elijah jamal asani, Naima Nefertari, and Angel Bat Dawid Put Their Ears to the Land

elijah jamal asani is an “anti-disciplinary” artist from Chicago, and currently based in Portland; Naima Nefertari is an artist, musician, composer, and archivist from London, who plays in the duo Exotic Sin; and Angel Bat Dawid is a composer, performer, producer, and educator based in Chicago. elijah’s latest project, ,,, as long as i long to memorise your sky ,,,, was born from his time as an artist-in-residence at the Grand Canyon in the summer of 2022, and was just released last week. Naima and Angel also just put out an album last week, their collaboration Journey to Nabta Playa. To celebrate, the three got on a call to catch up about it all.  
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music

elijah jamal asani: Thank you both for being open to this, for being graceful with your time. But also, thank you for the project. I had a chance to listen to it.

Naima Nefertari: Excellent. 

Angel Bat Dawid: Thank you, elijah. Yeah, it was deep. We’re still on the journey right now. We’re just at the tip of the iceberg.

elijah: It’s a beautiful journey. It’s a guttural story — revolutionary remembrance, and the original connection to the sky and the heavens. Sometimes words don’t do the trick.

Naima: Yeah, it can be difficult to put it into words. And I think in many ways that’s probably why we made this album, because we’re trying to learn about the place, talk about Nabta Playa, and gather information about it. The best way of formulating that was into this story and sound, I think. 

elijah: I feel like the first words that I recall being said were a prayer. Is that right?

Angel: Yeah, definitely a lot of prayer with this project. Even how it came about, it was just divine. It’s definitely outside of Naima and I. There’s no way we could have consciously planned this. Like, Naima lives in London and I live in Chicago — how is this going to happen? How are we going to be able to get together and work on this project? And it was always some divine, serendipitous situation. I had a show in Poland, and Naima was like, “Yo, you want to come through to the house in Sweden?” And I was like, “Yeah!” It just worked out because I was already over there. And then Naima would be over here sometimes, and usually when she’s in Chicago, she’s staying with the great Kahil El’Zabar — which we actually recorded some of the music there at his studio as well. I feel like it was actually Kahil who encouraged us to do an album. Right? 

Naima: Yeah, it was. Because it was after my uncle David [Ornette Cherry] passed away, I came to visit Chicago and stay at Kahil’s, who had made a record recently with my uncle David. And then when we were hanging out and playing and stuff, Kahil was like, “You should just do a record.” So, yeah, a lot of it came from him. And I feel like David, being that guidance also behind him.

Angel: Definitely. I had the privilege of meeting David only one time. Naima and I have been friends for years, actually. I think the first time I really met Naima, I was on tour at the London Jazz Fest. Art Ensemble of Chicago was playing, and she came backstage. I think it was really brief when I met her, but I instantly felt like, Oh, my goodness, who is this woman? She’s amazing. And then I was introduced to her music with Exotic Sin and just her as a pianist and everything she’s doing with her family’s archives. I was just like, I want to be friends with her. And we developed that friendship. I think over the years, we just kept running into each other in different places. 

Naima’s just as adventurous as I am, so it’s been a wonderful journey being able to perform with her. She’s prolific. And it’s just so refreshing to work with another Black, woman because there wasn’t any of these stipulations of how far we wanted to go. Nobody’s there saying, “Oh, maybe you should do this.” Because let me tell you another thing, Naima is very technical. Naima is so technical and detailed, and I’m the same. When it came to us mixing the sounds and the integrity of the piece, we was not playing games. It was just really fun. And that’s just the technical stuff. There’s this whole spiritual journey — because I never heard about Nabta Playa until Naima. 

Naima: When I was staying at Kahil’s that time a couple of years ago, and we started doing some recording and experimenting, somehow I started telling you about Nabta Playa. I had discovered it when I was reading another book about star constellations and ancient astronomy, and I found this other essay online that was talking about the colonialism of the study of the stars, and how what most people know is that it’s the ancient Greeks, so-called, that discovered that. But really, there’s much earlier mapping and understanding of that from all over the world. And it’s not about who did it first. It’s just about the fact that, of course, there are ancient people from all different parts of the planet. Nabta Playa is in what would now be Egypt. 

