The Soul of Music: Sampa The Great Returns to her Roots | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

Foreign [Music]

Douglas: I'm a producer here at Overheard, and this is the second episode of our four-part series focusing on music exploration and black history. It's called The Soul of Music. National Geographic explorers will be sitting down with some of our favorite musicians to discuss how history and the natural world inspires their art and adventures. Today's guest is Sampa Tambo, better known by her stage name Sampa the Great.

Sampa is a Zambian-born musician, and she's blown up over the last few years. Her song "Never Forget," which you'll hear soon, was used in the trailer for the Marvel movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Pop culture-wise, it doesn't get much bigger than that. Sampa's music is inspired by hip-hop, rock, and the traditional Zambian music of her homeland. Her most recent album is called As Above So Below.

On that record, Sampa gets personal about her struggles, her successes, and her self-love. For me, you know, "as above, so below; as within, so without" has a lot of meanings. It just means that your outer world is a reflection of what's going on within you. Sampa says she didn't always feel like she could show off her inner personality, in part because she spent a lot of time living outside of Zambia.

She was raised primarily in Botswana. In 2013, she moved to Australia to study audio engineering. "Especially in Australia, I felt like I had to put on an ambassadorial role because of where I stood in my community, and I had to make sure, you know, whatever I sang, whatever I put out represented my community well because we were sort of the only examples of black music and black culture in Australia.

We didn't allow ourselves to be humans, and for me in particular, a lot of scars came from it. But I know a huge part of it was perfectionism because any mistake I made, that was an African community mistake and it wasn't a Sampa mistake. You know, and that's just a huge weight to bear, and I just didn't allow myself to be the whole range of something—the goofy Sampa, the funny Sampa, the Sampa that loves to love, the Sampa that loves love."

During the pandemic, Sampa moved back to Zambia, and she says she was able to shed the armor she had built up and be more genuinely herself. "And I actually got to show that through this project. I got to show a full range of who I am—am, all the mistakes, you know, all the love, the tears, everything, all the goofiness. Like, I actually got to finally show fully who I am as Sampa Tambo, and I feel like that was my 'As Above So Below' moment.

I didn't have to wear any mask; my outer world finally represented what I was going through in my inner world, and it felt like the perfect phrase."

This is Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world. This week, as part of Overheard's The Soul of Music series, Sampa the Great sits down with National Geographic Explorer and wildlife biologist Danielle Lee. Danielle has studied the behavior of giant African pouch rats, which are used to sniff out landmines all around the world, and she's passionate about science outreach.

We featured Danielle in an episode of Overheard last year. "My whole thing is I like to take pop culture references people understand, that they already have a really good comprehension and foundation in science already. Like you already know a lot of science, you already know a lot of behavior, you already know a lot of this. I use their vernacular and cultural lexicon that is already familiar and then I relate it to the scientific terminologies."

Sampa and Danielle discuss inspiration through history, the power of language, and mental health therapy through nature—more after the break. But first, fuel your curiosity with a free one-month trial subscription to Nat Geo digital. You'll have unlimited access on any device, anywhere, ad-free, with our app that lets you download stories to read offline. Explore every page ever published with a century of digital archives at your fingertips. Check it all out for free at natgeo.com/exploremore.

[Music]

Danielle: How you doing? How’s it going?

Sampa: Hey, Danielle! How are you?

Danielle: I'm doing great! So for the audience, could you tell us your name and what you do?

Sampa: Hello everyone, I'm Sampa Tambo, also known as Sampa the Great, and I'm an artist from Zambia.

Danielle: Now let folks know exactly where Zambia is.

Sampa: Okay, Zambia is in southern Africa. So you have South Africa at the lower point of the continent, with Botswana right on top of that, and then you have Zambia on top of that.

Danielle: And you grew up in both Zambia and Botswana, right?

Sampa: Yes, that's correct. I grew up between Botswana and Zambia—so born in Zambia, and at the age of one, one and a half, my parents moved to Botswana. My dad got a job in Gaborone, the capital city, and we were sort of raised between the two countries.

So our Christmases or special occasions or any big family event were spent in Zambia, and you know, our upbringing, our primary and high school, and everything else in between was spent in Botswana.

Danielle: So what was Botswana like as a school child spending time there?

Sampa: It was quite an adventure. It had both pros and cons. The pros were, you know, you got to experience life outside of Zambia, and you got to bring all those stories back to your cousins, and they'd be like, "Wow, that's crazy!" But also, you're not raised around family, so all your extended family is in Zambia, and you sort of feel left out in an experience that everybody else is having.

