Long before the development of language, humans expressed themselves through sound. Noah Slee and Dhanesh Jayaselan, founders of the BIPoC choir A Song For You, intend to remind
you of that.
Two days before his mid-August performance, Noah Slee, the co-founder of BIPoC-centered choir A Song For You, felt like his "brain was so scrambled that it would almost explode." When most vocal groups usually rehearse for two months, his 50-plus person ensemble, who could barely fit into the cramped "sweatbox" of their audition room, had a mere 48 hours to put aside their frenetic nerves and get it right. And yet, when the collective greeted the gilded, scarlet majesty of Theater des Westens dressed in dignified autumnal oranges and yellows to debut selections from their album Home, all the audience could hear in their clarion harmonies was the tone of triumph.
In only two short years, A Song For You has disrupted Berlin's electronic-dominant scene. Founded in 2022 by Slee, 38, who is a Polynesian-New Zealander, and creative director Dhanesh Jayaselan, 27, who is of Indian mixed origin and was raised in Australia, the choir filled a profound musical chasm in a city often bereft of the warmth of voices, not to mention providing a platform to the BIPoC community for authentic expression. This is perhaps best encapsulated in the recurrent lyric in the eponymous track off their album: "Seems like
I found my home in you," a reminder that home is not only a physical construction, but a sense of togetherness and belonging that is supported by seeing your humanity mirrored back in another.
Aeyde Mix 07 attempts to capture what is both earnest and gentle. Mixed by Jayaselan, his contribution exalts the key sonic inspirations—contemporary gospel, jazz, and R&B —that form the soulful, sumptuous palette of A Song For You, meanwhile generously diverting into more experimental frontiers.
Whitney Wei:
What is your musical background?
Noah Slee:
Growing up in a Polynesian household, music was everywhere. I think my earliest performances would have been church performances. I was surrounded by, like gospel music, and then also on the flip side of that that we had, like our cultural music. So we were also learning culture songs that we performed as part of a professional Polynesian showcase. Then in primary school, teachers recognized that I had a voice, so they put me in the school plays [and theater productions] and it snowballed. I also started a funk band when I was in high school, and we got signed off the bat. We were playing around New Zealand, playing Australia, the States, and around Europe. Throughout the duration of the band, I was also in dance ensembles and professional choirs. I went to uni for a while to study music, but then my teacher was like, you should quit, because you're pretty much doing everything that you're going to do.
Whitney Wei:
You were involved in church, and there's a strong gospel element to the music A Song For You performs. It seems that religion was a very formative part of your musical experience. Do you consider yourself religious or spiritual?
Noah Slee:
At this very stage in my life, I consider myself spiritual, but not religious. Being queer as well, I didn't have the best relationship with religion for a while, but now I'm able to kind of approach it [differently]. The journey was actually realizing that what I grew up in was a really beautiful environment.
It's definitely been informative in my training as a musician, because church has so much healthy competition around it. Not everyone gets the opportunity to be on the stage. If you miss a rehearsal, or if you don't learn the song, it's like the theater, and you don't get the opportunity. You have to put in the hard work. I think that's why a lot of church musicians go on to be in the session bands for all the biggest artists in the world, because there's this training ground that you have at church where you have to come correct, and you have to put in the time, and you also have a religious context to it too, like, where people want to be the best by God and that's your small worship to do as well as you can.
“I consider myself spiritual, but not religious. Being queer as well, I didn't have the best relationship with religion for a while, but now I'm able to kind of approach it [differently]. The journey was actually realizing that what I grew up in was a really beautiful environment.”
Whitney Wei:
Why is there so much power in collective singing?
Noah Slee:
For me, I think it's one of those experiences that are so simple in form, but still requires people to come together, people to be in the same mindset, to want to create together. But I think the impact and effects that it has on yourself and the people on your left and right is so powerful. Forget performing as a choir, I think just the experience itself is part of the human experience, and should be practiced more. There's so much varying emotions from joy to healing to pain to celebration that can be felt in these experiences. A lot of cultures still do that as part of their day-to-day. I think it's just something that is underrated, totally. That's like my experience here in Germany. Going over to my brothers in France, on the border of Spain and even in Spain, people are, like, singing flamenco and on the streets. Of course, I'm romanticizing this a little bit, but in England, in the pub, you know, everyone's got their chants and singing away.