It was just really fascinating, this essay I was reading; it was about how this ancient knowledge had been colonized, and basically the only way it was taught to all of us is that this was discovered by the ancient Greeks. But really, I think they had adapted most of the information from ancient Egypt. And even before what we think of as ancient Egypt and the pyramids and all of that was Nabta Playa. Nabta Playa was the was a meeting place and a pilgrimage place that was a stone circle that people would gather at these important times in the year, on the solstices, the equinoxes. It was all in line with certain stars on those exact days. This was around, I think, 5 or 6000 BC.

Angel: So ancient.

Naima: Yeah, it was really, really ancient. And apparently only more recently, scientific astronomers’ calculations of star alignments shows that it lines up exactly with their mapping in Nabta Playa. But nobody knows about it. And like I said, it’s not some kind of competition — I think that’s a Western way of thinking. It’s not about who discovered it. It’s just about knowing that this knowledge goes back so far, and knowing that our ancestors had these really deep and scientific understandings, but scientific in a way that crosses over with spirituality and nature, and how it’s all holistic and it doesn’t need to be separated. It doesn’t need to be professionalized. That’s in us still, understanding and making these connections. I mean, we’re learning.

Angel: We’re still learning.

Naima: Making this album, we wanted to learn more about it, really. I only knew a tiny bit, and still only know a tiny bit. But really, the reason we ended up making this album was because we started talking about Nabta and we were like, “Oh, my god, I wish we could go there.” And then we started imagining the journey, and it became a story. It became our own mythology. 

Angel: In our present day, 2025, what would it look like for two sistas to go back? What do we have to go through sonically? And honestly, that’s the only way we can actually get to it, because you can physically go there but it’s a disaster right now. Because you know how they do Black archives. I heard that they had taken the stones and put them in the Nubian Museum, and all you see is a replica now. Y’all don’t know where that shit’s supposed to go! And then there’s also a rumor — I don’t have complete proof, but I found one article that is saying that there’s been a canal project that’s been in the works for a while that may actually disrupt it on some eminent domain shit. Now, they ain’t doing that for Stonehenge…

elijah: That part.

Angel: Which, this predates Stonehenge. But with the album, we also worked on a zine. So when you get the album, there’s a booklet in there. The booklet has contributions from Neneh Cherry, Dr. Adam Zanolini — because the only other person who we knew who knew about Nabta Playa was Adam. For such an important Black space to exist, and it’s so hidden… And sometimes we think hidden is bad, but sometimes hidden is protection, and only certain people are supposed to tap into it. Us.

elijah: Right.

Angel: So this project turned collaborative when it came to not just the music, but the contributions of people in the zine. And I wrote an article too, a little breaking news article like, “Hey, Nabta Playa’s the hood, y’all. Y’all see how y’all do us? Nabta Playa’s gotta be the hood — no one’s taking care of it. It’s being done to our culture once again.” So in a way, I hope that this album can bring more attention to the actual site. I’ve already talked to Naima, “We need to get our chariots” — because we do have a song on there called “Chariots of Expansion.” I just have this vision of me and her on chariots running through the desert. [Laughs.]

Naima: [Laughs.]

Angel: Hey, I’m thinking big. 

Lately, I’ve been dealing with the thought of the veiled. Some of us are doing the work — we’re doing really big, expansive work — but we’re veiled. And that’s almost like a protection. You know what I mean? Because I will tell you, at times I’ve had a bit of trepidation about accessing the power of Nabta Playa, because I know that power is real. I don’t want to fuck around. You can’t access that shit if you ain’t really thinking about the spiritual implications of going in that portal. That’s a very ancient, ancient place. So I’ve had to level up on my own personal, spiritual disciplines. Because I’m not going to walk up into Nabta Playa on some, “Oh, I’m just doing this for a record” — it can’t be superficial.

