Live & Local: Salin

This portion of the interview above has been edited for length and clarity:

ABI: Salin, you're a drummer and producer from Thailand now based in Montreal, and you've kind of been doing a lot of different styles of music. I was reading, you started off in the rock and metal scene, moved into an R&B and soul vibe, and have been really pioneering Afro Jazz and Thai Funk in a beautiful blend. In an interview that I read, you said that your life feels more like different chapters, and we're excited to be along for the ride for that cause it's been really cool.

SALIN: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

ABI: Yeah. So, you're now based in Montreal, but you moved to Ohio to go to college, and I was reading that you were a journalism major and then moved into anthropology, and of course, music was always at the center of everything. It wasn't until you moved to Montreal that you discovered Afrobeat. Is that right?

SALIN: Yes.

ABI: What was that like? Where did you first hear it or what was your impression?

SALIN: I first heard about Afrobeat at a live show [by SPRLUA, a Montreal group]. They do live jam improv at this venue called Boulevard. It's closed down now, unfortunately, but when I first discovered Afrobeat was through Jahaan, who's also actually, funnily enough, a drummer and a leader in the community. And he would throw in this beat with Jordan — I think he was on guitar then — who is my guitar now, funnily enough.

ABI: Full circle.

SALIN: He would be on the — well, he won't be on the Denver show, but he'll be on the LA show and so forth. But I heard the community play Afrobeat. I was like, oh my god, what is this? I never heard something like this before in my life, and I just fell in love with the polyrhythmic vibe a bit and the fun, dance-y vibe that it brings.

ABI: You were finding it was connected with Mor Lam, right? You were seeing those connections when you were listening?

SALIN: I didn't hear the connection right away, but it was a couple years ago — so, this is probably 10 years after that that people start to ask me, “So, like, you know you're from Thailand, but what does Thai beat sound like?” And back then I know of Mor Lam, but I don't know well enough to be able to say, “Oh, this is exactly how you should play it.” So, I kind went into studying how that rhythm, and then one day it just clicked me. I'm like, “Oh, wait a minute. Mor Lam beat, or Samsha, they're very similar, has very similarity with Afrobeat. The way it's upbeat. Like, in Afrobeat you have, “Tak, tak, ta, ka, ka, ka, ta.” And then Mor Lam is like, “Ta, ka, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ka.” And then when you hear some of Amapiano’s song, you would hear people like, “Oh my God, this is like —" because the kick and the snare is never really too straightforward. It kind of switches around a bit. It kind of implies — like jazz really. And that's how I figured out I could blend the two genres together.

DELE: That's a really cool and interesting story to hear about, Salin. And yeah, I'm curious about when you started playing the drums because from what we've discovered in our research and just from hearing your music on recording, all these different genres of music sound and feel so authentic and natural. So, I'm just really interested in your development as a drummer.

SALIN: I love playing drums, and I’m kind of lazy as a student to be honest. I don't like reading. I don't really like following a book or something like that, but I love transcribing whatever I hear. So, drumming for me is very spiritual. For me, it's a way to get in the zone in the present moment and just feeling the rhythm. And I always try to transcribe things that I love. For example, I transcribe Clyde Stubblefield or Nate Smith or Yussef Dayes, and when I went to South Africa, I got this gig. I was in a commercial, a Ford commercial, and I was a drummer in the commercial, and this was in 2019, I think, or a bit before that. I went to South Africa, and I remember feeling the vibe of the earth and the rhythms. You can just hear rhythms from everywhere. And I just keep that very spiritual connection with drumming as if drumming is part of the sound of the universe. It's part of the sound that is all around us, and you actually try to listen to tune into that frequency, you would hear rhythms, and that frequency I find was very strong in South Africa, and they can argue that Africa continent is the birthplace of all humanity and where we all started. So, it would make sense that the frequency there is very strong. And then I also — to backstory with that — I also went busking a lot. So, I actually would play Breakbeat on the street to make a living before I could get any type of gig that would really pay my bills steadily. So, I really developed my style through the streets and through transcribing different drummers.