And, you know, it was a huge sort of identity thing for me when I was younger, and it still is, in a sense, today, where you knew that you were being raised in a country outside of the country where you're from, so you didn't quite fit in. And then also, when you went to the country where you're from, people kind of looked at you like, "Ah, yeah, but you're being raised outside of your home," so you're not quite fully, you know, like us.

So, there's always that thing where you know you were neither of the options, but you were also a middle ground for both.

Danielle: That's interesting. I spend a lot of time in Tanzania, which is a bit more northern than Zambia, and I had that experience as an Afro-American because that's usually the terminology that was used on the continent.

Yeah, visiting the continent, I was often called '0.5,' you know, this idea of being half there, like I was half African—historically inherited, wanting to connect—but I wasn’t there. So I was always back and forth. There was still this overwhelming Americanness to me, which you can see it, like how I walk differently, how I wore my hair, and you're right: that kind of being in between does still hit you up.

Sampa: Yes, it does stand out. I mean, I guess for me, I tried to heal that, but obviously, it's not at the same level as your experience. I just tried to heal it by, you know, being in Zambia more, learning more about my language, learning more about even just the inflections and the way we speak.

Remember, you know, my mulishani is different than a Zambian who’s raised in Zambia, and you can tell the influence of English. You can tell the colonization in my language. So I really tried, and I think it's still happening through adulthood to reconnect with, you know, all these different aspects of being Zambian and trying to fill that hole. It’s obviously not at the same level, but I do love when my friends of the diaspora do come to the continent and just get involved in language and culture, and just seeing, you know, what it would have been like had we been raised in our ancestral homes.

Danielle: Yes, absolutely! So there's a song of yours that I want to share a clip from: it's the "Never Forget" track you made. Can you break this song down for me?

Sampa: Wow! I think this is an epitome of me and my friends just created music that we love and are inspired by and didn’t know what it was gonna do so well.

Danielle: So just jamming out, huh?

Sampa: Just jamming out, and whoops! We just created something amazing.

[Music]

Danielle: Now, your sister's on this song with you, isn't she?

Sampa: Yes, she is! My sister actually co-wrote the chorus, so that was pretty huge. And when I started creating the album, we sort of booked out the studio for a whole month, and all the people involved in the album were all just hanging out together—literally forced to be with each other—within a span of two weeks and just talk about where we are, reconnecting back in Zambia and working on music together.

A huge genre that stood out to me while I was in Zambia was Zamrock, and just how huge the influence of that music was, and just the knowledge that, you know, some people in Zambia don’t know how global Zamrock music went. And it sort of mirrored my experience in being a Zambian artist whose career took off in a continent and country away from her own, and you know, more people outside of our country know about her.

And I sort of took that as a, "Well, this may be something that is interesting to explore" and just did a deep dive into Zamrock and decided to create this song that was supposed to be us paying homage to all the Zamrock legends who came before us and just sort of, yeah, just sort of saying thank you and you know, taking that inspiration and paying it forward.

Danielle: Okay, that sounds so... we're gonna come back and talk a little bit more about Zamrock, but I did have a question about the second verse of this song.

Yeah, is it Chef or Chief?

Sampa: Chef. Chef 187, yeah!

Danielle: So he's speaking in Bemba?

Sampa: So Chef is rapping in Bemba, and Teo is singing the hook in Nyanja. So we have Nyanja, Bemba, and English just all rolled up into one beautiful thing.

Danielle: Yeah! Now, uh, Bemba and Nyanja—are those mother tongues in Zambia?

Sampa: Yes! One of the 62 languages and dialects in Zambia! So, I mean, if you get one, at least you have something. Remember, my mom is Bemba, so Chef speaks my mom's mother tongue. And then my dad is from a tribe called Tumbuka, and Teo's my cousin, and he's speaking in Nyanja! So we’re kind of bringing both of those energies together.

Danielle: I love it!

Sampa: Subconsciously, but it was also just really beautiful again. Language being involved in music is more prominent now in this project than in my other projects, just as a way of reconnecting and again reclaiming that, you know, part of me that was lost growing up somewhere outside of my own country. So, it was really important to have language be a huge part of it.

And also just to have rap being done in a different language and just showing the huge influence that hip-hop has had on the continent and just showing how we appreciate it in our own style and our own art form. So to have it being rapped in Bemba was really cool!

Danielle: That is really cool! So I use a little hip-hop in the work that I do in science communication. I don't flow, though—let me be honest. I don’t do that.

Sampa: Some influence a little, but like...

