Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content

Sound travels in all directions, but your feet can only follow in one.

STORIES

“Losing My Accent”: Lupita takes on an American accent when she becomes an actor-in-training at Yale.

Original score by Ian Hughes Pelton AKA Tofu Jack.

“Obaa Sima”: How long can a song stay in your heart? A musical journey from Ghana to Germany to Canada transports Yaw Atta-Owusu from the toy store to the dance floor.

Big thanks to Yaw for sharing his story with us! Check out the Obaa Sima album featured in this episode. Thanks as well to Awesome Tapes From Africa for sharing Yaw’s music with us.

Produced by Marisa Dodge and Regina Bediako with assistance from Bo Walsh. Original score by Clay Xavier, with additional music from Marla Kether and Ata Kak.

Original Mind Your Own theme song by Sandra Lawson-Ndu AKA Sandu Ndu x Peachcurls ft. Ehiorobo. This episode also featured the song Show My Side by CKay ft. Amaarae.

Executive Producers: Glynn Washington and Mark Ristich
Managing Editor: Regina Bediako
Director of Production: Marisa Dodge
Series Producers: David Exumé and Priscilla AlabiMusic Supervisor: Sandra Lawson-Ndu
Story Scouts: Ashley Okwuosa, Fiona Nyong’o, Jessica Kariisa, Lesedi Oluko Moche
Editors: Nancy López and Anna Sussman
Engineering: Miles Lassi
Operations Manager: Florene Wiley
Story Consultant: John Fecile
Graphic Design: Jemimah Ekeh
Original Artwork: Mateus Sithole
Special Thanks: Allan Coye, Jake Kleinberg, Samara Still, Sarah Yoo, Warner Music Group, and Afripods

Mind Your Own is a production of KQED’s Snap Studios, with sales and distribution by Lemonada Media. Hosted and produced by Lupita Nyong’o.

Snap Studios is home to the Snap Judgment and Spooked podcasts.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

EP 1: THE SOUND OF HOME

Lupita: This is Mind Your Own, a storytelling show navigating what it means to belong, all from the African perspective. I’m your host, Lupita Nyong’o.

[music]

Lupita: “Mind your own.” That’s a phrase I’ve heard used throughout the continent. It’s both an admonition and an invitation. It’s mind your own business, like, deal with what you’re dealing with, you know? But it’s also like, mind your own people, find them, take care of them. So, when I think about that phrase, for me, this podcast is about me minding my business, and my business is African stories.

I grew up surrounded by African stories. Those experiences, not the hot-button news reports that we get a whole lot of, but the nuanced, intimate stories are extremely interesting to me. I want to help share them and tell a few of my own. And it is a way for me as a homesick person to feel more at home.

[upbeat music]

Lupita: So, in this podcast series, we’re going to the village and the big city. We’re going to sneak into a cemetery, hop onto a stunt plane, hit the red carpet at the Academy Awards, and maybe make an escape in a getaway car. We’re going to Kenya and Canada, Ghana and Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and South Africa, and beyond.

We’re going home.

[MYO theme song playing]

Lupita: In order to create this podcast, I had to get very comfortable with my voice.

[radio effect] I’m fixing my voice, trying to find that perfect radio voice.

[laughter]

[radio jockey voice] Welcome to The Sundowner, live from New York City. Today, a little bit of jazz as the sun goes down.

[in normal voice] It has not been easy. I’ve long had a complicated relationship with the way I speak. You’ll see what I mean.

[on edge music]

While I was in undergrad, I held on to my Kenyan accent for dear life.

I had seen so many Kenyans not even get off the plane and all of a sudden, they have an American accent. I would eat tater tots, that’s okay, but I would hold on to my accent.

After I graduated from undergrad, I was in New York. I was an assistant. I had to do things like QuickBooks. I have no business doing QuickBooks. I call my mom and I say, “Hey, I don’t want to do this.”

