The Symphonina Foundation

Dr. David Fogel, CEO of The Symphonina Foundation, recently had the opportunity to interview Grammy®-nominated artist Matt B and his wife Angela V. Benson, CEO of Vitae Records, regarding their experience creating their new album ALKEBULAN II. The album features African music with important support from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded at Abbey Road Studios. Matt and Angela also created a short-film with the title ALKEBULAN II for which David attended a preview showing in Hollywood in September 2024. 

David: Thank you again for inviting me to your preview showing of ALKEBULAN II – it was a great experience and great meet you both! Let’s start with some basics. Please remind me of the proper pronunciation of ALKEBULAN. 

Matt: So, in terms of the history of ALKEBULAN, it would be al-keh-bu-lan, with accent on keh. Some people pronounce it al-kee-bu-lan, but the original pronunciation would be al-keh-bu-lan.

David: Great, the genesis for ALKEBULAN II has to start with the first ALKEBULAN album you did. So let’s begin there. How did your first album come into creation?

Angela: I guess we'll start with the origin of the name. ALKEBULAN is the ancient indigenous name for Africa. And it means ‘Mother of Mankind’, ‘Garden of Eden’, or ‘The Ones Before’. We thought that that name was very impactful for this series for a number of reasons. Matt did an ancestry DNA test back in 2020 – we were just trying to have fun with it during the pandemic since everything was shut down.  We did the test and Matt discovered that he was over 70% Nigerian, which was fascinating for him. We wanted to find a way to translate this new journey of self discovery and all of the emotions into words that people would be able to connect to. And with music being the universal language that we all understand, we felt the best way was through Matt’s music.  We started researching different genres of African music, trying to figure out where Matt’s roots resided. That was the seed of the idea – let’s create a little EP or maybe a couple of single here and there – but it grew into what is now ALKEBULAN. 

David: It’s always great when little things blossom into big successes! 

Angela: Yes, right! So yeah, that was the first part. The second reasoning behind the album title is, as we mentioned earlier, that was the name of Africa prior to its colonization. We thought it was very impactful that we give the name ALKEBULAN back to the Motherland because that was the name that it originally had prior to rights being taken away from the people there, the slave trade, and all of these things that we know are a part of not only Black history but African-American history as a whole. 

David: Really, part of world history. 

Angela: Yes, exactly. It's a multi-layered thing, but that kind of is like the origin of how we got from there to here. 

David: All right, so you did the original ALKEBULAN album and then you still had unfinished business. You wanted to do something else. So what was left for you to do and how did it lead to the second project? 

Angela: Africa is a massive continent, you can't really sum it up in one album. Much like you can't sum up all the languages or all the cultures in Africa, you also can't sum up all of its musical genres. Then we were trying to figure out, are we going to make this a regional thing where this album talks about traditional Nigerian music, while another album talks about traditional South African music?  Eventually, we decided that instead of doing something so predictable, we felt like it would be more impactful to try to create a sound based off of all of these genres and create Matt's own unique sound conjoined within those genres. So instead of it being an Afrobeats project or an Amapiano project, it is a “Matt B album.” In ALKEBULAN II, we utilized various African percussion instruments, nearly ten African languages and we had the pleasure of working with several different writers, artists, and choirs from all over the diaspora. We tried to make the album as diverse as possible, our goal was to create more unity and bridge the gap between Africa and the Americas.  We also brought in orchestral elements, which was something we dabbled in with the first album. We wanted the album to feel cinematic and epic, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra really helped to elevate things to another level sonically.

David: Well, we'll get to that in a second, but as far as film goes, this was your first short film, right? If I remember correctly from the premiere, right? 

Matt: Yes, yes. Oh my God. That was a journey. I don't have a film background.

Angela: Me neither.

Matt: I just always wanted to do a film and I've been very passionate about film since I was a kid. So I thought to myself, one day I would marry the two together. I would marry the music with the cinematography. And we dabbled in that quite a bit with the original ALKEBULAN, traveling to Africa, filming a lot of music videos across the continent, particularly in Uganda. I wanted to do the same thing for ALKEBULAN II, but we just wanted to step it up a notch.

David: Well, the result is great!

Matt: Thanks! Now, being an independent artist and trying to figure out budget and all of those other different things, it kind of led us to a space of wanting more control and also trying to stay within those parameters, which is why we ended up purchasing the RED cinema cameras.  At the beginning of my solo career, I was filming music videos on DSLR cameras for people in college. I did that for a significant amount of time, always editing using Final Cut and things like that. But I eventually doubled back and it was very much learning as you go. Initially, Angela and I were like, “You know what? Let's buy this RED cinema camera. It's going to cost us some money.” Basically, you have to sell a kidney for one of those things. [laughing] 

David: [Laughing] Did you consider renting it?

