Freetown Collective releases Rainy Morning

FREETOWN Collective wants to create sweet music that reflects the best of the Caribbean back to itself.

The band, led by Muhammad Muwakil and Lou Lyons, recently released its latest single, Rainy Morning, which forms a part of that wider mission.

The single was released on May 3, under the aegis of producer, composer, musician and sound designer Neel Dhorajiwala (Dwala).

Muwakil described the latest single as a fusion between reggae, dancehall, calypso and Dawla style.

In the phone interview, he said the song was originally written for collaboration with someone else, but that did not materialise.

“But we felt that the song was so good we wanted to get it produced. We knew immediately that Dwala was the person that we wanted to do this particular song, just because of the nature of it.”

Dwala and Freetown Collective were used to each other, having collaborated on the 2020 single No Millionaires.

This time the band wanted to do something upbeat with the multidisciplinary sound artiste, who has also worked with Kes.

For the band, this new single is part of its evolution. Muwakil said the song addressed love and aspects of it like sex.

“For us in Freetown, it is a moment of expressing a wider part of ourselves. The ideas of our own sexuality and stuff like that. Sometimes conscious artistes tend to stray away from the depths of these topics, but they are being spoken about by everyone else, in ways which sometimes don’t honour the sacredness of sex or these types of things….”

This is also reflective of the group heading into a space of being more honest with its music, and it hopes doing so encourages others to do so.

The band has always embraced its evolutionary process, moving from creating music with two guitars to having back-up singers and, then doing its first soca tune with Machel Montano.

“We acted in films. We created scores for films. It’s always been this process of evolution for us, adding more to our plate, always expressing ourselves in wider ways so this is just par for the course, part of it for us.”

Rainy Morning will be a stand-alone single before the band’s soon-to-be-released album, which it has been working on  over the last two-and-a half-years. To be released this August or September, it will feature 13 tracks. In the upcoming weeks, Freetown Collective will release its next single with Mr Killa.

A number of soca artistes will be featured on the album, but not in ways that audiences might expect.

“We put them in another light. We put them on songs that people might not be accustomed hearing them in the way they will be heard,” Muwakil said.

It was a deliberate choice to do so, as the band wants to highlight the versatility of soca artistes.

“Unfortunately or fortunately – it depends on who you are – soca tends to be limited in its topics, and it is a huge criticism soca has had to face over the years.

“I never for one second believe that, because soca tends to limit the artiste in their ability to choose what they want to speak on in terms of topics, that the artistes themselves are limited in any way.”

The album has a wide range and features everything thing from contemplative to celebratory music, he said.

“Everything from ballads to songs that are faster,” he added.

Rainy Morning is a love song that Muwakil and his band members hope will show Caribbean people how important it is to love.

“It is important that we love ourselves. It is important that we continue to make sweet music that reflects our people back to them in the best of ways so that we can continue to grow and be as beautiful as we are,” he said.