This was something that I just really missed being a musician and living in Berlin. What I just kept hearing from my peers is: why don't people sing together more? I feel like collective singing is one of these things that, if you go all the way back, it's one of the first things we did—before even language, we made sound together. The power of it is phenomenal when it's linked with intention, like, we all learn a song, say about joy, and we're all intentional to express the song. There's this superpower in that moment when the voices [reverberate] off the wall.
“I feel like collective singing is one of these things that, if you go all the way back, it's one of the first things we did—before even language, we made sound together. The power of it is phenomenal when it's linked with intention.”
Whitney Wei:
Let's talk about Home, the album itself. It's a spiritual, harmonic and physical representation of space and home. Berlin is also the adopted home, from what I understand of many of your members. So could you describe the album concept more and how it came about?
Noah Slee:
We had group writing sessions, and also people would present their works. Songwriters in the group would also present their work, and then I was also writing songs. There were lots of different people contributing to the story of what this album could be. We got funding to go [to the south of France] and record the album, so we did the majority of the album in the studio [and former vinery] called Limusic. That was a very beautiful, cathartic experience because we were all together. It was during this process, and also having [new] people join the choir, [we uncovered] what this project and album meant to everyone, that there is, like, a sense of hope and belonging in our coming together. It only made sense for us—and the song ["Home"] was already written—to focus everything on home and what that means for the collective and also to the individual people and the ensemble. It was a really inspiring reaction after that realization. We created these postcards from home [written by poets]. What does it look like? What does that sound like?
We also explored sound in a deep way. We knew there were a lot of choir albums that were inspired by gospel. It's such a skillful sound that people have practiced to be able to sing. Our group, though, felt a little bit more like a fragile tone to how we were trained vocally. We felt it wasn't a powerful, dynamic, kind of gospel tone, it was a bit more of a rounder, fragile sound. Dhanesh and I talked a lot about our influences, and how we wanted to shape the album and how we wanted to explore texture and sensitivity and softness. We wanted to explore that side of the voice, and that it doesn't have to always be a projected voice. It can be like a whisper, you know, it can be like a softer tone, and that is also just as powerful.
Whitney Wei:
You spoke a bit about Berlin's music scene and how collective singing is not part of the culture, as opposed to other places in the world. Why are you based in Berlin, and what brought you here? What do you make of the music scene here?
Noah Slee:
I ask myself that all the time, why am I here? When I first moved here in 2016, I really fell in love with the city, and there was so much that I gained as a human being, as a creative person. I felt like it opened up my mind in many ways, and I was able to explore music and art and myself. It's been a beautiful experience. I did notice at that time, though, that there wasn't much music —or you had to really dig for it—outside of techno, house, and electronic. To be fair, I'm a huge fan of and I also make electronic music as well, but I also enjoy other things like acoustic folk music, or jazz, or neoclassical. I realized that there wasn't much space for it. I was on the hunt, you know. Where can I find something else when I'm not trying to be on the dance floor and trying to experience something mellow or with harmony? Fast forward to now, there's been a huge shift, and a lot of really beautiful collectives. There's so much more diversity and genres, but there's always still so much room. The exciting thing is that there's still so many untapped creative endeavors that could be explored. [With A Song For You], Dhanesh and I wanted to collaborate on something that allowed our friends and people from the BIPoC community to be able to tell their stories authentically.
“We knew there were a lot of choir albums that were inspired by gospel. It's such a skillful sound that people have practiced to be able to sing. Our group, though, felt a little bit more like a fragile tone to how we were trained vocally. We felt it wasn't a powerful, dynamic, kind of gospel tone, it was a bit more of a rounder, fragile sound.”
Mix 07 by A Song for You is broadcasting on Aeyde Radio now.
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