Life & Work with Almamy

Today we’d like to introduce you to Almamy.

Hi Almamy, so excited to have you with us today. To kick things off, maybe you can tell us a bit about how you got started? 
I was born and raised in Dakar, Senegal, with a father obsessed with movies, especially from the Golden Age of Hollywood, which had a huge influence on me. So I got my parents to enroll me in drama classes as soon as I could take them. But to my utter shock and surprise, I found out that I didn’t particularly enjoy acting. I was quite good at it, actually, but my sense of self was already too strong to truly enjoy embodying someone else’s experience. Then I studied dance, in New York, and became a professional dancer. Which is ironic, considering that as a dancer you do act; you portray a character within a story or an abstract concept.

Being immersed in the very insular world of dance and working with visionary choreographers, and the avant-garde composers scoring their pieces, gave me the foundation to essentially find my way and come into my own as an artist, regardless of the medium, which for me turned out to be recorded music, surprisingly. Because I was also clubbing a lot and making friends with electronic musicians, I naturally started to write songs. What hooked me was that I could really be a creative artist, with music, as opposed to just a performing artist. I was yearning for creative expression, and I always felt that it eluded me just being a performer. I also loved that with a record you can basically paint with sounds, and build a sonic world that can be inhabited by whatever you want in there. Quite Godly (laughs).

Indeed! So, I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far? 
Not always, but it’s all about perspective, isn’t it? You can approach struggle as a hindrance or as a chance to grow. If anything, my dance training taught me more about pushing through pain than anything else. You see, the resilience you build from shaping your body into an instrument, for weeks, months, and years on end, you unconsciously apply to other aspects of your life. So whenever I faced adversity, I kept going, taking it as a chance to learn and grow by stretching beyond whatever limits I had at that particular moment. I’m very cognizant of the fact that my growth as an artist is inextricably tied to my growth as a person, and vice versa.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do and what you’re currently focused on? 
While music is at the core of what I do, I also work across a variety of art forms. At the end of the day, it’s all the same to me, I’m an artist and the different mediums are just the different colors on my palette. For instance, the project I’m currently working on is a trilogy of concept albums that have a series of short films as companions. Talk about coming full circle (laughs). The films, which I wrote and will direct, are to be presented as an immersive VR installation. I’m very excited about the prospect of directing and quite intimidated as well, but as you’ve figured out by now, I believe that one’s reach should often exceed one’s grasp. Those are the things that make you come alive and make your work vibrant.

As a whole, this project is transmedia storytelling, a process in which elements of a narrative get dispersed across multiple art forms to create an interconnected entertainment experience. Like a puzzle, each piece contributes to the larger narrative while being accessible on its own terms. So my aim with this is to make the intersection of music, visual storytelling, and technology central to my artistic output, in a way that I haven’t before.

I used to focus much more on one discipline at a time, but with this body of work, I’m incorporating all of my skills and experiences into one project. And by dispersing integral elements of a narrative across different mediums, I get to really stretch my creative wings and practice. Hopefully, this will set the stage for me to write and direct more films, alongside my ever-evolving music career.

How do you define success?
The Japanese have a concept referring to one’s reason for being. They call it Ikigai. Some see it as your soul, while for others, it’s your purpose. For me, it simply refers to one’s innate nature. So, I define success as being in alignment with your essence. When they talk about finding one’s purpose or hearing the call, I don’t think it has anything to do with a specific job or career, but everything to do with the idiosyncratic gifts that you bring to any occupation, basically the soul you put in it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://modyworks.com/almamy
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/almamy__/

Image Credits
Izar Khan, Sam Fuller and Lisa Noreaga