The Sun Still Remembers Its Birth
Here’s the debut performance of my song “The Sun Still Remembers Its Birth” at Bushwick Book Club Seattle concert of original songs inspired by Nnedi Okorafor’s brilliant YA novel Akata Witch.
I had just finished writing the song—with its raucous menagerie of chords and time signature changes—a couple of days before, so you’ll see me looking at my notes a lot. Well, that’s how you know I’m a real person! Still, I’m so happy with this song and with Town Hall Seattle’s livestream production quality, so I wanted to be sure and share this with you.
Bushwick Book Club Seattle also featured me in their October “Artist Spotlight;” you’ll find that interview below the video.
Kat Bula is a fiddler, singer, and music teacher, down-to-earth astrologer—and a self-proclaimed "Human Person". Kat will be performing original music inspired by Nnedi Okorafor's Akata Witch live at Town Hall on October 9th, 2021 at 7:30 PM. Read Bushwick Book Club’s exclusive interview below!
What have you been up to?
Rebooting my songwriting and solo performing practice has been a primary pandemic project. I had been focused for years primarily on supporting other artists as a fiddler and harmony singer. It’s alternately restorative and anxiety-provoking to come home to my own songs and artistic vision.
Right now I’m creating band arrangements for a show October 28th at North City Bistro, which will be my first time fronting a band for a complete show in at least five years.
Why did you choose to write and perform a song for Akata Witch?
I have been really interested lately in the relationship between the fantasy genre and the complex history of European religious oppression, colonialism, and collectively unprocessed grief around the trauma of separation from our experience of indigeneity, as people of European descent.
When I saw that Bushwick was doing a young adult fantasy novel that engages both West African juju and postcolonial cultural commentary, I knew for sure that was something I wanted to read and explore. It has proven to be even more rich than I expected—almost overwhelmingly so.
What is your process for songwriting?
One of two ways:
1) Free-write a bunch of dumb crap until something interesting happens. Ask the interesting thing what kind of melody it might like to have. Get hit and sometimes taken out by a tidal wave of musical ideas. Despair when I realize how complicated the resulting musical composition often is and how long it is going to take me to learn to play it. Write the rest of the lyrics, which may or may not involve beating my head on my desk for an hour trying to come up with one half of one line. Suffer having this song stuck in my head for days on end, which is how I eventually learn most of it, except for the parts I forget or spontaneously change onstage.
2) Sit down and write a song, the way I'd sit down and write an email or a to-do list.