And see, my suspicion is this, about Nabta Playa: I think it’s the original site of Blackness. You know that Blackness that we’re talking about — not skin color, but that diasporic thing, that when Black people hit something, the energy vibration changes into something that’s real cool. Words like that — “cool,” “hip” — the way we dress, all of that kind of stuff, I think that’s Nabta Playa. That’s the original source. And Naima was talking about it being cosmologically aligned with the seasons. It was this thing where it filled up with water and resources, and that’s when the party was on, and then the basin would go away. So on the album, when you get to “Black Stones of Sirius” — that’s us like, “We here! We made it to Nabta Playa and it’s a party.” It’s Black. It’s cool as fuck. Everyone looks fly, food’s smelling good.

Naima: A celebration.

Angel: Isley Brothers is playing. Everybody’s stepping, line dancing. That Black. I do believe that that ancient site held that, and I’m very interested. 

I’m working with one of the best archivists out here — she has the duty of trying to archive her family, which is mega. And Naima, I’ll give you props, sister, because a lot of people don’t love their family like you do. They sell it off or they don’t put no value on it. And the fact that you are gatekeeping it and preserving it, you’re going to be blessed. Being at the house, most of archives are there. So Naima was pulling out sheet music from Don [Cherry] and sheet music from David, and “Bishmillah” came up.

Naima: The only recording I’ve ever heard of it is a really short part in Don’s album called Complete Communion, which came out in 1966. And so we found this sheet at the house, of the “Bishmillah” composition, which is just super simple, basically based on this kind of kind of East Asian style scale. 

Angel: It’s an Arabic word, too.

Naima: Yeah. “Bishmillah” is like an Islamic prayer. So we decided that it made so much sense to fit into what we were doing with the album and the story. It was really interesting to record something that isn’t one that everybody knows and hears often. So we really played it to the way that it that he’d written it on the sheet with the basic melody and then with the improvisation in the middle. 

Angel: Naima also had an unreleased string piece written by David, and it was just like, “Wow, we should include this in there.” What was it for, violas and — ?

Naima: Yeah, it was written for cello and viola. My uncle David, who had a lot of challenges with health and with his asthma, had spent a lot of time in the last few years of his life working on these compositions just on the computer. As far as I know, most of them have never been recorded or even played live by anybody. He just made these compositions for different string ensembles that he wanted to do things with in the future. Then he suddenly died unfortunately, in the end of 2022. And when we were recording the album in 2023, Angel asked if I wanted to compose something or dedicate one of the tracks to David. At the time, I didn’t feel ready to compose a whole piece for him. It was only five months or something after he died, and I didn’t really feel like I had it in me yet to to write a whole piece for him. But then we were looking at some of his papers and it just came to me — “It would be beautiful to record one of these string compositions that nobody’s ever heard as something to really dedicate to David and celebrate his work and his life.” So that was a great thing that we added to the project.

elijah, you being in Portland — David lived there 15 years. David moved to Portland because his partner at the time was living there, and with his asthma and everything, he found it so much fresher and greener and a lot better for his health than living in Los Angeles. So he moved there. He would have loved to meet you, and the many other younger Black musicians that are now doing stuff in Portland, because at the time he really struggled to meet other Black musicians there, to find people to connect with and play with. Even though he loved it there for other reasons, he said it was really difficult. So I think he would have loved to meet you. 

Angel: elijah, I knew you in Chicago and then you moved to Portland, and I’m pretty sure you felt the same way — like, “Where’s my tribe?” And I’m like, “Well, I know Roman [Norfleet].” And all of a sudden, now you guys are all in cahoots. I just love to see this, now y’all have this whole cohort.

elijah: It’s a movement going on. Yeah, I remember when I first moved to Portland, I hit up Angel, because you’d had just had a performance here before I came. I remember we were talking and I was like, “It’s beautiful out here, but I am so lonely. I don’t know who to connect with, what to do with my time.” And then, yeah, she put me in touch with the tribe. Brown Calculus as well.