I decided that I wanted to be an actor.

When I showed up at the Yale School of Drama, I made this pact with myself that I would learn how to sound American in a way that would guarantee me a career in acting, because obviously, I didn’t know very many people in movies and television with Kenyan accents. There was just no market for that.

Casting is unforgiving. It’s so hard to suspend people’s disbelief if they’ve seen something in you that they have an unconscious bias about. And I knew that Africa was the unknown [chuckles] element, and I didn’t want it in the room. So, I made that commitment to myself that I would do lessons twice a week to figure out technically what this American accent actually is in my mouth.

I had an accent coach, actually two accent coaches, that’s how serious I was about it. There were just these sounds that were hellish, like, the word C-A-N apostrophe T. As a Kenyan, I would say that as can’t, and Americans say can’t. Oh, my God, just like sounds – “can’t.” It just sounded so off.

Couldn’t, that’s very American. Couldn’t, because I say “couldn’t.” So, what it was is that the Kenyan accent is — you pronounce everything [laughs]. It’s there for pronouncing. So, pronounce it.

One of the main ways that I could test how well I was doing with my accent was automated voice messages.

[phone ringing]

Service Provider: Hello, this call may be recorded for [crosstalk] purposes.

Lupita: Like when you call your phone service provider or something.

Service Provider: For billing, press 1.

Lupita: For billing, press 1 or say–

Service Provider: Billing.

Lupita: For ne– press six. And so, I’m practicing my American accent, so I’m going to choose to say the things. I want to see how far I can get. And so, sometimes I got far, other times I gave up.

My classmates always loved my accent. We were rehearsing a play, we had an assignment, a group of us, maybe five actors. We were devising a show together. One of my classmates, she’s giving an idea of how we should move. She says, “Okay, so how about you guys come over here, and then we can form a curlicue, and then we can go back, and then we can start the scene?” I didn’t fully understand what she meant. I raised my hand and said, “You spoke of a curlicue. What is that?” And everybody burst out laughing.

In that moment, everyone was so tickled because of my choice of words like, you spoke of a curlicue. I guess, that’s not very American.

Oh, God, I still have work to do.

[phone ringing]

Lupita: The hardest was calling home.

“Hi, Mommy. How are you?”

It was very uncomfortable for me to do that. It felt like a shirt that just didn’t fit, an itchy shirt that didn’t fit. I was so afraid to let go of the exercise, because I knew that it was in repetition that it would stay. And the idea was to stick to an American accent until it became second nature, so that I could reach for it whenever I wanted it.

My very first meeting with a casting director, and her saying, asking me about where I was from, and I said, “Kenya.” And she said, “Oh, my goodness, you don’t have an accent.” I was, at once, so elated and also so crushed. I had rid myself of myself, kind of.

[ominous]

Right before I graduated, I auditioned for this movie called 12 Years a Slave. It starred some heavy hitters. I mean, you’re talking Brad Pitt and Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender. These names that I had, people that I’d studied and grown up watching. It was just so bizarre. And now I was cast in that movie. They had an edit of it, and they had an understanding of what this might do for my career.

I had this Ghanaian-British friend who also worked as an agent. Before I started press for 12 Years a Slave, he asked me, “Lupita, what’s the story with your accent? I can understand why you would do that for an American market, but the truth is that the stage you’re going to be on is a global one. And do you want to send a message of an American accent being more valuable than your own?”

I remember being so stunned by that. The truth is, at the end of the day, I never wanted to lose my authenticity.

I called my reps and we had a conference call and I said, “I’ve decided that from tomorrow, I am going to return to my original accent. I want to send a message that being an African is enough.”

They’d never heard me speak in a Kenyan accent. So, they were like, “Well, we look forward to hearing what that sounds like.” [laughs] And I was like, “Yeah, I look forward to it too.”

