Twins Peak - Hot Press Meets Ibeyi

It’s January in Paris – a strange moment to be talking about music. “What happened is really, really shocking,” says Lisa-Kaindé Diaz. “Everyone is discussing it – how to live with this, how to move on from it.”

She is of course referring to the jihadist atrocity visited upon the city, which at the time of us talking has claimed 15 lives and plunged the West into an existential crisis as to how best confront Islamic extremism. Outside Diaz’s apartment window, all is quiet – it chills her to know that, just a few miles away, SWAT units are involved in what will ultimately prove a bloody stand-off with terrorists.
“We are all so sad,” adds Naomi Diaz, Lisa-Kainde’s twin and the second-half of much-hyped crossover duo Ibeyi.” It was such a ‘heavy’ thing to go through.”
These are not matters the siblings ever thought they would be required to address in their first major Irish interview. Still, as children of two cultures – they were partly raised in Cuba where father Miguel ‘Angá’ Díaz played with the storied Buena Vista Social Club – the twins grew up along the racial faultlines which this month have been laid bare in France.
“We never experienced that racism,” says Naomi, slightly baffled by the question. “We had a really normal childhood. We didn’t feel different: we were the same as everyone else.”
If anything, their Cuban background was enormously helpful. In France, the Caribbean island is widely perceived as the land over the rainbow – at school in Paris, the sisters were regarded as exotic, slightly magical even.
“Our background has always been a positive,” says Lisa-Kaindé. ”For French people, Cuba is like paradise on earth. You say you are from Cuba and, it’s like, ‘wow – that is so cool.'"
As kids they would fly to the Caribbean regularly. Touching down at Havana airport, they recall a peculiar feeling: not quite like coming home, closer to a sensation of stepping into a world more vivid, more alive, than grey northern Europe. It was a sense they had experienced nowhere else, until they happened to arrive in Dingle before Christmas for the Other Voices festival. “We are in looooove with Dingle,” enthuses Naomi, deliciously pronouncing the Kerry village as ‘Deengle’. “It was one of the best life experiences ever.”
They especially adored performing in tiny St. James’ church, though it wasn’t the first time they’d sung in such a venue. On the occasion of Other Voices, however, the circumstances were rather happier.
“Last year, our sister passed away,” says Naomi. “She was buried in Miami. It was impossible for us to get there. As it so happened we were playing in a church that day. That was a complete coincidence and so emotional. With Dingle, there was a strong feeling too: I cried three times that day. I’m a crier – but not that much.”
She feels there are parallels between Ireland and Cuba (once you discount the small matter of the latter’s glorious sunshine): both are small islands adrift off great continents and proudly zealous of their cultural traditions, indigenous music in particular.
“There is something in the air in Cuba. Every time we are there we feel it. And Ireland is the same. We had that sense as soon as we arrived.”
They grew up aware their father, who passed away in 2006, was an acclaimed musician – but his celebrity did not intrude on their day to day lives. Splitting his time between Cuba and France he played cajon – a box-shaped percussive instrument from Peru – and, though his list of collaborators is enviable, he remains best-known among mainstream audiences for his involvement with Buena Vista Social Club.
“Obviously we knew he was someone special,” Naomi notes, “and yet to us he was, first and foremost, always our father. It was a bigger deal for musicians we met. They would discover who we were and say ‘gosh, I played with your dad – he is amazing.’”
There’s an apocryphal story that it was their father’s passing nine years ago that prompted them to take music seriously as a profession. Actually, the situation wasn’t quite so straightforward.
“We’ve played music since the age of seven,” says Lisa-Kaindé. ”What happened is that, the day after my father died, I picked up the cajon for the first time. I wasn’t doing it because he had passed – it was an unconscious act.”
One of their biggest inspirations is the Yoruba singing tradition, brought to Cuba by slaves from Nigeria and Benin. As children their mother (from Venezuela and now their manager) would sing Yoruba songs to the twins – the same mixture of melancholy and soaring emotion is discernible in their music.
To this, the sisters add a thoroughly 21st century sensibility, involving layered beats and clipped, dancefloor ready rhythms. Their marriage of the ancient and the modern is powerful and, if you set your cynicism to one side, quite moving.
“We come from a mix of cultures – two worlds and two ways of seeing life,” Naomi proffers. “I wouldn’t say it’s something we consciously incorporate into our music, but it must be there all the same. It does seem to be something people respond to.”
They’re not surprised that the initial interest has come from outside France, in the form of London’s XL Records and its impresario Richard Russell. They love their homeland and yet it can be terribly fusty when it comes to new music.
“Richard discovered one of our videos online and came to Paris to see us. It was one of our first shows. Afterwards we talked and hit it off. He recorded our album with us: he was so cool and we learned such a lot,” Naomi concludes. “In France, radio sometimes waits until London or the United States has discovered something before they will champion it. They stand back and look around and see if anyone else is paying any attention to the artist. They usually will not go out on a limb on their own.”

Ibeyi’s self-titled debut album is released by XL on February, with their Other Voices appearance airing later in the month on RTÉ Two.