Alfa Mist, from self-taught training to London jazz sensation: “I started listening to music”

Alfa Mist It’s part of the good news that the We want it! Festival takes to the stage at Marina da Glória, in Rio de Janeiro, on April 13th. In São Paulohe performs on the same night as Adi Oasis at Audio this Thursday (11). The deal is right for the São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro public, who will have the chance to check out one of the most interesting names on the jazz scene in London in its first performance in Brazil.

A great goal, in fact, scored by the pianist who wanted to be a football player, but ended up finding music as an almost innate talent, which he developed on his own. Alfa Mist, working name of Alfa Sekitoleko, started making his beats at the age of 15, influenced by hip hop and grime music. In Newhamwhere he was born, his unpretentious path through samples from different sources would lead him to discover jazz, soul and classical music, which he was unaware of.

“I started listening to a lot of jazz, classical music, and I decided to try to understand what was happening in the songs, because a lot of the time I preferred to hear what I was sampling. There was something about those songs,” he told Rolling Stone Brazil.

Today with five albums and celebrated by labels such as the legendary Blue Note, he has followed an unconventional path among his peers, so often immersed in conservatory music theory. At the age of 18, already involved in the restlessness awakened by jazz, he decided to learn the piano – which he did on his own, following the hand movements he saw in music videos: “What I did was practice on songs that my hands couldn’t handle. play. At the end of each song, I was better. I could play. That’s how, listening to music, I started.”

The ease in combining electronic sounds with self-taught and rigorous piano training would end up defining Mist’s unique style – complex and melancholic, deeply influenced by hip hop and electronic music, but today defined by talent on the instrument. Instead of limitations, his trajectory opened up, in the union of gender, a range of possibilities:

“I think things will always mix because everyone has a different starting point. If I played guitar, I don’t know, since I was four, there would be a lot of guitar in my music, you know?”, he reflects. “But because we’re from different genres, we’re going to try to integrate. Especially jazz, which is so broad. Hip hop too. I think it’s quite easy for those things to mix and I think it’s good for them to mix.”

Despite what the sound innovation may suggest, Mist says that his creative process is rigorous – he is a perfectionist, he guarantees. “If I did, I would spend years making a song because I wanted it to be perfect. I want everything to be amazing, but because I know that’s who I am.” Today, nine years after his first EP – the great night -, he gives himself a pre-determined time to deliver his compositions. “Because of this I can put music out into the world.”

We want it! and Brazil

In the presentation he brings to Brazil, Alfa Mist’s main focus will be the album Variablesreleased in April 2023. As the name suggests, it is an album about variables, about potentials.

“Everyone can start in the same place and then end up in different places because of circumstances and choices in life. So I thought that was interesting. I wanted to make an album about that. That’s why there are so many different genres or maybe different styles on the album. It’s because of the different paths I could potentially take.”

The visit to the country is accompanied by an old desire. Of the influences, which “invariably” include Brazilian jazz and names like the guitarist Fabiano do NascimentoMist says that Brazil was one of the first places where fans asked for his music – and it ended up being one of the last places he could finally visit.

A football fan, he says: “Brazil was my favorite team. You know, I’m from England, but there wasn’t a team as amazing as Brazil when I was growing up.”

In addition to a match, he guarantees that he would love to see the country’s landmarks and cuisine as much as possible, but given the tight time of the tour, he might not be able to: “but I’ll go back and do it, if I can for sure” .