Matt: [Laughing] Yeah, but ownership is really important to us. We wanted to be able to have that flexibility. So we purchased it in January and then we were like, you know what? We have to buy all of this stuff around it. So then that got us started diving into steadicams and other types of cinema gear. As we prepared for filming, we realized that one camera was not going to be enough. So we ended up purchasing another RED cinema camera.  And then from there, it just evolved with even more equipment.

David: It becomes like my saxophones. [Laughing] 

Matt: [Laughing] Right! Then we ended up needing a drone. 

David: And then an air force. 

Matt: Then an air force, yeah, yeah, exactly. Then we started teaching ourselves about photography – aperture, shutter speed, ISOs, and all the rest of these different things that go along with cinematography.  I spent literally like three or four months on YouTube, watching documentaries, watching like the breakdown of how certain movies were made and how certain television series were made in order to get a better idea of exactly what we were getting ourselves into. From there, we kind of hit the ground running.

Angela: People call us either really smart, really crazy, or maybe a combination of the two.

David: You can be both, it's okay!

Angela: Yeah. We like to bet on ourselves and that's exactly what we did and we got a phenomenal outcome. 

David: You did. I remember earlier in the year, I had messaged you [Angela] at some point and you messaged back that you two were on your way to Africa, which was right when you were going to film for ALKEBULAN II, but before you traveled to Africa to do all the film shooting, you had a stop in London and you go to Abbey Road Studios and you record with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. So…most people don't wake up one day and say, you know what, I'm going to go hire the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to play at Abbey Road Studios and I've got my score ready to go. [Laughing] So what was your process like of getting to, we want to have orchestra music for this project and we want it to be a significant part of what we're doing to, we're going to go with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, and all the preparation for that. 

Matt:  Well, we definitely can't take credit for everything. We have an incredible team of producers, co-writers, etc., who really helped out with this project. Starting with the origins of how ALKEBULAN II started, It started with Angela and Kitt Wakeley saying to me like, “Hey, I know you just did an album last year and I know that you're kind of working on ALKEBULAN II, but I really think that you should release that album this year. I don't think you should wait.” I was planning to do it over the course of two years. So I'd already been writing since the prior year, ever since ALKEBULAN I dropped.  I wanted to take my time with it – but the music was already in me, right? So I started that process with some of the producers in Africa that I worked with for ALKEBULAN I and we went back and forth – a lot of co-writing. And then from there, we did a lot of mock-ups and templates here in the US. Some things we kept, other things we didn't. 

David: I’m sensing a lot of time pressure here. 

Matt: The album was created from January through April 2024. Now we're getting into May/June, and that's when a lot of the production around the scores started happening, particularly with Kitt and Brent Fischer. Brent and Kitt had already worked on production for ALKEBULAN I, so we knew that they were perfect for this particular task. When we made it to Abbey, it was just like the perfect marriage. It fit together like the perfect puzzle and we only had four hours to get all of the primary recording done. 

David: It’s amazing what can get done in four hours. 

Matt: Yeah. So it was really stressful, but it was incredible. The following day we had an additional, six hours to do comps. Then it was off to Africa to go shoot this film. We were in London for a week.  It was a very stressful time, but we got it done.

David: Before your film showing, you had a very nice behind-the-scenes film about the whole creative process behind the project, which featured some others who were involved.

Angela: Yes, Star Parodi and Jeff Fair were there as score producers and were really invaluable.

David: OK great – so, now, you’re there in the recording studio, and once the orchestra starts going, what are you feeling? 

Matt: I was on cloud nine because it's like all of these things are just all happening all at one time. Like as a kid, I always dreamt of having an orchestra on just a track, let alone an album, right? And then just coming from the background that I come from, being from the South side of Chicago, being raised in a ghetto, like most people don't even make it out of that type of background. So to then have the audacity to think that I was going to have an orchestra on anything, like what? And then on top of that, then I'm going to the greatest studio in the world and to have one of the best orchestras in the world perform on this record, it was just, it was mind blowing. That would be the best way of describing that. 

David: Mind blowing is good! When you had all the recording done, who was working on post-production? Were you working on post-production or did you have other audio engineers from Abbey Road Studios doing that or was it a combination? 

Matt:  It was a combination. I was doing a lot of post-production really prior to recording at Abbey Road with other elements. John Barrett engineered our session and did a lot of post-production from our London recordings. For mixing, we had Marc Whitmore who mixed the entire project and did an incredible job. For the premiere, we had to get everything put into Atmos and 5.1 surround sound, which was a completely different mixing process. We found that out five days before the premiere! So all of those mixes that were in the actual premiere, they were brand new and mixed by Matt Sim. but they were Marc Whitmore's stems that were used for that process. Everyone did a great job in a short period of time. 