I gave myself the weekend, actually. I don’t think it was an immediate thing because I was just like, oh, my God. My American accent was this– What can I call it? It was a harness that had been holding me for so long, and all of a sudden, how am I not going to have my harness? I needed a few days to [laughs] wrap my head around it.

I’d also prepped my roommate as well. I remember waking up and going to the kitchen to see her and trying to remember how to say “good morning” in a Kenyan accent.

And what came out was so neither here nor there. [laughs] I realized, oh my God, there is no turning back.

It sounded like what I sound like now. I say a few words that sound Kenyan, others that sound like deceptively British, others that sound American, and I couldn’t find myself in my mouth anymore. I just felt like, yeah, the word is imposter, and I just wept.

Then I spoke to my mom and she said, “Your accent is representative of your life experience.” That gave me solace that an accent, it comes into being from your life. Accent, just like skin and hair, it can change. And it’s okay.

I guess this accent is called Lupita. I don’t know who can claim it but me. [laughs]

We’ll be back in a quick second. Stay tuned.

Welcome back. You’re listening to Mind Your Own.

In my story, I get all kinds of mixed up whenever I try to express myself. Some people don’t have that issue. They know their voice. They know exactly who they are every time they open their mouths to speak. But does the world really hear what they have to say?

Today on Mind Your Own, we’re passing the mic to Yaw Atta-Owusu, someone who knows that struggle. Our story starts in Germany in the late 1980s, when a young couple, Yaw and Mary, had just moved there from Ghana.

I hope you’re listening.

[pensive music]

Yaw: I got home and I said to my wife, “I lied to the guy. I don’t know what happened to me. I’ve lied to somebody and I’m still thinking about it. I shouldn’t have, but I don’t know what I did.”

Lupita: This was a guy Yaw met at the post office, of all places. Yaw was in line sending a letter back home to Ghana when this man just came up to him from nowhere and said, “Are you a musician?”

Yaw: I looked at his face and I said, “I play the drums,” because that was the only thing that could come to mind. And he said, “Oh, yeah, I’m looking for a drummer.”

So, I told my wife that I was going to use the dining table as my drum set. [drumming] While I was playing on my dining table, my wife said, “You are disturbing me because there’s no way you’re going to make it.” [drumming] My wife said, “Call the guy right now and apologize and tell him you’re not a musician.” I didn’t listen to her. So, I started training, playing, playing. I wouldn’t even sleep. Five days later, the guy came, picked me up.

Lupita: Two years into living in Germany, Yaw was still struggling to find work. He didn’t speak German, so he was ready to jump on any opportunity that came his way, even one as strange as this one. The man from the post office drove Yaw to a big building, a rehearsal space and he put him in front of a drum set.

Yaw: As soon as I got there, for the first time in my life, I sat on the drums. And I remembered what I was playing on my dining table using both legs. I got so scared, but there was one thing that I could do. I could hold on to the tempo. By tempo, I mean how fast or how slow it goes and how you are able to keep the timing, that I was very good. So, after the session, I was expecting the guy to say, “Nah, man, you can’t play [laughs] the drums.” But he said, “Man, you’re good.” I thought he was joking, “How could I be good?”

Lupita: Yaw came back home, sat down at the dinner table, and ate dinner with his wife.

Yaw: I told her that I didn’t embarrass myself. [chuckles] She didn’t believe me, but that was okay because I knew I was telling her the truth. After maybe some months, two or three months, I gained confidence. And so, I was able to play the way I wanted to play. The only thing that I couldn’t do at that time was I couldn’t play any drum phrase or drum roll. And by that, I mean [imitates drumming sound] that I couldn’t do that. But playing straight, I was so good.

Lupita: But Yaw had a point to prove. He took his wife to rehearsal to show her the songs he’d been working on.

Yaw: When she saw me [laughs] playing on drums, singing songs that I had written myself, it was amazing. Seeing my pregnant wife, dancing to the tunes and singing, it was awesome. I just laughed.

