No. 24: IRAH

How kung fu, comedy and group chats made a Brixtonian the voice of Britain

Alright alright alright alright alright, as Andre 3000 would say if he wasn’t off tooting his shakuhachi. We’re back, we’ve been busy, and we’ve got some absolute treats for you.

Let’s get straight into it. Our next subject is right back to the core of Bass, Mids, Tops: representing most obviously the pervasiveness of Caribbean soundsystem culture at the heart of modern Britishness, but also the liminal spaces between what we think of as monolithic scenes and genres. IRAH - born Ezra Bryant - is essentially a dancehall vocalist, but of a generation that grew up with, and constantly interacted with jungle, garage, dubstep and grime. So as the cycles of hype and revival rotated, he found new ways in, leaving a trail of great tracks, videos and radio sets along the way, until eventually as jungle really established itself as a folk form for a new generation, he became one of its key voices thanks to his work with Chase & Status. In particular his voicing of C&S’s “Baddadan” along with grime legend Flowdan and Manchester legend Trigga has produced one of the deepest burrowing earworms of current times.

But it’s not just as simple as music scenes and styles. His way to the position he occupies now, as you’ll see, is uniquely of the digital age - he built his profile as a comedian and entertainer as well as a musician, and did his networking through group chats every bit as much as he did through pressing the flesh. All that said, though, at the heart of it, his craft is still physical, still out in the world, based on stage presence, projection, stance, style, and understanding of the spatiality of speaker boxes whether they be home-rigged sounds or the vast stacks of the stadiums and arenas he plays with Chase & Status. IRAH is the very model of a modern dancehall general, and he was a lot of fun to photograph (as you can see by the volume of great pics Brian has got here) and to talk to…

Hi IRAH, what's keeping you busy right now?

I'm just doing a little bits and bobs. The single “Gunfinger (Salute)” is out at the moment¹. So that's an every day thing. I’m just trying to pattern up at home, socially, get some stuff sorted out. I’ve been on the road for a few days…

I can imagine you've been pretty busy this year, right?

The last few years has been really busy. But yeah even more now.

How do you make time for yourself? Are are you able to say no to stuff? Do you pick and choose or do you grab what opportunities are there?

Well touring with Chase & Status, you don't really get to say: “No, I'm not doing this one.” Every show's massive, you know? I'm obviously a part of the band, so that's the commitment I've made for that. But, other shows, IRAH shows and stuff that I've got coming up, you can shuffle around here and there sometimes, but generally there's quite a strict regime that I have to stick to. In between that there’s studio time, interviews and promo. So yeah. It gets difficult to really get your social life in order.

So we want to talk about like your cultural background and how you made all of your musical connections and all of that. Let's start right at the beginning. Where were you born?

I was actually born in Northampton. My grandmother lives in Northampton. Her birthday's coming up September, she'll be 97. And yeah she still lives in Northampton. We lived in Brixton, London. It was on a day visit when I popped up. So I ended up being born in Northampton.

But Brixton raised?

Yeah Brixton, not born but raised.

And what were you surrounded by? I mean, culturally, musically as a young kid?

My dad's got one of the largest record collections in Europe. So I had a broad spectrum: jazz, African cultural music, Rastafarian music. A deep, deep, deep, deep introduction to music from inception.

And he'd be playing it at home?

Yeah, man, my dad did all the time. And my dad's got his Bang & and Olufsen banging set. Crystal clear before that on his record players and stuff. Yeah, man, it's a massive part of growing up.

And were you allowed to rifle through them? Did you get your hands on the records?

Heh, no rifling for anything… Well… when he wasn't looking, I used to. I’d see like Dizzy Gillespie specials… You'd see a lot of jazz. Real, real authentic jazz pieces in there as well as his 45 reggae selection which was mostly white labels.

Any record from then that really grabbed you? Like you’d want to keep coming back to?

“The Upsetter” is a very memorable moment. My dad drove us from Brixton to Egypt. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? We had an ex-army Range Rover converted, and my dad drove us to Egypt. We left out from Stockwell, went to Dover, took the ferry over to France, drove through France and Spain, took the ferry over to Morocco, and then went from Morocco to Algeria, Libya, Egypt. Then we drove all the way back to Morocco, and took the ferry home because they were absolutely shattered. And they changed the Range Rover engine twice. That's the kind of crazy journey we had. “The Upsetter” by the Upsetters was one of the musical theme tracks to the journey, if you know what I mean.

What age were you?

I was 11.

What drove this mission?

My dad… he's passed away now - last year. The anniversary's coming up. I can't explain. Someone says: “Oh, we drove from Brixton to Egypt.” Yeah. That's my dad. He's just that kind of magical guy. We were culturally soul searching. It was a, a deep, deep soul search. A mission.

The idea that “The Upsetter” was the core of that mission out of the ordinary… Lee "Scratch" Perry is an anarchist…

The melody in that song … do, do do do do do… do do do do, do. We, as children, me and my two brothers and little sister would sing along to it in the back of the car. That's why it means something.

Motifs like that, those simple riffs, just a couple of notes, can make the most powerful memories. It's like the riffs on early rave tunes, they burrow deep…

I’ll be tears if I hear it anytime. Powerful, powerful memories attached to music, yeah.

Did you have a sense of music as something social outside the home?

I grew up in deep sound system culture, like actual sound systems clashing, like Black Kat, Bass Odyssey, Stone Love, Saxon, Coxsone, Sovereign Syndicate. These are the sound systems I grew up around as a young man. So I was heavily into that. I wasn't really into hip-hop. You enjoy all the commercial hip-hop stuff as everybody else, you know. But I was a sound man.

And you wanted to be involved with that as well from early?

Well you are involved from when you’re a kid, because everybody knows … You start knocking a beat on the table and everybody starts rhyming and putting words together. So it's just something … You don't choose to be, you're just born with it. If you choose to pursue that, what you have, then you can pursue it. But we all had it.

But was there anything specific you saw yourself doing? Did you want to get on the mic when you were kid at dances?

My first experience was on the ferry on this journey to Egypt that we did on the way back. We reached to Morocco and my parents were exhausted. God knows how many miles they had driven. So they decided to take a cruise ferry home. And on that cruise ferry, they had karaoke. And the prize for karaoke was £100 and a bottle of champagne. And my brothers dared me to go and to go up there and do a song and win the prize. And I went up there, did “Johnny Too Bad”. And won. So that was my first experience of the stage. I think it sprouted from there, really. I didn't do much. I wasn't musical much after that. My little brother's a rapper, so he had his little rap stuff going through. I wasn't ever interested in doing music. I just enjoyed music.

So you were at the sound system dances to dance and to just be part of the crowd?

But also go help carry the boxes, just to be one of the sound men. You know?

Did you have other ambitions in life? Was there anything else you envisaged doing later on?

Never thought about being a musician at all. I wanted to be a kung fu, stunt man. Go to Hong Kong and make kung fu movies,

Which you later achieved in your way.²

Yeah. Still doing. Yeah. And now I'm going to do more.