David: So when you're doing the recording in the studio, would you say that everything went according to plan? 

Angela: No. Does it ever? [Laughing] 

Matt: We had a lot to record with multiple takes and had a very finite amount of time. Once we made it to the final track ‘THE CREATOR’, we literally had five minutes left in our session. And they got it done. It just goes to show how incredible the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is,  they did a phenomenal job. They played, they did one pass and that was it. Shout out to Ian McClay who is the Royal Philharmonic’s executive director.

David: So, all right, so based on all that experience, have you booked your next trip back to Abbey Road or some other place, wherever it might be? 

Matt: We're figuring that out, honestly. We're always creating and making new music.

David: That's excellent. Let’s come back to something earlier in the thought process. When you decide that you want to have orchestra music with African music, that might not be the first choice that someone who's doing African music might have. It's probably not the first choice someone's doing Caribbean music would have or reggae or whatever, right? But you've done it and you've done it in an immersive way where it's integral to the whole thing. Would you encourage other people from other genres to start exploring more of the use of orchestral music in their music as well, based on your experience?

Angela: 100%.

Matt: 100%, and I'm going to tell you why.  As a kid, my mom used to take me to the symphony in Chicago.  We would see all of these different people play. And that really stuck with me. I was maybe about eight or nine years old. Then when I graduated from high school, I did a very brief internship at VanderCook College of Music in downtown Chicago, where it was basically orchestra 24/7 for about 3 or 4 months straight for me. So that really was deeply ingrained in me as well. So I knew going into it that eventually I wanted to put that on a record. I just didn't know when, or I didn't know how.

Angela: It's unorthodox to do something like that. But that's one of the reasons why we were up for the challenge of doing it. 

Matt: And I'm not saying it doesn't exist at all, but it's just not very often that someone would do that. So it was a challenge. It was worth it because we ended up creating something sonically authentic and unique. And it introduced our kids to a lot of symphonic music as well. Our oldest son, he's 11, and he says that he wants to be a composer. I'm not sure whether or not that would even have been something that he would have even have desired had he not been introduced to this.

Angela: All three of our children got to play on the album. Our youngest, he plays drums. So he got to play the popcorn snare. Our middle child, she plays the acoustic guitar. So she got to play acoustic on the project. And our oldest, he got to play piano.

Matt: In regards to classical music, there are so many different studies that say that it helps you study better. Like when you're in college. 

David: You could be a spokesperson for The Symphonina Foundation, Matt! 

Matt: [Laughing] It's good. It helps. It's calming. It's soothing. It helps with concentration. It helps you to just think in a more artistic way. The list just goes on and on and on. Honestly, I also feel like it helps with musical diversity and understanding the foundation of Western or European-style music. Choral structure and all the rest of what is the foundation of modern music. If you have a stronger foundation, you have a greater appreciation for music in general. So having that classical knowledge really goes a long way. I think one of the reasons that people struggle with music is they don't have that foundation. So I'm a big fan in bringing that back as much as possible. 

David: I sense a future Ambassador position for the Symphonina Foundation for you coming up shortly. [Laughing] 

Angela: Oh, before we go, I do want to shout out M.B. Gordy. He was one of the producers on the album along with myself, Kitt, Brent, and Matt, of course. He played all of the beautiful percussion on the entire album and he helped us with some of the arrangements as well. We recorded all of his parts at his studio, Riot Drum Studios.  He was incredible and he has this vast collection of all of these different types of percussion that I've never seen before. We were really honored to share that space creatively with him and he brought the quality of the project to another level and really gave it that immersive African feel. He studied African musicality for many years in West Africa. 

Matt: Something else that we didn't cover would be the co-producers on the album from Africa. the African side. Bash Killa and B.I.T from Uganda and they are just incredible producers. 

Angela:  We needed them for a level of authenticity.  While our ancestral lineage is from the continent, we are not natively born on the land and familiar with the daily cultures and languages. So it was very important to have them to help with a lot of the translations and things like that. 

Matt: As I mentioned earlier, I sang in several different African languages, from Zulu to Bantu to Setswana to Igbo, Swahili, Luganda, and several others.  My co-producers and co-writers helped exchange ideas with me and voice exactly what I wanted to say creatively.

David: How can people best get in touch with you?

Matt: You can follow me @MattBWorld and that's across all social media platforms. 

Angela: I can be found @AngelaVBenson across all socials, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. 

David: And you like hearing from people? 

Angela: Oh, 100%.

Matt: Yeah, definitely.