Lupita: Yes. All that time, Yaw had been banging away in the middle of the night on those drums, his wife had been pregnant. But as happy as he was playing, the truth was the music, the band, the idea of building a future in Germany was over.

Yaw: The dream of coming up with a reggae album in Germany did not materialize, because they were putting pressure on me to leave the country.

Lupita: He had this vision of creating a reggae album. But Yaw and Mary had come to Germany on temporary visas that had run out. So, none of it would be possible. They would have to leave.

Yaw: It was tough. That was when we left for Canada.

Lupita: They moved into a tiny apartment in Toronto with their baby boy, who was born just before they left Germany. Over the next few years, Yaw worked to make ends meet, and eventually he got a job at Toys ”R” Us. The pay was low at the toy store, but the work–

Yaw: It was very easy. I didn’t have to use the brain much. Very easy to do. So, I could sing and not make mistakes. [singing song] I got the opportunity to work on my songs, because every time I was working, I could sing loud. It was okay for everybody. They enjoyed it. So, the day I didn’t sing, they would come and say, “Hey, come on, we want to hear some songs.” Then [laughs] I’ll be singing. So, that helped me a lot.

When I was working at Toys ”R” Us, sometimes they play music. They have loud speakers while we’re working there. Sometimes they’ll play it on the radio. I remember this song, Everybody Dance Now. [humming the beats] If you are dead, you wake up. You listen to it, that is excellent song. I just loved it. And so, that influenced me a lot.

I wanted to be quite different from anything that I already heard from Ghana. I left Ghana, and so what was actually happening in Ghana, I wasn’t so sure. I had not heard anything about rap music from any Ghanaian musician. And so, with my influences by Grandmaster Flash, I said, “Why don’t I introduce this into the musical scene in Ghana?” So, I made up my mind to rap in the Twi language.

Lupita: As Yaw’s mastery of music grew, so did his family. He and Mary had another baby. So, Yaw picked up another job to help pay for recording equipment.

Yaw: Imagine living with your wife and two little children in an apartment and always going, bam, bam, bam.

Lupita: An Atari computer next to the dishes, wires everywhere, it would be a lot for anyone to put up with.

Yaw: My wife, from the very beginning, knew everything I was doing because the studio was right in our living room. I finished the album. And the first people I played to were my wife and kids. I told my wife, “This is what I have.” I played it. She loved it. My kids loved it and they danced to it. And I said, “Ah, this is good.” It must be good, because I know my wife. Once she was satisfied with the album, I was very happy about what I– [voice fades away]

[Yaw singing]

Yaw: So, when I played to some Ghanaians, there were those who said, “Oh, it’s good.” They appreciate it. “Oh, this is good.” But you look at their faces and you can read from their faces that, uh, it’s not good. It doesn’t sound good to them.

[retro music]

Lupita: Yaw songs were so different from the Ghanaian high life everyone was used to. The rap was in Twi, not in English. And the dance tracks were quick, quirky, mixing so many styles.

Yaw: Because it’s so unpredictable, you get some kind of fear. What if it doesn’t work the way you envision it? What if people don’t like it? What if the album doesn’t sell?

Lupita: What would be the point of all these sacrifices that he and Mary had made if the album flopped? But Yaw was determined, and he had a plan. He sent the master cassette tapes of his album over to his twin brother in Ghana who agreed to help him try to get it into clubs and onto the radio. They had enough money to produce 50 cassette tapes. He decided to call himself Ata Kak, which means little twin. The one thing he didn’t have to think about at all was what to name the album. He’d always known what it would be: Obaa Sima.

[music]

Lupita: Yaw’s brother handed it out to DJs in Ghana and Yaw waited. Months crawled by. Then his brother called.

Yaw: He also tried what he could, but it wasn’t the best.

Lupita: No one was interested in his album. And for all Yaw knew, those tapes were sitting in the corner of some shop gathering dust.