Danielle: But I love, like, how vocabulary—and I love the artistry of it. And I've been able to use it to explain concepts to not just my students in science but like to general audiences, using that to explain concepts.

And I've used not just American hip-hop, but I've also used some Continental hip-hop, so out of Nigeria, you know—like, yeah, because my jam is "Chop My Money" there to explain, like, every behavior.

And I love how hip-hop, which is a, you know, Afro-American-derived art form, but, like, we acknowledge here in the States that that's part of our call-and-response culture that we were able to hold on to. So, like, we recognize that it's continental too.

Sampa: Yeah! It was, you know, it was a memory that we didn't even know we had. You know, we were able to hold on to it!

Danielle: Right? I think music, out of all of it, is the one thing that just DNA just seeped into wherever we are in the world! Like, we kept—you know, the connection with the continent is strong!

Sampa: That's really beautiful.

Danielle: Yeah, so speaking of, you know, connections and language, when we were talking before the interview, you mentioned that growing up you really struggled connecting with your grandparents back in Zambia because they spoke Bemba, your mother's family’s mother tongue.

But in Botswana, because you lived in Botswana, they don’t speak that, so you didn’t really get to cultivate that. And I love that you talk about the fact that you have at least three different languages together on that one song.

How do you think language shapes and affects our relationships?

Sampa: Oh man, there's so much information, so much emotion, codes of DNA that go into language, that I just can't express how different it is to hear music in English versus music in your ancestral tongue.

There's so much you miss out on, and I think it's sort of a blessing and a curse to be able to be in this middle ground, especially as a rapper, where you see sort of the impact your verses have and your flow have when you're rapping in English and when you're rapping in Bemba.

And for us as an oral people, it's so important for us to be able to pass information and feel through the sounds that are happening in, you know, our phonetics.

It goes back to just the drums and how we were able to talk to each other through sound. And as well, like, English is not our language; it's a colonized language, and it itself has all its sort of bastardizations as well.

And I know, as Africans, wherever we are on the continent, we make English our own. We put in our own little flavor in it, and I know my brothers and sisters in America also do their little things in Ebonics. You know, we can't just be. We need to add our own little flavor to it.

And also in that realm, I know that the tone that happens when you're speaking in Bemba versus when you're speaking in English is also different as well.

Danielle: Yes! Yeah, exactly! I hear an Americanized version of that is like how the word "girl" can communicate how you say it. Like, a different way I said that was good.

Sampa: I saw an SNL skit with Megan Thee Stallion, and that was the "girl" skit, and I was just like, that is actually really perfect!

Danielle: So, we've been talking—you mentioned very briefly about Zamrock and how you're a big fan of it. Now, Zamrock is a very special Zambian-designed, the Zambian-grown genre of music, and it became popular in the '70s.

Yes, and it's this combination of traditional Zambian music with psychedelic rock. What are those traditional elements that differentiate Zamrock from that psychedelic rock that was popular back in the day?

Sampa: Man, so in Zambia, we have this music that's called Kalindula music, and it's sort of, I guess we could say, Zambia's folk music. So a lot of our storytelling happens through Kalindula music. A lot of sort of the traditional sound of the guitar happens in Kalindula music.

And so I guess the kids from the '70s heard psychedelic rock and were like, "This is insane! We love it!" But we're also going to infuse it with the style of where we're from and just spark something different, which I think is really inspiring, especially for a conservative country like Zambia to have psychedelic rock be your inspiration.

To me, it's wow! And so they infused these two sort of genres and still kept, you know, the art of storytelling as a center for it. I imagine rock also is rhythm and blues, and blues is also sort of that folk storytelling thing, so you have four from these different continents and sort of the feel of these distant relatives that is coming through this music, which is really beautiful.

And so, yeah, you have these young kids who are inspired by this music, they fuse it together, and it sort of became a huge phenomenon in our country and became our national music. Zamrock was the Zambian sound.

And then, unfortunately, we had this huge AIDS epidemic that sort of killed a lot of our legends, and so Zamrock started to sort of die down, and we saw other music take center stage on the continent. So we had your Afrobeats at that time, which was huge, and your Congolese sort of rumba music that was huge.

And we sort of adopted that music, which was really beautiful, but we sort of lost the essence of our own folk-telling music, our own folk story music. And as I, you know, deep dived into Zamrock, I reimagined a Zambia where we still had our own music—you know, we had our musical identity just the way Afrobeats is influenced by West Africa and the stories that surround West Africa.

I thought Zamrock was that for us and what would it take to go back to that? And I sort of saw the similarities again with Zamrock being known outside of Zambia—like much like myself in my career.

