Rusangano Family are a three piece rap group consisting of two MCs, MuRli and God Knows, and DJ mynameisjohn. They are based in Limerick, with the members originally hailing from the diverse backgrounds of Zimbabwe, Togo and Ennis. Kevin Bird met up with an MuRli ahead of their performance at Hard Working Class Heroes.

 

How did Rusangano Family come to be?

We started working together about three years ago. Initially it was God Knows and mynameisjohn, who collaborated on an album called Rusangano/Family which I was also on, but we weren’t operating as a band. When the album was released in May 2014 I went on tour with the guys, so that’s when we started doing it as a trio. Off the back of the tour I released my EP Surface Tension, which mynameisjohn produced four tracks on, and then in March 2015 we launched Rusangano Family as a proper group.

 

Your music, especially on your new album, incorporates a lot of musical styles, particularly ones that might not traditionally be associated with Hip-Hop. What kind of stuff did you listen to growing up?

Initially it was just whatever was on the radio, but my parents were into a lot of different types of music. My Dad played a lot of Hindu music, so I listened to that a lot. He also had a lot of country music playing in the house; a lot of Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson. Later on, I went to live in my uncle’s house and there was lot of Gospel there. My Grandfather as well, he was a musician. He performed poetry at funerals, and it was the first time that I saw someone perform lyrics, in the way that we rap nowadays, so I found that really inspiring.

Hip-Hop came later on, it was when I arrived in Ireland at age twelve that I really started to listen to it. I liked it, because I found similarities between what they were doing and what was traditionally done in Togo, where I am originally from.

 

You’re very much a multicultural group, and you all come from diverse backgrounds. Would you see yourself as a voice for multicultural Ireland?      

I never really think about it like that, but I think you can’t help but be that. Because we are multicultural, everything that we do is kind of representing multicultural Ireland. So I think you could say yes to that. But the one thing that we want to be, is a voice for everyone who may have been through the stuff that we touch on in our records. We don’t want to be boxed into one label.

 

You went to the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas earlier this year. What was your highlight of the festival?                                                                                                        

Our last gig at the festival was in an Irish pub, and to this day, gig-wise, I’ve never experienced anything like it. We got to the point where the inside of the pub was packed and there was a window opened out onto the main street of Austin and a load of passers-by just stopped and started watching us. So at some point God Knows just jumped out the window, and we’re doing a song where God Knows was doing his raps outside and I was doing mine inside. And just for a moment I was thinking “this is incredible!’ this is the kind of stuff that changes your life!”.

 

One of the lines in your song “Lights On” which struck me was “thought I had to be American, thought I had to be English, everything but Irish”. Are you always conscious of the fact that you’re in an Irish rap group?

I think you’d have to be. There’s been a lot of criticism of Irish rappers and how they just don’t cut it. But I think a lot of those criticisms have been really unfair. However, it is changing now, with the emergence of rappers in Ireland now who’ve really got it. But you’ve got to understand, everything takes time to grow and mature into what will eventually be a healthy rap scene. So that early stage evolving into maturity is always going to be tough.

A lot of the time you feel as a rapper, that you have to look like you’re not from here in order to be accepted. We’re pressured into being and acting a certain way, and as you get older you realise that you can’t sustain being something that you’re not.  It’s a reality for a lot of rappers in Ireland.

 

 

Following that, what do you think the future of rap is in Ireland? Do you think we could ever have our own unique scene like that of Grime in the UK?

I think it’s possible, but it will take time. You need to give it time and allow it to grow naturally, without trying to make it into something that it’s not going to be. Also, you need to accept that sometimes rappers are going to sound a way that you don’t like, but that’s fine too because you need that. If you go to LA or wherever, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be many different forms of rap. You need all types of rap to live together. It can’t always be that ‘this group are against these guys because one are the old school and the other are the new school’. I think that kind of thing is destructive. We’ve got to look to a way that is constructive, so that eventually we get to the point where we have a healthy scene, like the Grime scene that has emerged.

 

Some of your tracks are quite in tune with current affairs and what’s going on, particularly a song like “Heathrow”, which resonates a lot with the migrant situation at the moment. Do current affairs influence your songwriting?

For sure, current affairs are what you experience on a daily basis, you can’t just close your eyes to what’s going on around you and say “that’s none of my concern”. It’s probably because I don’t live a lifestyle that people would tend to associate with mainstream Hip-Hop. Some people feel comfortable with putting on a persona, I’m not able to do that, reality is much more of a concern to me. I can’t just watch people being treated a certain way that I’m not happy with and not say anything about it. We try not to pick sides either, but we want share what we think about these things, so it’s important to us.

 

On the bio of your bandcamp page it says ‘think globally, act locally’. Is this the philosophy of the group?

Yes, it is our philosophy. There’s this idea that it’s so tough to make it in Ireland musically and eventually you’ll have to go abroad to LA or London or wherever. Our whole thing is that we don’t mind going to LA or London, but we want to make an impact at home in Ireland. So we could go to LA, but we always come back, just the way that people go on business trips. We want to impact the whole world, starting out from our community. That’s what our goal is in a nutshell.

 

Images courtesy of Rusangano Family