. When I was eight, my parents gave me my first saxophone for Christmas. It was the Christmas gift for the whole family. However, I remember my brother and sisters didn’t complain. That was my instrument for quite a long time, until my graduation. During my last years in conservatory, with the first money I earned, I bought myself my first professional saxophone. I still play the same horn today. I forgot to mention that I didn’t really stop early music at this time, I attended several courses in different classes and tried to finish every course. So, I did an entire early music course and a classical contemporary course before finishing a jazz course.

That was still during high school?

During and after high school. I also studied art and began to work early, but I always felt that music was something that would stay with me forever.

Did you have professional artistic ambitions at that moment in your life?

I didn’t really want to make music my profession or considered being a musician at this time. I mean, a professional musician. It’s funny, because I was very serious about the courses, but I didn’t have those specific ambitions. More in general as well. For a long time, my life wasn’t about professional ambitions at all. I was dealing with salaries as a totally independent subject. What I really wanted was to be free. Free to be myself, free to do whatever I wanted to discover. Free to have enough time and space to nourish my soul. I wasn’t interested so much in trying to directly connect these things with finding a way to make money. I just started to work quite early in my life so I was able to attend all the classes I wanted. I became a teacher. In recent years this has changed because playing concerts is how I earn a living, it’s my job now. But it’s new to me.

Is that shift to being a professional musician related to your involvement in the collectives in Lille, like Muzzix?

I got involved with the collectives at an early stage. The first one I discovered, while I was thirteen, was called Zoone Libre. Muzzix I joined around 2007, so almost twenty years ago already. For me music, improvisation and all those things, weren’t in any way connected to having a profession. I was worried for a while that it would create some kind of alienation. I was afraid of the strange relationship between work, productivity, rentability, capitalism and I didn’t want to put my passion into that space. So, I was happy to deal with life and, apart from that, have some gigs to play with my music. I didn’t want to have the pressure of earning money because I felt that it wasn’t good for the music to earn a lot. It could unconsciously push you to please an audience instead of being honest to yourself and all that. I was a bit anxious, I feared the pressure on my process as an artist, a process that is supposed to be free in your mind. But then at some point, I began to make some money only from concerts. For me, it was at first a kind of a bonus because I still had my teaching work. Since a few years now I don’t teach anymore so I finally have to face these questions again.

Fullness in emptiness

In an interview from two years ago you are quoted saying “I recently started discovering myself through improvisation”. What did you mean by that? Is improvisation something you discovered only in the past few years?

I think I mentioned that in the context of my solo experiences and solo record ‘Goodbye Ground’. Improvisation is something I’ve been experimenting with for a long time. But playing solo is relatively recent for me. I was always involved in groups and collectives, also in my life in general. I was the youngest in a family of six. There were always interactions or at least equations. To confront myself with solo experimentation, that was something new for me. Before, being alone was the same as being lonely. Although I don’t think that word in English describes the exact thing I mean with this. Maybe solitude is more suited in this context. Playing alone is very different from playing with other people. You don’t have the same feeling of urgency. The experience of time is different. With the solo, I discovered for the first time the naked echo of my own voice, the one that vibrates the envelope and the space that surrounds it. For me, it was the first way to discover fullness in emptiness. All that was refreshing and inspiring.

Is that also why you chose to record your solo album alone, at home? Without anyone looking or listening?

That was part of the process, which I felt was very inspiring.

‘Goodbye Ground’ has a narrative. I recognized some of the material in your solo concert at Summer Bummer last year.

Yes. I try to connect the concert performance to the album. I keep some ideas, intentions and architectural drawings.

So how different is it to play it in front of an audience instead of just for yourself?

When I was without an audience, the first difficulty was to manage to create music and try not to “work”. I mean, when you’re alone you can stop at any moment and start again. Having an audience means that you have to make music and make sure you have a beginning and an end. Alone, you face the difficulty of involving yourself enough, to not just try to make music but to really make music, which is a big responsibility. A responsibility that requires everything from you and doesn’t leave any space for subdividing of consciousness. I found that aspect very interesting. People, when they act in a truly musical way, you can feel them and their energy speaking to you, that’s something real and makes a difference.

A big time experiment

This year, you’ll perform twice at the festival. There’s an exciting quartet with Heather Leigh, Farida Amadou and Ava Mendoza, but you’ll also play in a trio with guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe and turntablist Mariam Rezaei. A few months ago, the trio did a residency at STUK in Leuven, where you worked on the music that is partially influenced by Ursula Le Guin’s classic sci-fi novel ‘The Dispossessed’ and the interval system that Henry Threadgill developed for Zooid.