Yaw: And honestly, I was so disappointed. So disappointed, because I had put so much effort into this and I had wasted my money, that’s what I thought. So, I had to start something new. When it happens this way, sometimes it puts you off. So, I wasn’t writing any songs anymore. But I didn’t forget what I did. I knew I had done a good job by just that it wasn’t good enough. So, I was angry at myself. My wife didn’t say anything about it. She didn’t mention it and I didn’t want to mention it either.

Lupita: Don’t go anywhere, more Mind Your Own after this quick break.

You’re listening to Mind Your Own. Where were we? Yaw wasn’t sure what to do next. Should he keep going with music? He tried to find a more stable job. And then, one day, after work–

Yaw: I went to church, I was playing the drums. We were just rehearsing. While I was there, I had a call from somebody that my wife had called. They asked her to come to the immigration for her papers, so she went there.

And so, I went to pick up the kids. When I came home, they asked, “Where’s Mommy?” And I said, “Oh, mommy will come back.”

I lied to them.

I went to the immigration and they said she had been deported.

I was dumbfounded. I wanted to hide from many people, so I tried to hide my feelings, my emotions. I was so downcast.

Lupita: Yaw and Mary had separate asylum applications. So, while Mary had been deported, Yaw stayed behind in Canada. The kids, however, would have to go with their mother.

Yaw: It wasn’t easy sending your kids to Ghana or having your wife in Ghana. It doesn’t make you think straight. So, I was working hard, working even on weekends, Saturdays especially, because all I needed was money, money, money, money.

Lupita: Yaw knew he had no choice, but to turn away from music once and for all. He got rid of his entire studio, the mics, the computer, the keyboard, all his equipment.

Yaw: I wished I could get money fast, so that I could leave Canada as fast as I could. But it never worked that way. I had to wait and wait. And so, it took me a long time. Long, long, long time. [laughs] And I had to endure it until the end when I said, “Now, hey, I have this, I have that, and I think I’ll be able to settle down in Ghana, work to keep my family going.”

Lupita: Yes. After eight years, he had finally saved up enough money to provide for his family.

Yaw: That was when I left for Ghana. I was so excited. She was so excited. [laughs] I can’t describe it. [chuckles] She had to run to me. And yes, we hugged for a long time. Yes. Finally, I was with my wife again. We went home and the kids were there. They jumped to me. I said, “Yes. I’m back, now I’m on my feet. [laughs] I’m on my feet again. [in singing tone] I’m on my feet again.”

Lupita: Yaw had his family together again.

Yaw: So, I wasn’t writing any songs anymore. I gave up on music.

Lupita: For the next decade, Yaw worked to support his family any way he could. His kids grew up and moved away. His beats were a thing of the past, or so he thought.

Yaw: I had a call from my son in Canada. He called me and he said, there’s a guy by the name Brian, and he’s looking for me. He’s been looking for me for a while.

Lupita: It was 2015, over 20 years since Yaw created Obaa Sima. His son gave Brian Yaw’s number. Brian called him up and said he’d uploaded Obaa Sima to the net.

Yaw: I was shocked, because I never thought that somebody would put this on the net. It was doing well on the net.

Lupita: Brian was an American indie record guy who found one of the last Obaa Sima cassette tapes on a random roadside stand in Cape Coast. On the cover was a young Yaw with his 1990s haircut, black shades, popped denim collar, and a backwards cap, the words Ata Kak jumping out in retro 3D printing.

Yaw: Brian Shimkovitz came to Ghana, and found the cassette, bought it, and loved it.

Lupita: Brian made a blog page and put Obaa Sima out there on the internet. This time, people from all over the world connected to it. The old school beats, Yaw rapping in Twi, the highlife chorus, it all came together to make a certified underground hit.

Turns out, Brian had been looking for him for eight years.

Yaw: I asked myself, “Is this guy for real?” Now he doesn’t even understand the language, so how could he possibly like my songs?

