Yanas Sarah, meet the last South Sudanese female artist standing
Since the political crisis began in South Sudan in December 2013, the music industry has been hit the hardest. With the country’s economy left in shambles, artistes that lack financial support have retreated from the industry and sought refuge in neighboring countries; most of them have ventured into businesses parallel to music.
Female musicians have also been roped in the twists and turns of the event as seen from their awkward silence within the music circle, this has been worsened by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which left many economies shut. Amid this crisis, however, there is one resilient lady holding tight to her career. She is Yanas Sarah, a lady who was introduced to the music scene at tender age. The City Review (CR) interviewed Yanas Sarah (YS) on how she manages to keep up to her music amid a global pandemic and how she balances her career and domestic responsibilities.
CR: You have been in the music industry for about six years but you were on and off. Can you remind the reader who Yanas is?
Yanas: My real name is Yanas Sarah. Yanas is basically someone who has always loved music and was luckily introduced to the music scene at a very young age. I remember my mum taking us out for shows such as live band shows and performances and I loved the sounds of the instruments. We used to do that a lot and I think that’s where the music vibe hit me for the first time. Actually today, my favorite kind of music is of course live band performances, I love hearing the drums, the bass; I just love it, it’s natural.
What kind of musical instruments do you play?
I play the guitar right now the acoustic guitar and I hope to learn more instruments such as the key board and the drums, they are actually amusing.
South Sudan is currently facing multiple challenges ranging from the coronavirus pandemic and heavy floods that continue to displace people within the country. Besides, South Sudanese are really going through a lot. Tell me how your music help to relieve stress and the burdens that people are going through currently?
This is the main reason why I write my music. I always try to find a way that I can relieve somebody off some sort of burden that someone is going through. Also, my music talks about positivity, being strong, working hard, and being resilient even in difficult times. One of my songs talks about hustling and this is something that everyone has to do if you want to achieve your goal, or that dream. You have to keep working until you get it. The other song is ‘De Kidip’, it talks about not listening to the negative voices.
CR: ‘De Kidip’ sounds a little touchy and educative. Tell us, how differently do you use your music to promote peace in the country?
You know this is one thing I always put in my mind when writing my music. I always think about the impact of whoever listens to my songs and their concern is always in my mind because I know that every single word I bring out, someone else is listening to it picking it up, and sometimes even taking it into action. So, what I do is to make sure that what I do should actually promote peace is, am very careful with my lyrics. Because these words have a lot of power and they have the ability to insight people. That is the aim of my music.
Talking about personal life, you are a very young, beautiful, and energetic woman. Are you at liberty to disclose your marital status to our reader?
Hahahah, I am actually very engaged and soon to be married. So, it will be a new chapter all together.
What challenges do you face during your work as a musician?
You know there are different types of obstacles, there are those that are within myself and there are others that are external. One of my internal challenges is that I have to constantly give myself the confidence to keep doing what I do because if you could compare it yourself we are very few female artists in South Sudan, majority are male. I think it just boils down to having the confidence to do it and always believing in your art form or who you are, believing that you have something to give to the world and sometimes we make a mistake of comparing ourselves to others, I mean, whatever you do will always come from you, so you have to be unique, you need to love yourself and push yourself.
The external challenge is our culture. We live in a beautiful country but some of our cultures and expectations from the society sometimes hinder young girls from choosing a career, it’s not just in music but other careers, too. Like in music, you can be a music producer, an MC, a singer or play an instrument. But how many parents would be fine with their daughter saying mum, dad I want to be a drummer in a band. So you find that our cultures sometimes make it impossible for young girls outside there with dreams to be in the music industry to do anything about it.
The other issue is lack of support. Local artistes don’t have support. Our society should support our art. We see this a lot from Ugandan artists. When an artist comes from Uganda, wow, the theater will be fully packed or the venue is booked in advance. But when a South Sudanese artist tells people like my show is going to happen in this why don’t you people come and support? People be like we are busy, we are busy. I get it, we are all busy but the type of energy and work it takes in to writing just one song is really tremendous and the whole point of musicians doing it is to show the audience but if the audience does not want to see or doesn’t want to participate by being part of the show then what happens is little by little the musician starts thinking that maybe people don’t want my music so they start to disappear. So, every time a musician puts out a poster, let’s support him or her because this is how some musicians earn their living.
Why do you think that people don’t turn up to the South Sudanese music concerts, could it be that the songs are not interesting or is it that our people just don’t want to support our own music probably because they are not up to the standard of other East African musicians?
You know what? I have had self-centered question about that a couple of times. Sometimes when you look at social media and how people respond to artistes on social media you will be amused, you put one poster and in a minute then you see hundreds of likes and comments but when that poster comes into a physical display, very few people react toward it with positivity.
What is the best song you have ever released and why?
I think in my upcoming album next month there is a song called ‘Hold on Junubin’, and it talks about being able to face what we are going through as South Sudanese but just remembering that we are together in this and just keep holding on.
The other song that is really close to my heart is called ‘Pageri’ and that song is dedicated to my village Pageri and it’s my first song that I have written that has a bit of my mother tongue Madi in it. I grew up in Pageri where we used to come home every Christmas and I just loved it there. So I wanted to dedicate this song to my because the place where we used to come for Christmas is no longer the same. This is why I love this song, it reminds me of what my village used to be and just so I can keep it in my memory and for others to also know what my village is all about. To be honest, I do love all my songs but these two are my best.
What is the message for your fans within South Sudan or around the world?
Well, I say thank you for the support because it has been years now that you have been coming out for me and attended my shows. And some of the fans are now my friends, every time they hear that I’m performing somewhere they are the first to arrive. They are very supportive and vocal, they clap, and scream. They do whatever is required to get the show going.
The other thing I wanted to tell South Sudanese is that we shouldn’t be afraid of girls being musicians, my family has been very supportive my mum, my sisters and brothers, they have always come out to support my shows. They tell their friends, tell everybody our sister is a musician and I know that for sure if it wasn’t for them and that strong backbone kind of support I probably wouldn’t have come this far. So, you need people who are always close to you and will always believe in you; that is why I am saying thank you to all my fans and I am going to continue to write more songs and to discover who I am and what my purpose in life is and what my music would mean to the people who listen to it. My music is educative and I feel like music is a very good messenger to very painful issues that you might not talk about face to face but you can always share it through music and people can take in the message better when it comes through a song and I have always respected the music that way and that is why I am very careful with whatever word I say because I understand that you can be misunderstood or sometimes you can mislead the young once and I have always taken it that way so, music is a powerful tool.
How are you going to balance your music with other obligations such as marriage?
I would like to say that I am among the lucky few, simply because the man I am getting married to is not far from the industry. He also writes songs and performs music concerts on his own. So, that helps me because he understands the industry.
How do you handle mistakes during performances?
You know I try very much not to do that; I make sure I rehearse as much as possible.
Have you ever performed in weddings and night clubs?
Yes, I have but I get nervous when performing most especially when am performing for young people I keep questioning myself. Are these fans enjoying my music? Is my music pleasing to them? So, there are many questions that come to my mind.
Interview recording and extract by Sheila Ponnie for The City Review