It was an interesting residency, first, because it was my first collaboration with Kobe and Mariam and it’s always exciting to initiate a fresh collaboration with these great artists. Kobe invited Mariam and I had to work on the idea of “forward process” of Le Guin. The founding idea of the project is based on her quote “[Several] instruments playing an independent cyclic theme; no melodic causality; the forward process entirely in the relationship of the parts”. It served as a performance instruction, with the turntables initially representing cyclical time, and guitar and sax as linear melodic instruments, roles which can be switched around or turned upside down through improvisation. Our work during the residency involved time in different aspects: there are different layers and chapters of individual and collective creation. First, there is Kobe who initiated everything and provided some compositions: several series of melodic and rhythmical lines. Very minimalistic material based on constraints and randomness.

It’s supposed to be very rough material, but it’s funny how we can still hear and project all kinds of references in it. The second part is a collective responsibility. Partly compositional, because it deals with how to create pieces based on the lines Kobe provides. We decided to use certain frames, shapes or arcs that can involve counterpoint, free improvisation, loops or other things. We try to find different approaches and characteristics, using the same material. It’s a balancing act between individual proposals and collective decisions. The third part is also both collective and individual. The three of us all have a separate responsibility as interpreters and at the same time we are able to interact together through improvisation in many ways. We can also plan as composers to stick to some patterns or planned trajectories. Written material and improvisation can connect and disconnect at any given moment. It results in this big-time experiment: linearity, cycles, chapters, trajectories, superpositions, accidents, blurring the lines between past, present and future.

It sounds complex but knowing Kobe and the superb work he did with the music of Anthony Braxton these past few years, I’m sure it will be exciting to watch and listen to.

The musical object is kind of complex, but when you hear it, you can interpret it any way you want. The material is very transparent, and you always feel that there is a set of rules underneath, even when it sounds messy. During the residency I remember I had the feeling of being lost in the material sometimes, but I realized you can always find a path. We called the project ‘1984’, because we were all born in that year. The book by George Orwell is another reference. Although written a long time ago, the story feels very current, sadly.

Your second concert at Summer Bummer is also something special because it’s the first time you, Ava Mendoza, Farida Amadou and Heather Leigh will play as a quartet. And that is a direct result of you all playing at the festival last year.

I already knew Farida for a few years from a musical tribute to Louis Moholo that we did with Eve Risser and now I am very happy to have another occasion to collaborate with her. We both have family roots in Niger, so we have several things in common. She was playing with Heather last year and Ava and I both did a solo concert. We all shared an evening together in the backstage and it was a lot of fun. At some point Farida got up and talked to Koen and Christel, the organisers of the festival, just to say that this meeting in music would be something really special and exciting to discover. And they succeeded in making this happen, so thanks to them!

And that’s where the seed was planted! Have you made any plans yet for the concert?

Not really. I think it will be free improvisation.

Recently, you also started a trio with Marta Warelis and Toma Gouband. Your first actual band as a leader, if my sources are correct.

Well, not totally. I tried to initiate projects as a student already and after that, my first professional project was an experimental duo with Jean-Baptiste Rubin called Bi-Ki?. All my life I’ve been mostly involved in bands and projects of others until I recorded my solo for Relative Pitch, when I was asked by Kevin Reilly a few years ago. The project with Marta and Toma is my second one for the label. We will play in Antwerp at Het Bos, in early October, as part of a tour in France, crossing Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Portugal.

Since you play different kinds of wind instruments, I was reminded of a quote by John Butcher. He once said that his musical thinking changes drastically every time he picks up a different instrument. For instance, with the tenor sax he thinks vertically and builds layers, while with the soprano he thinks in lines. Is that something you recognise?

Definitely, although I have that feeling less and less as my approach to improvisation deepens. More and more, the instruments are becoming tools for developing my own distinct voice. I always had very opposite materials, the recorder and saxophone, in and out of the institutions, so for a while I had very different sounds and different ways of playing. But I had the feeling that I had to keep both, to be complete.

We’re almost at the end, but before I let you go, I want to ask what you have been reading recently or what music you have been listening to.

At a residency earlier, there were some books in the apartment where I stayed. I found a book on civil disobedience by Manuel Cervera-Marzal that I thought was interesting called ‘Les nouveaux désobéissants: citoyens ou hors-la-loi?’. Today, I have the feeling that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to resist the things you don’t like. I also notice that getting older in a context of disillusion can make you lose your energy in that aspect. But in this book, I found that it was described in a refreshing way. That struggle is not always about winning, because winning and losing are both sides of the same coin in a way. They can involve similar stimuli.

It reminded me that history is a march that can seem to move forward or go round in circles, depending on how you look at it. Its infinite movement seems to contain as much hope as fatality. But the simple idea that resistance never dies, but always moves on, already offers, I think, a sense of relief from the utopian suffocation we’re currently experiencing. In short, I don’t know if this book has given me hope, but it has at least given me some strength. On music, that’s another question. A few weeks ago, I reconnected the speakers to my dad’s ancient music system, and we had the cd player repaired. Then we listened to an album by Ali Farka Touré. It was a little “madeleine de Proust” moment that I was happy to let my children discover. In a way, it’s also about lines, circles and moving forward.