String Theory

R&B, rap and electronica meet in a genre-bending blaze of glory when Sudan Archives gets her hands on them. Fiona Shepherd talks to this self-taught violinist who was inspired by an Irish fiddle band and ditched an obvious route to fame for the greater musical good

We’ve all seen Lizzo, whipping out her flute and trilling away, just in case we were in any doubt of her evident talent. Well, Brittney Denise Parks (known to listeners of taste as Sudan Archives) sees that flute and raises the stakes with her violin. Neither instrument is especially rare in the pop field (think pastoral soul or disco strings) but it’s what these righteous R&B divas do with those signature instruments that distinguishes their music.

Like her idiosyncratic mix of hip hop, soul and electronica, Parks’ path to picking up the violin was unusual yet instinctive. As a child growing up in the US Midwest, she attended a number of different schools, landing in one particularly musical establishment in Wyoming.

There, she was struck by a visiting string band playing Irish fiddle music, an old tradition which sounded brand new to this curious fourth-grade student, witnessing the violin as a party instrument for the first time. ‘They were stomping their feet and dancing while performing,’ says Parks, imitating the sound of a jig. ‘They looked so cool I wanted to be like them, so I started playing the violin and haven’t put it down since. Those are the people that inspired me, but once I picked it up I thought, “hmm, I can make it sound different”.’

The rigours of formal violin tuition were never for Parks, who remains entirely self-taught. Unfettered experimentation through her teens took a more professional shape when she left school and moved to Los Angeles, studying music technology at Pasadena City College. Applying her self-production skills to early solo gigs at the Low End Theory club night in East LA, she would layer and loop eclectic ideas, with her violin at the heart of the mix.

‘I like taking it and making it my own,’ she says. ‘I think starting off as a DIY musician and having to rely so heavily on my loop station definitely influenced me a lot as a producer, and influenced my creative process in writing this new album. The process is different with each song. Sometimes I’ll start with violin, sometimes I’m beating on it for percussion and I curate the melody on the violin around the song I’m making. Once I’ve laid that track, I’ll lay some bass on the next track, and then I’ll lay a longer string on the next track, then I might lay pizzicato on the next track . . . ’

Such is Parks’ manipulation of the instrument that some listeners have suggested they can’t actually hear the violin on her new album Natural Brown Prom Queen. Yet she clearly unleashes some of those Celtic party sounds on the track ‘TDLY (Homegrown Land)’, while her use of African drones on the fidgety hip-hop title track (main lyric: ‘I’m not average’) showcases the key influence of Sudanese playing traditions which she rooted out online over the years. That led to the nickname she adopted as her moniker.

‘It was really cool seeing violinists that looked like me,’ she says. ‘What inspired me most looking at the Sudanese culture was that they were very outside the box when they were playing the violin. Sometimes they were playing it kinda crazy and wild, and sometimes I like to play my violin crazy and wild too.’ Like many musicians, the opportunity to cut loose on her instrument has kept Parks sane over the last two years, as has her self-contained home studio set-up, which even accelerated the production of Natural Brown Prom Queen.

‘The album would have definitely come into fruition but maybe not as quickly if it weren’t for covid because I was literally locked in my basement,’ she recalls. ‘I had nowhere else to go; in LA everything was locked down. Covid influenced it a lot because there was so much going on that it made me write more, kind of like a therapeutic way of releasing the emotions I was feeling. It was really just me and my music in the basement every day so I felt like I was my own boss.’

Parks is in her self-sufficient element now, but this was not always the case. Encouraged by her stepfather, who worked at Atlanta R&B label LaFace Records, she and her twin sister Cat formed a pop duo, N2. But Parks, a self-confessed loner rebel, was uncomfortable with the contrived nature of that project. ‘I felt like I didn’t want my creativity to be limited to one specific genre just to aim for commercial success. I wanted to be able to make whatever music I wanted, however I wanted, and I felt at the time we were pushing to make pop music with the hope of being successful and popular. But I don’t really care about being popular; I just wanted to make music that felt good.’

Now, popularity has come to her. As Sudan Archives, Parks has released two EPs and her 2019 debut album Athena, all vibrant calling cards for her mix of Nubian hip hop and neoclassical influences. Athena was a conceptual collection, not unlike Janelle Monáe’s audacious debut The ArchAndroid. But for its follow-up, Parks wanted to drop the persona and produce something earthier and more personal. ‘I wanted to show people more sides of my personality. A lot of people don’t realise this, but I’m actually really goofy and silly. I like to goof around a lot, and on this album I also wanted to showcase my family so people can relate to me more. It talks a lot about being homesick. I put a lot of my family on the album in different ways.’

An undulating piano interlude titled ‘Do Your Thing (Refreshing Springs)’ features a lovely sample of her mother encouraging her to ad lib (‘get up there and do your thing’), while the bassy cheerleading single ‘Selfish Soul’ explores self-image through the many styling options for Black women’s hair. The album title, meanwhile, is Parks reclaiming the high-school prom night she never had. ‘I didn’t go to prom because I didn’t fit in, and I didn’t feel like I had a prom date. So on Natural Brown Prom Queen I’m saying even if you never went to prom, even if you were never what you wanted to be, you can still achieve that in your own unique way.’

Sudan Archives plays SWG3, Glasgow, Sunday 20 November; Natural Brown Prom Queen is out now on Stones Throw Records.