ABI: That traveling, it really authenticates and just brings out this major connection with the music. I was excited to be brought into daylight to your travels in the creation of “Rammana” going to Thailand for — I can't believe — three days?! It seemed like you packed so much in there! It was just exciting to see it at the root, and see the folks that you were hanging out with from the Nyah Kur tribe play their music and bring you more into that culture. I would love to hear a little bit about your theory, how the rhythms of Africa connect to Thailand and the area in that archipelago — Indonesia, Malaysia, how those are connected, and then how you probably brought your journalism background and your love for world into those travels to inform your music and really create this bond.

SALIN: So, to best story, the travel took a little longer than three days. It was like I went to the northeast of Thailand for 10 days. We only, well, there's only three days episode there, but we haven't finished the rest of the documentary really. So, we are planning to launch that very soon as well. But long story short, I did two travels, one in northeast of Thailand and then one in the south, and the south is where I discovered the Urak Lawoi. And the Urak Lawoi, they are sea nomads, and you can find their tribe — their roots — from Madagascar all the way to Papua New Guinea. So, they would travel through the sea. And so, my theory was that perhaps they brought the rhythms and the influence from Africa, meeting with the local people in Thailand, and then birthed the Rammana song, which is a traditional folk song on the which is the last song of the album. And that symbolically shows how it has this Afro vibe in the sense that there's a call and response in the vocals, but also their drums is called also the Rammana drums. It's tuned very low, like the traditional African drums. So that's how I was able to see the connection. And actually, looking further into the studies, in Madagascar there's a drum called the Ramana. I think they have similar version of Rammana across in Madagascar in Malaysia. So, I think my theory is pretty close, but it's a very cool discovery to hear the Rammana, hear they sing Rammana, and hear how they have that influence.

DELE: Yeah, that is so cool. That journey brought you closer to the indigenous cultures of your homeland, and you were able to draw these amazing connections just based on your experience. And you say you're a lazy student, but what I see in this project is just maybe just that passion, that dedication to something that's really sparked your interest, and really applying a very studious nature to developing the sound and in that documentary short. The segment where you start sampling the man playing the mouth harp, I love that song from the new album, and it's an infectious sort of rhythm and sound that I can just feel getting stuck in my head. So maybe to pivot a little bit into talking about the new album, that's my favorite song. I don't know if you have a favorite song, Abi.

ABI: Oh my gosh, it's so hard to pick!

DELE: I'm curious, Salin, if you have a favorite song on the album or a favorite moment from working on any of the music in this new project?

SALIN: Yeah, I go through phases, but really, my favorite part of this album was really the first time I listened to the first track to the last track and see how it kind of puts me in a time travel mode. Like the beginning of the album, there's the Ngoma drum, which is a traditional Congolese drum rhythm, and then you have this Thai Mor Lam vocal. She sings on top. So that was the beginning of the meeting between two cultures and how it ends, and then you go through this journey, it's like my art is super hype and then current has a two by genre in the one song, and I just love how it brings me to a journey and to the end it goes to Rammana, which is like หมดแก้ว (mòt gâew) is saying it means, “Come cheers,” in Thai. So, it's a really uniting moment. So, I love listening to it from start to finish. I'm like, “Oh yeah, that's pretty good.”

ABI: Yeah, “Rammana” is an anthem. The way that you bring the strings in there and then it's building throughout the song, but the album itself, it feels like you can't really feel like when one instrument stops and the next begins. It's so layered, kind of like all of the journeys that you took to make it. I did have a question about “Current,” and it wasn't until I watched the video that I saw what it looked like, but I still don't know what it is the instrument in it. That kind of sounds almost like a — I knew it was wind-driven — and then I see this musician playing what looks like almost like an upright pan flute. I love the way that instrument sounds. What is that?

SALIN: It's a Khaen. It's a bamboo instrument. You're right, it's like a woodwind instrument. It's compiled of different bamboo tubes, and you would have to press different holes to block the wind so it produces different sounds in the scale. Yeah, it's a really cool instrument.

ABI: It was amazing to see the musicians playing them and seeing so many of those instruments deriving from plants and creating those unique sounds out of it. Very, very, very cool.

SALIN: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, I love seeing them. I love meeting it. This is the first time, too, and yeah, you're right, it's all from plants. The Khaen is made of bamboo, and so is the port, which is the mouth harvest. It's also made from bamboo.

