The Sun by Raashan Ahmad

Music is a language that can best be compared to an aural tapestry, a weaving of sound and textures to create an impression for listener appreciation. It’s through the individual strands and fibers that make up the textiles with which the artist is able to create, that words are spoken. These become the foundation for the framework and they have a cultural significance – the struggle to preserve tradition are rooted there. In music, this is the chosen genre, style and choice of tools used to create. How will I convey my tapestry to the world? Through Hip Hop? With my voice? Analog, digital or an offspring of both?

But how the artist chooses to use this canvas, the technique and layering of sound, that’s where individual musical statements are created. We each gravitate to the sound that speaks to us, that resonates with our inner-being. We need artists to speak this language into our souls. And artists need us to harness their creative energy and keep it alive.

While textile manufacturers apply cultural traditions and handicrafts into their work, musicians gather and pick and choose. Whether using woven, dyed, appliquéd, embroidered or printed techniques, they are tapping into something ancestral. This is true for music as well – especially Hip Hop. Though, the more in tune the artist is to their sense of place, their identity and how they choose to navigate through our connectedness…the greater the appreciation for the listener. With technology and the speed in which the internet is changing our society, cultures are at risk of becoming obsolete, and struggling to maintain their identity. It’s commonplace for artists to look for easier, faster and more profitable ways to create. The language is changing.

Raashan Ahmad is a globe-trekking musician who speaks his language through the lens of cultural diversity. Whether speaking on social ills or the need for self-healing his delivery is very much a product of his travels. Each strand and fiber a reflection of where he’s been and what he’s seen. Each experience a technique for creation. Imagine for a moment Igbo, Yoruba and Ashanti peoples sharing ancestral knowledge for textile production while being exposed to Germanic, Latinate, Byzantine and American Southwestern Native influences in garment making. The beauty of each to unlock something new, a language never heard but still understood. Music is one of the few spaces where the beautiful pieces of places we have been can be added to the fabric of what we create.

With The Sun, Raashan has created something wonderfully fantastic and beautifully organic, a tapestry of love, life, pain and hope. Tapestries tell stories. This story is that of a man taking the reigns and responsibilities for every aspect of creation from fiber to finish and telling the world, “This is the sound I needed you to hear.”

If you listen to this and hear it with your soul, you understand the same language of connectedness that he was hearing when he created it. - Eric SAESO Alvarez

Raashan Ahmad is an MC/Poet with a thriving career. He has garnered critical acclaim from worldwide press. Raashan’s albums have garnered worldwide attention and earned him the admiration of fans as he has toured feverishly throughout North America, Europe, Japan, Australia, and Brazil.

raashanahmad.com
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