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If there’s one band we can almost guarantee will appear in every Sound of 2015 list, it’s Ibeyi. As XL’s latest signing and with a helping of musical royalty in their blood (their father was Buena Vista Social Club’s Miguel 'Anga' Diaz), not to mention the handful of captivating songs they’ve released so far, there’s a lot of hype surrounding the French-Cuban duo.
Not that they’re letting the pressure get to them. When we speak to them in XL’s London headquarters, the walls pasted with posters of XL’s success stories – Adele, Radiohead, The xx, The White Stripes – the teenage sisters seem entirely at home. They’ve just come back from lunch with label owner Richard Russell (“We love him!”), and greet every member of staff enthusiastically as we head to the interview room.
Ibeyi are twins, but aside from sharing a womb and a band, they have very little in common – something which, they say, contributed to the genre-defying nature of their music. Lisa-Kaindé loves Ray Charles and is bubbly, expressive and, despite proclaiming several times that “my English is so bad!” (it’s not), very loquacious. Naomi prefers Kendrick Lamar, and, unless she feels the need to disagree or clarify, is happy to let her sister do the talking. Both are a delight to interview.
Gigwise: How was the Rough Trade gig yesterday?
Naomi: Oh it was cool!
Lisa-Kaindé: The venue was so incredible because it was a record store. It was tiny, tiny, tiny! But we had a problem... One of the booths was broke... Broken? Break? Broken! Sorry! My English is so bad.
We first heard about you when you performed at the XL showcase a few months ago.
Lisa-Kaindé: That was our first show ever in London. We were so nervous! The thing was, it was a presentation of what we were doing... it was kind of, "Hello, this is Ibeyi: like us!" It was really weird. And, you know, we are only two, so the pressure is bigger. When you are a group it's different, when you are a two, when something is wrong you can hear it in a second. So we must really concentrate when we play, so it was kind of difficult to not be nervous, but we enjoyed it. The venue was amazing!
Are you getting bored yet of answering questions about being twins?
Lisa-Kaindé: No, because we are not those sisters that say "Oh, it's everything! Marvellous to be playing together!" We are saying the truth: that it's hard, and we are so different, and in life we're arguing every two seconds....
Naomi: I cannot live without her and she can't live without me. But it's hard.
Lisa-Kaindé: On stage is our...
Naomi: ...way to communicate. And maybe it's the only way actually! The only no-screaming way. I think this is our way to be sisters.
Have you been making music together since you were young?
Lisa-Kaindé: Oh no! Only three years ago. This is new. I started composing when I was 14, but it was only for me, like, "I'm bored. I will make a song". It was not "Oh one day I will be a musician", that was not my plan at all. I wanted to be a music teacher. What happened is, it started like, "Oh Lisa make other songs!" and I make other songs and then "We will try to make an EP" and she says, "OK you are not doing an EP without me".
Watch the video for 'River' below
You said in an interview recently though that you have quite different taste in music.
Lisa-Kaindé: In life! In life!
Naomi: We're completely different.
Naomi, we've just noticed your Ibeyi logo tattoo. Do you both have one?
Naomi: No. I got it three months ago.
Lisa-Kaindé: It was her birthday present! It's symmetrical, and it is so us! Because we are twins and we felt like it was so cool.
You sing in English, Yoruban... Do you sing in French?
Naomi: No. It's so difficult to write in French. In English you can say what you want. "I love you" [for example]: what you want to say, you can say it. In French the words have to be right, and it's hard.
Lisa-Kaindé: In English you can be direct, which is what I like. I remember when I listened to Amy Winehouse - like everybody, I love her - and she's like, "You should be stronger than me". Every sentence is direct. In French you have to "Oh la la", I don't know how to explain really, but you cannot be direct, because if you are direct, it sounds like... shit. It sound really bad, so you have to work a lot... And I'm still working on it! One day I hope I'll be able to write a good song in French.
Watch the video for Amy Winehouse 'Stronger Than Me' below
You grew up in Paris, but your cultural background is also Cuban and Yoruban. How important is your culture to your music?
Naomi: It's us. It's important. How? We don't know. We grew up like that, with European culture and with Yoruban culture.
Lisa-Kaindé: We live like that, we see life like that, so it's life with two worlds and two visions mixed. So obviously, our music is two things mixed. Even my name - Lisa-Kaindé - it's mixed too!
Your music is very percussion-based. Was that influenced by your father?
Naomi: Not really. I think I'm doing percussion because of my father but when he passed away we were 11-years-old, so the person who was here to push us and help us was my mother. My father was here but we were on vacation with him, we were not playing with him.
Lisa-Kaindé: When you're 11 you're not thinking, "Oh I have to play", so this came afterwards. This came when we were 14, 15, 16. And in all this period it was our mother. I think the reason is because in a song what we like is the rhythm, the bass. When the bass is hard, you know!
Watch the video for 'Oya' below
You said that for the 'Oya' video, you deliberately didn't feature heavily in it, because you wanted it to be about the music. Do you find that the music industry puts a lot of emphasis on your appearance?
Lisa-Kaindé: Yes of course, nowadays image is really important, but that's great... I mean you can really twist your image, you can really do interesting things and try to invent yourself. This is not something bad! It's something bad when the only thing you have is your image. I mean that's not bad it's just not really interesting, but you can do amazing stuff! I think image is great!
Naomi: But we have to be careful.
Lisa-Kaindé: Of course, as women we have to be careful, and it's an interesting question. You have to think, "What do I want the public to see about me? How do I want the public to look at me? What do I want to give to them as an image?" This is so hard, because you have to imagine how they will react, but you have to give what you think you are, or the way you want to invent yourself.
Is there a lyric you're most proud of?
Lisa-Kaindé: I'm really proud of 'Mama Says.' And I'm really proud of 'Oya'. And I have to... no actually I'm proud of every single lyric. Some I wrote with my family, my mother wrote a lot of lyrics and my uncle, Eric Collins, wrote a lot too with me, so it's like family.
And you write a lot about family too.
Lisa-Kaindé: Family and love. And actually I was really pissed about it at first, because you know when you're writing and the only thing you write about is love, and you're like, "Gosh but I'm an idiot!" "He leeft meeee, what happenedddd, where are youuuuuu" and you're like, "COME ON! Write about something else, please!"
And I tried and it never worked, and I said to my mother, "I'm a mess" and she said, "Gosh but Lisa you're crazy, painters paint about the same thing, but they paint it a hundred million different ways, and that's your job. You can talk about one subject all your life, what you have to do is find different ways to explain it!" And I was like, "That's interesting! Come love! I will write about love!"
Are you nervous about your album release?
Lisa-Kaindé: About a few things, because when you say 'I don't like it' it hurts a little bit of course, because you put all your love in it, obviously you want people to like it. But you know, that's life, it's always like that.... But the more scared I am is that people will people will say, "OK, you are using Yoruba to make money". Those things can really really hurt me, because this is a heritage, this is my father, this is our country, this is really important for us and we believe in it a lot.
When people criticise that kind of thing, it's often artists who appropriate cultures that aren't their own. But it is your own culture.
Lisa-Kaindé: I would never say that this artist is the same level as us but Ray Charles, who I love, when he took church music and put R&B in it, people screamed at him! Because of course, when it's religious, people felt like, 'This is not good!' And it's what we are doing, because we are taking religious songs, Yoruba, and putting it in our music which is spiritual but not religious, but the truth is we are doing this because we love this music. We believe it is our identity.
Ibeyi's self-titled debut album will be released in 2015.