Lupita: Language differences don’t have a place on the dance floor. People in Europe wanted to come see him play Obaa Sima live. And Brian was making Yaw the offer of his dreams, to sign him to a record label and launch a worldwide tour. Yaw took a leap of faith.

Yaw: So, my first concert was in London. I’m singing in a language that my fans don’t understand. It tells me that I have done something good, because even though I restricted myself initially to my people, now it’s become global and I love that.

[concert music playing]

Lupita: Next stop, Berlin, Amsterdam, and eventually the US of A.

Skateboarder: I am a downhill skateboarder, and your music is very big in the downhill skate community. We love skating to it. That’s like our favorite stuff.

Yaw: Thank you very much. Nice to know.

Lupita: All those years ago, squeezed in between an Atari computer and a dining room table, Yaw had performed for an audience of just three. But now, hundreds were dancing along to his title track and ultimate inspiration. Even though Mary couldn’t attend, Yaw sang her praises every time because she is Obaa Sima.

Yaw: So, Obaa Sima actually means an ideal woman, and I regard my wife as an ideal woman. I believe in loving somebody forever, not just for a while, not temporarily. When I’m in love with you, I’m in love with you forever. She’s everything to me now, besides God. My wife is next. She’s taught me a lot of things. She’s taught me about life. And so, I sung about her love.

That’s what I wrote. About an ideal woman and what she does.

[background music plays and fades away]

Lupita: Yaw’s voice is so bright. It’s just laced with optimism. And when you hear the lengths he went to, first of all, to pass as a musician before he was one, and then to make his dream happen, it’s all contained in his voice, his hope, his faith, his confidence. The cloud doesn’t have a silver lining. It seems like the whole cloud is silver. [chuckles] Yeah, he just seems to wear his heart on his sleeve in a really, really inspiring way.

For sharing your story with Mind Your Own, I thank you, Yaw. Yaw lives in Kumasi with his wife and still performs as Ata Kak to this day. To find more of his music, check out our show notes.

Thanks for listening. It’s been good to have you. And I enjoyed going to our living room. Hmm, scratch that. Our home studio, where there’s an Atari computer and microphones in the bathroom and smiling in front of us: Obaa Sima.

See you the next time you Mind Your Own.

Until then, here’s a song from the continent: Show My Side by CKay and Amaarae.

[Show My Side song playing]

Lupita: Mind Your Own is hosted and produced by me, Lupita Nyong’o. This is a production of Snap Studios at KQED, with sales and distribution by Lemonada Media.

The executive producers are Glynn Washington and Mark Ristich. Our managing editor is Regina Bediako. Our director of production is Marisa Dodge.

Original music in my story “Losing My Accent” was by Ian Hughes Pelton, also known as Tofu Jack. The story “Obaa Sima” was produced by Marisa Dodge and Regina Bediako, with assistance from Bo Walsh. Original music by Clay Xavier. Additional music from Marla Kether, and Ata Kak’s Obaa Sima, courtesy of Awesome Tapes From Africa.

Our Mind Your Own producers are David Exumé and Priscilla Alabi. Our story scouts are Ashley Okwuosa, Fiona Nyong’o, Jessica Kariisa, and Lesedi Oluko Moche. Our editors are Nancy Lopez and Anna Sussman. Our story consultant is John Fecile. Engineering by Miles Lassi. Our music supervisor is Sandra Lawson-Ndu, also known as Sandu Ndu. She also created the Mind Your Own theme song with Peachcurls, featuring vocals from Ehiorobo.

Special thanks to Allan Coye, Jake Kleinberg, Samara Still, Sarah Yoo, Warner Music Group, and Afripods.

Graphic design by Jemimah Ekeh. Original artwork by Mateus Sithole.

Make sure to follow Mind Your Own and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

There’s even more to love with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content from across the network for only $4.99 a month. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts.

Now go out, get together, and mind your own… voice.

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]