Music

Extracurriculars: Le Motel’s Voodoo Footwork

We often pigeonhole musicians into two-dimensional characters rather than seeing them as fully realized human beings. Extracurriculars is a series that uncovers unknown, surprising, and often super weird non-musical interests of DJs and producers—and lets them explain how it all relates back to their work. 

Le Motel is a kid—a 22 year old graphic designer from Brussels. It would be easy to discount him as just another spring chicken making beats in his bedroom. But then you listen to his  music—collages of samples collected from Haitian voodoo rituals, placed over a lattice of twitchy footwork and juke rhythms. It’s an unlikely union of two wildly disparate worlds, but he makes it work so effortlessly you have to sit back and think, but of course. So, the music is great, but I wanted to find out if Le Motel’s interest in voodoo went further than the typical American Horror Story hipster-fied mysticism (you know what I’m talking about!). I asked him to explain, in his own words, how exactly his music references and relates to the Haitian religion. You decide. 

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Download Le Motel’s “Pygmy Juke” 

“I’m currently working on my first EP, due on TAR in February. It will be called Le Motel – 45°34°50°. Those are the latitudinal coordinates of Brussels, Montreal and Los Angeles, because even though I’m from Brussels, I live in Montreal and TAR is a label from Los Angeles. It will include “Pygmy Juke” which uses a pygmy hunt song recorded in the 50s. I love how the repetitive nature, with added elements, creates a sort of trance.”

“My biggest influence is Maya Deren, an American artist who died in 1961.Two of my videos, Loko and Papa Legba, use images from her film The Divine Horsemen. Deren succeeded after much hard work to integrate herself in the voodoo rituals of Haiti. They believe that when an anthropologist arrives, the gods leave. So she approached them as an artist who makes experimental films and dance.”

“The film Le Maitres Fou (The Mad Masters) is also an inspiration. The documentary illustrates the rituals of the Hauka movement [ed: a form of religious cultural resistance that arose in French Colonial Africa, where participants mimicked the military ceremonies of their colonial occupiers through their own ceremonies.] which was practiced by the poor immigrants of Ghana. Jean Rouch explained that this violent game is nothing but a reflection of our own civilization.” 

“This track, “Shango,” again uses voodoo samples. The influence is mainly in the structure; I love the minimal but progressive aspect of voodoo rituals. One can find this in techno, but especially in footwork, with its repetitions of phrases and its raw, dirty qualities—despite having a relatively rigid structure. Some samples were recorded during the ceremonies. I recorded drums, the sound of pans, forks, with a microphone that I reworked afterwards.”

“I’m also working on a forthcoming “voodoo EP.” Each song is named after a god—Papa Legba, Loko, Ghede. I’d like to go to Haiti to record my own samples. But it’s very hard to meet and be accepted by Haitian vodouists. Still, this is the project that is closest to my heart.”