And then I stumbled on some huge information this year, which was my uncle was part of one of the huge Zamrock bands called The Witch, and he was one of the founding members of that band.

Danielle: Nice!

Sampa: Which was like information that was well to me! And information that I needed when I started my career because it was like so lonely doing it alone.

My dad nonchalantly says, "Your uncle was part of that," your uncle was part of that! Just casually, and I was like, "Oh my goodness!"

Danielle: So, who are some of your favorite Zamrock artists?

Sampa: Okay, I'm gonna be biased with the first choice—it’s The Witch! That's because my uncle was part of the founding members of The Witch. And then also Pauline Gogozi was really huge, and again, one of the leaders of Zamrock was huge to me as well. So I'd say those two.

Danielle: One of your other big musical idols is Angelique Kidjo. Tell me about her and why she is one of your favorite artists.

Sampa: Angelique Kidjo! How can I express how important she is? Angelique was like, not to compare her to Madonna, but she came into the music sphere, bringing being African and showing our culture to the world, into the conversation. She made it cool.

Not only that, but showing our spiritual side as well, which was often and is often demonized. To me, she was one of the founding members of Afrofuturism before Afrofuturism was, you know, a thing visually and artistically.

To me, I saw Angelique Kidjo do that, and as a young African woman, you’re like, "Oh cool! We can do that! We can show that part of ourselves, and that be cool!"

And that was what Angelique Kidjo was to us—a huge inspiration and still is a huge inspiration.

Danielle: Where did she hail from?

Sampa: She's from Benin.

Danielle: Benin. Yeah! She is from Benin, and yeah, she just infuses her culture, the spiritualism of where she's from, and her language into her music, which I think is really amazing.

Sampa: So I really love this song, and she’s featured on your song "Let Me Be Great." It is, first of all, it's a dynamic song, and the video is just visually jaw-dropping, so we're gonna play a little bit of that.

[Music]

Danielle: She’s so neat!

Sampa: I’m still shocked because I’d say that's the only feature in the album that was super unexpected but fit in as if it was planned! Like, we were in the middle of making our album, and we had just done our NPR Tiny Desk— in Zambia, the home version—because we were locked down at the time.

And I remember that being released, and we sort of did it and wanted to infuse our whole culture, and then we were wearing our Zambian attire, and we were like, "Yeah, this is great! We're really gonna show them!"

And I remember getting a DM from Angelique Kidjo, and I remember seeing that on my phone and just like screaming, wiling out, showing my cousin and my sisters!

Do you understand? Because, again, like, legends DM! I don't know this encounter before, so it was so wild!

[Music]

Danielle: I just remember opening the DM, and she was like, "The NPR performance was so beautiful. I’m working on my album. Don't tell anyone, do you want to be a part of it?"

And just still being in shock that like Angelique Kidjo is DMing me, you're like, "Yeah, anything you want, I'm gonna do it!" Anything! And that was just, I don’t know, it was just really insane.

Sampa: And I remember doing the verse for her song and just knowing that we had just worked on the song called "Let Me Be Great" and her vocals would be exquisite on the song. Angelique has these vocals that we call "ancestral vocals."

I think these are like the way we sung before we were influenced by classical music or any other sort of way of singing because this has like spiritualism inside.

I think that her voice is just it carries so much history and so much—it just sounds spiritually connected to our ancestral music, so nice to even just have her there is just a huge honor!

And I remember, you know, sending her back the song that we did on her album and just sneaking "Let Me Be Great" in the email as well, being like, "Here’s the song for your album; here is my verse," but I'm also working on my album!

And just like trying to do two things at one go, and luckily enough, you know, she was gracious enough to be like, "I love this song! I want to be a part of it!"

What is it about? And me just expressing to her, you know, as a young upcoming artist, you face so many doubts, so many fears. You don’t know whether you want to do this path anymore.

You're influenced by these huge legends—some of them you meet, and they don't quite live up to your expectations of them. Then you realize that they were supposed to be examples that you could do it, you know?

They were supposed to be reflections and representations of someone who looks like you doing what you've dreamed of doing. But you are not supposed to be a copycat of them. You were not supposed to be the second version of them.

You were supposed to take that inspiration and sort of manifest who you want to be through that inspiration. And yeah, I think that's the beautiful thing about being able to interact with your legends and people who created these pathways for you so that they're able to sort of pass the baton and give you these stories and show you how you can pay it forward.

And she just seemed like the perfect person, and it just felt like perfect timing to have her on that song, especially for what it meant. I was just so happy and lucky that she was down to do it!