Angel: Brown Calculus, from Chicago. 

elijah: So, yeah, the legacy of David definitely lives on with the renaissance of Black musicians here. And I can see the intention with your guys’ project, in terms of all the legacies and lineages that come together within it. It almost feels like putting your ear to the land and just listening for a while.

Naima: I feel like your album also is that in a different way. You can really feel that organic and natural… When you recorded it, and you were on the residency, was a lot of it outdoors?

elijah: Yeah, it was very nature-based, more so than I am typically used to. Because I was visiting there right after I left Chicago, and in Chicago, the most nature you can get is Humboldt Park or something. But to be intertwined with nature, wake up right next to such a, not only naturally beautiful place, but once I got to know the natives of the land and what they see in the Canyon and their reverence for it — it’s a holy place for them. And I think that’s a through line with my project and your project. It’s not only the divinity of land and the sacredness, but also the earth telling stories.

Angel: Mhm. I love the way you approach performance — and all the mediums you do, as a filmmaker as well. In fact, I think how I knew you first was on the film stuff. And then the music, of course, just aligned with it so beautifully. But I’ve always respected the way you approach music, and it’s always so pure and has such great intentions and is just beautiful. You really understand beauty. I think everything that I’ve seen and heard you do always has this real elegance to it that just tells me the way that you look at nature, you see the beauty of God’s creation.

elijah: Thank you so much. That means a lot coming from you. I am inspired by all the intentions that you put forth and the legacies that you’re leaving. When people speak about Afrofuturism, sometimes I get so caught up in the first person of it, but I feel like whatever our ancestors envisioned Afrofuturism being — Angel, Naima, you guys are it.

Angel: And you too. And it’s amazing that we’re all in cohorts together. 

I’m glad you brought up the word “Afrofuturism,” because in so many similarities, it reminds me of the word “jazz.” Like “jazz,” the word “Afrofuturism” is also problematic. It’s the word that they’re pinning on artists like us because we don’t make sense to the colonial vision. “Y’all ain’t supposed to be doing all of that” — it’s that subtext. But I always feel like, if we’re going to use this word “Afrofuturism,” then we define what it is. And it already sounds like your definition for Afrofuturism is very in line with what I call it, which means a future where Black people are running everything. It’s a Black future. Period. New management. Black folk, we runnin’ everything. That was really important on our album. We recorded it, we mixed it. We made sure we had a Black mastering engineer. It was intentional. It was an all-Black project. And Black woman project. Don’t get it twisted. [Laughs.] This is all Black initiative. And you having us here, this is probably one of the most important interviews for me.

Naima: Yeah.

Angel: Because I’m sure a lot of people are going to be interested in what we have to say. But talking to you, and you open it up to say, “Hey, we want to talk about your album, too” — it’s very important to me. Thank you so much for bringing us together. 

Naima: I wanted to also ask a bit more about your process. You talked about the Grand Canyon part, but I was wondering if you then continued to work with the sounds once you went back to Portland?

elijah: Yeah, there was a little bit of that. Most of the ideation was done at the Grand Canyon, at the land, and I did a lot of field recording. That was the foundation of the project, just going out collecting sounds and meandering, and almost allowing the sounds to lead the way, be the bandleader. When I got back to Portland, I definitely tinkered with it, and expanded and touched on it a bit. But I definitely wanted it to be a time capsule of my most potent proximity.

Naima: I love how there’s that mirroring with your album that was recorded outside at that sacred space, and how ours is an imagining because we couldn’t travel there. One is kind of this mythology, and then one is the actual sound and experience. Both are connecting to these sacred sites in different ways.

elijah: The spirits are heavy in both of our projects. I can tell that even though you haven’t been there physically, your energy knows Nabta Playa, or has visited in some sense.

Angel: I’m really looking forward to listening to your album, elijah. I’m gonna set aside special time for a special man like yourself. Thank you for the interview.

(Photo Credit: right, Sulyiman Stokes)