Matthew Coutts, National Post
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Ask the 31-year-old hip hop artist where he would choose to watch the tournament from -- aside from South Africa, where he will perform live during the World Cup -- and his answer is clearer: Toronto, the multicultural hub he has called home since leaving his war-torn homeland at the age of 13.
"I remember watching the streets change colours," he says about watching previous World Cups in Toronto. "The colours of the street are dependent on who won that night. When the Italians win, it is a flood of their colours. Toronto is probably the closest place you can be to being in South Africa, because the world is really represented in Toronto. You will feel almost the sensation of being at the World Cup."
It is well past midnight when the smiling singer says this, on board an overnight flight from Seattle to Toronto, one of the final legs of an eight-month FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour.
The coveted trophy is locked safely somewhere on board the private jet. In less than five hours, the plane will touch down in Toronto, where K'naan, fresh off two Juno wins and the unmitigated success of his single, Wavin' Flag, is set to unveil the aforementioned trophy to Canadian soccer fans. He's trying to remember the last time he visited "home."
"Probably 2001," another musician on the plane wryly suggests, and a small group of fellow jet-setters breaks out laughing. It was actually January 2009, still over a year ago, that K'naan last spent any length of time in Toronto, where his mother still lives. Balancing a world concert tour, appearances on the World Cup publicity circuit and other commitments that come with being one of Canada's hottest recording artists has become a tricky dance.
"I haven't had any time. I literally haven't had a full week off since January of last year," he said. "It has not been easy but everyone I work with has been trying to make it as smooth as possible. It's just very demanding. There is just too much to do."
He speaks in a smooth voice, barely audible over the hum of jet engines, as he discusses his connection to this country.
"I can tell how much Toronto has influenced my music," says the singer and songwriter, best known for rapping about the struggles of Somalia. "But I know, because I am more explicit about the stories of Somalia, that people can't tell.
"Everything I write has some element of Toronto in it. You find it in the solitary moments of my songs. You find it in the longings. You find the sparks that, in fact, make me think of Somalia are from Toronto."
The artist's long rise culminated this year with a world tour for his second studio album Troubadour and the selection of Wavin' Flag as headline sponsor Coca-Cola's official song for the World Cup.
After reaching #2 on the Canadian Hot 100 list last summer, the song was re-released last month to raise money to benefit relief efforts for the Haiti earthquake. Recorded this time around by a collection of young Canadian artists, including Drake and Justin Bieber, the song opened at #1.
Coca-Cola then approached K'naan to use a lyrically adjusted Wavin' Flag at soccer's flagship global event. Soon, if not already, millions of soccer fans across the globe will be intimately familiar with every beat.
"It's crazy, but the song happened, I just wrote it. I'm lucky to have found a rhythm they can sing in China and they can sing in Russia," K'naan said. "It's rare. Some songs have success but it's often created by a machine that pushes the song down your throat. And you're kind of like, ‘I don't know why but I want to sing that song. I don't really like it but I want to sing it'. ‘Wavin' Flag' is the opposite of that because it is people singing it, it's little kids singing it. It is finding its own way to be something for Haiti at its time of need. It is people saying what it is, not me saying what it should be."
K'naan was born in Somalia's capital Mogadishu as Keinan Abdi Warsame in 1978, where he lived with his family during the country's civil war. He has spoken openly in the past about being trained as a child to shoot guns before learning the alphabet, the inspiration for his song, "ABCs."
In 1991, when he was just 13, he and his family boarded the last plane to take off before the war forced the airport closed, and flew to New York to connect with his father. The family moved to Toronto's Rexdale neighbourhood, where a large community of Somali citizens had begun to settle.
"They were new at the time. They were all coming in at the same time I was coming in. But it was nice, comfortable," he said. "It was a very communal area. There is a lot of Somalis living in the neighbourhood. There was something that made it feel strange and familiar all at once."
K'naan has said he learned to speak English from listening to American rap albums, but even before that he had the voice of a poet, entertaining his family with stories as a child.
"My dad says I thought like a writer. I was into poetry, like everybody else in Somalia. I was the designated storyteller in my household. And that's a big thing in Somalia. Every Friday everyone would sit down, after having had dinner, in an open courtyard near their homes and someone would stand up and tell an hour-and-a-half- or two-hour-long story. Sort of like how you would go to the cinema. We would tell a story, and we would create characters. I was the guy who would tell the story."
In 2002, he met Jarvis Church, a member of Nelly Furtado's production team, while recording a song for War Child.
"He said, ‘Yes, I know that everybody here is popular. But you are the most interesting artist to me,' " K'naan said. They ended up producing K'naan's 2005 album The Dusty Foot Philosopher.
Four years later, he would release Troubadour and be named Artist of the Year and Songwriter of the Year at the 2010 Junos.
"For it to happen in Canada was a specific joy to me. It could have happened at the Grammys and that would have been nice, but it wouldn't have been the same as in Canada."
Source: National Post
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