But not only was she down to sing lyrics that were already written— I mean, she’s Angelique Kidjo! She can write whatever she wants!

She was like, "I'll sing this chorus you guys wrote, but also add her language to the outro of the song." And just that's more passion and more spirit involved in this song and this message, and we couldn’t have jumped off a better track!

Danielle: Now, being a touring artist is a pretty stressful job, I can imagine. But when you're taking time off from touring and making music, you like to hang out at your family's farm in Zambia. Tell me about that—what's the farm like?

Sampa: So the farm is immensely quiet! There's nothing that goes on around it really; all you can hear are the birds, you know, the wind, the people who are in the background tilling the land, and you can actually be present with life.

I feel like when you're touring, you’re going from one place to another, you’re changing time zones; you're talking to all these people, you’re exchanging so much energy, you’re in rooms, and you know, that are not your own space.

And you’re really going through these different spaces at a huge speed, and you don’t actually have time to yourself. On top of that, you’re not getting any rest, and it can be a huge punch on your mental health.

On top of being an artist who expresses music differently to, I guess, what mainstream or commercial artists express, and you’re doing that every night. You’re connecting with people who’ve been inspired by the music, and you know, you’re exchanging stories, you’re exchanging traumas, and that just can be a lot to bear for a huge amount of time.

And I was finding that, you know, every time we were off tour, we’d get like two weeks off, and then we’re back to the same sort of strenuous cycle, and it just isn’t one— a normal way for humans to live and interact with each other.

But also, as the artist, you find that you don’t have time to fill in your cup again; you don’t have time to recoup, you don’t have time to sort of replace the energy that has been exchanged or exerted.

And a lot of what I expressed through my music has a lot to do with grounding yourself. As a person who started off with major anxiety, I started meditating really early in my career. I knew what I wanted to do, but it was so huge and so grand of a dream that it scared me to even want to, you know, pursue the dream.

A friend of mine sort of explained anxiety as you being in the future while your body is in the present, and you sort of create this rift, you know, in your chest of trying to be in these two places.

And I really had to practice being present and just growing my confidence for knowing what I wanted to be as an artist, and that has sort of stuck with me throughout my career.

So when you're adding touring to, you know, that equation in order to exert all of this energy to exude the confidence that we do on stage and share these stories, it also has to be time to self, to reflect and to grow.

And I usually do that by connecting to nature and being sort of away from everything else. You know, grounding myself in the actual ground, in the actual grass, you know, being able to reconnect and hear my own breath and hear my heartbeat, and just be in a place of solitude and stillness, which is what nature gives me.

It reminds me that I'm alive more than any stage could, you know? And I feel like that's one of the beauties in nature that we've lost with technology, with buildings, and everything else that is in the middle of it.

So when I finally have some time to myself, my remedy, my medication is to be able to go back home and connect with the land and actually be involved with sitting in nature and bringing myself back to ground zero. And so that's sort of how I deal with everything.

Danielle: Thank you so much! This has been a pleasure.

Sampa: I know this has been really beautiful!

Danielle: Thank you for taking me down memory lane.

That was explorer Danielle Lee in conversation with musician Sampa the Great. If you like what you're hearing, and you want to support more content like this, please rate and review us in your podcast app, and consider a National Geographic subscription.

That's the best way to support an Overheard. Go to natgeo.com/exploremore to subscribe. Learn more about Sampa the Great at her website soundforthegreat.com—that's spelled S-A-M-P-A-T-H-E-G-R-E-A-T—and follow her on Twitter or Instagram at sampa_underscore_the_underscore_great.

Learn more about Danielle Lee at her website about.me/dnlee and listen to a full interview with Danielle in the Overheard episode The Wonders of Urban Wildlife. You can also follow her on Twitter or Instagram at dne5.

That's all in your show notes right there in your podcast app. This week's Overheard episode is produced by me, Harry Douglas. Our senior producers are Brian Gutierrez and Jacob Pinter.

Our senior editor is Eli Chin. Our manager of audio is Carla Wills, who edited this episode. Our executive producer of audio is Navara. Our photo editor is Julie Howe.

Ted Woods sound-designed this episode, and Hansdale Sue composed our theme. The Soul of Music series is produced in collaboration with National Geographic Music. Special thanks to Hannah Grace Van Cleave, Jennifer Stillson, and Brittany Greer.

This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners. The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, funds the work of National Geographic Explorer Danielle Lee.

Michael Tribble is a vice president of integrated storytelling, and Nathan Lump is National Geographic's editor-in-chief.

Thanks for listening, and see you next time!

Thank you! [Music]