DELE: Wow, that's so cool. Your journey has been a lifelong journey in music, but it seems in the last maybe four or five years that you've just skyrocketed to this point of now, I could say, that folks would see you as a leader in this space of music, and you're still fairly new to it in terms of your creative process. I wonder how that feels.

SALIN: Oh, I'm really grateful. Sometimes I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, but I guess I know a bit what I'm doing.

ABI: I’d say.

SALIN: I'm really grateful of all the feedback that I get and how much it connects with different people from different walks of life, too. I love seeing how, even though this sounds very new, how it connects all people's walks of life really. I have people from South Africa really love it from Thailand and America, and Europe, so it's been a blessing. Yeah.

DELE: Yeah. Speaking of just connecting to people from different walks of life and everything, I discovered your music on Instagram. My algorithm showed me a video of you playing the drums on a beach and playing just an awesome — this Afrobeat rhythm. I'm not sure exactly which video it was, I can't remember. But yeah, I discovered you on social media and then started diving deeper into your music, and now it shows up pretty much weekly in my show, so yeah. I'm also curious how your presence on social media you think has influenced your growth.

SALIN: Oh, it's a huge influence. I remember before I had maybe 1,000 or 3,000 followers on Instagram, and then one video blew up, and I remember I started getting a hundred followers every time I would swipe, and I was like, “Oh, my God, what?” Then I was like, it was getting close to 10K. I'm like, “Oh, it’s probably going to stop at 10K.” And then 10K, it didn't stop, and then I'm like, “I don't know what's going on.” And then it went to 20K and then it went to 30K, and then one of you reached a million views then, and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is crazy.” Then Questlove shared it too, just different people sharing it and really connecting with it, I guess. And then from that on, it's like I have way more fans and radios reaching out, and so is my manager. The team kind of just came together from that, which is crazy.

ABI: Wow. I mean, people I think are really drawn to the personal connection, the respect and the love that you put into your music and into celebrating all these different cultures, and we're in a really exciting time where there are a lot of musicians that are bringing in their cultures into the music. I know you've touched a little bit about the Thai music scene and seeing some of that explored. It's got to feel amazing to be part of that kind of wave of music that we're seeing now.

SALIN: Yeah, I know. I love this wave.

ABI: Well, we are really excited to have you in town. You're going to be three dates in Colorado at Cervantes on the 20th here in Denver, and then you're going to go out to Boulder at the Flatiron Sound Music Festival, which that's in a historic venue, right, Dele?

DELE: Yeah, the Chautauqua Park amphitheater is beautiful. It's along these jagged Flatiron mountains that are just kind of iconic staple of Boulder's visual identity, and it is a beautiful theater and so many amazing artists from around the world have played there, so that's really exciting. You've got two big dates in the Denver area. Cervantes, another place with a great history locally in Denver, in the neighborhood where that venue is historically was considered the Harlem of the West. Harlem, New York, that is the birthplace of jazz. And so, Denver has a really deep and rich jazz history, and you’ll be able to join the ranks of artists from around the world who have been on that stage. Seun Kuti actually just played that venue a few weeks ago, so powerhouses of Afrobeat music have been through that building, kind of priming the space for your show.

SALIN: That's amazing! Oh, my God, I'm so excited.

ABI: We're excited.

DELE: Yeah, and then we see you're off to LA for a show and then back to Colorado. So, I mean, if Colorado becomes your next home, if you say Montreal is your home for now, I'm sure with three dates in Colorado, you might be convinced to change your locale.

ABI: That's awesome. We're excited to see you in the mountains too (at) Jazz Aspen. Amazing work on the album, we're so excited to continue with you on your travels and of course to have you here in town for those dates, you're about to embark on your summer tour. How are you feeling? What's next? What's going through your head as you're going to be sharing more of this music with the world?

SALIN: So actually, we've been writing some new stuff as well, so I can't wait to play some new stuff. I know it's like, yeah, just released an album and here we go, writing the second one! So, I'm really excited to share some of the new material and also just meeting the people that I never met. I never been to Denver or Colorado. I never played in LA. So, playing all these places the first time and meeting the fans there, I am just really excited.