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Farees—seen here in the studio with his Danelectro 12-string—cut his teeth playing with iconic Tuareg group Tinariwen.
Photo by Rafaelle Serra
Bucking the “neocolonialism” of World Music, this guitar pluralist brings explosive scope and skill to Tuareg-rooted playing on his new album, which includes original Meters guitarist Leo Nocentelli.
Farees’ new album, Blindsight, opens with a blistering cover of “Hey Joe.” And although the guitarist is heavily influenced by Hendrix and delivers a nearly spot-on rendition of the iconic solo in the middle of the song, he’s really displeased by the comparisons being bandied about in attempts to describe his own guitar prowess.
“It really pisses me off when they say ‘the new Jimi Hendrix,’ or ‘here’s the next Hendrix,’ or ‘the Jimi Hendrix of the Sahara’,” says Farees, who is of Tuareg and German/Italian heritage. “There’s only one Jimi Hendrix. It’s promotional bullshit, just to attract attention. World music is really a neocolonial system. It’s based on exoticism to this day, and so they always try to manufacture this exotic image—you see a person of color with an electric guitar, and you go, ‘Jimi Hendrix,’ which is racist. So, yeah, I don’t like the way Jimi is used. It’s profiting off the image of Jimi to promote someone else.”
Farees’ strong, articulate character permeates his musical output and vision. He’s a fiercely independent artist who wants to dictate his own terms within the music industry. And he’s fervently committed to dismantling the thinking around the neocolonial power dynamics that dictate much of capitalist society—check out his “Maneefesto” at farees.com for his incisive worldview. Regarding the music industry, he’s challenging what he calls “the age of shallowness and appearance.” As such, his music and lyrics are inextricably linked to the ideals and values that define him as a human being. There’s no separating the performer from the person. “I’m invested in societal change because I’m a musician. It’s as simple as that—it’s natural,” he proclaims.
FAREES feat. LEO NOCENTELLI of THE METERS - The Melting (Official Music Video)
On the bouncy and funky “The Melting,” Farees sets down his guitar and lets the Meters’ original guitarist, the legendary Leo Nocentelli, handle all the guitar parts.
When it comes to songcraft, Farees grounds himself in his traditional Tuareg heritage. For the uninitiated, the Tuareg people are a large nomadic ethnic group that principally inhabit a vast area of the Sahara. “It was a huge empire and, being nomadic, they were influenced by many different cultures, so you have a music and poetry style that’s very diverse,” he explains. “If you listen to traditional stuff from Timbuktu and the Niger River in West Africa, it really sounds like the blues. And since millennia Tuaregs had rap and spoken word. We had all of that in Africa.”
Farees started out playing guitar professionally as part of the Saharan music scene in the bands Tinariwen and Terakaft. His first record, Mississippi to Sahara (released under the name Faris in 2015), assayed the traditional rural blues of Mississippi through the lens of a Tuareg style. It is an unequivocal tour de force of mostly solo guitar playing. The album caught the ears of Taj Mahal and Ben Harper, who quickly embraced both his musical ambition and his social mission. And even though it was a low-budget project, recorded in just a couple days, Mississippi to Sahara contains all the hallmarks of the highly rhythmic approach that would come to define his guitar playing, producing, and songwriting on future albums.
In 2020, he released Border Patrol and Both Sides of the Border, two collections of genre-hopping, guitar-heavy protest songs, including Border Patrol’s “Y’all Don’t Know What’s Going On,” a collaboration with U.S.-based indie-rock band Calexico. Drawing on his own experience of being profiled, arrested, and detained during an American tour, his spoken-word poetry on Border Patrol harks back to the late-’60s protest traditions of artists like Bob Marley and Hendrix. Farees employs spoken word throughout much of his music and says that this came out of necessity. “I have too much to say for just standard lyrics,” he chuckles.
“World music is really a neocolonial system. It’s based on exoticism to this day, and so they always try to manufacture this exotic image.”
Farees’ recent release, Blindsight, continues his genre-bending, socially responsive musical trajectory. Through bombastic funk, conscious but raucous hip-hop, and psychedelic blues, Blindsight affirms the signature “wall of groove” production style he is becoming known for. “I guess that’s my African ancestry,” he says. “Rhythm always comes first. I always lay down a wall of different rhythm tracks on different instruments—drums, bass, keyboards, guitars, or percussion—and then, once I have this wall of groove underneath, every melody comes alive. That’s the way I think as a producer.” A prime example is “The Melting,” featuring Leo Nocentelli from the original Meters line-up on guitar. The song is like a jigsaw puzzle of cascading rhythms and contrapuntal melodies—including a busy and melodic bass line—that coalesce with astonishing fluidity.
The Meters are another of the Farees’ big Western influences, so it was quite an honor to have Nocentelli onboard. “We met online,” recalls Farees. “I asked him, ‘Do you feel like you could play some guitar on one of my tracks?’ And he was like, ‘Sure, man.’ So, it was a dream come true for me. Now it’s more of a spiritual connection—we became like brothers.” Nocentelli performed all the guitar parts on “The Melting.” “I didn’t touch the guitars, specifically to leave room for him,” says Farees.
At the time of this interview, Farees had just played with Nocentelli’s band at the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in support of the Meters guitarist’s own much-heralded, recently released lost 1971 solo album, Another Side. Nocentelli says he was drawn to Farees because he’s a unique person with unique ideas: “His music is like a mixture of dialects and musical interpretations from various parts of the world, and I like that.”
After meeting Leo Nocentelli online, Farees asked the original Meters’ guitarist to play a feature track on Blindsight. The famed 6-stringer said yes and handles all the guitar parts on “The Melting.” This year, Farees joined Nocentelli’s band at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Photo by Joseph A. Rosen
For “The Melting,” Nocentelli used a Gibson ES-335, direct through the board. “I’m old school,” he says. “I like the direct sound if I’m tracking a clean sound, especially rhythm. When you hear Jimmy Nolen with James Brown, the guitar is clean. There’s no distortion or anything like that. Al McKay from Earth, Wind & Fire, too—his rhythms were sparkling clean, and I try to duplicate that.”
Clearly, Farees isn’t content to be defined solely by his guitar playing, good as it may be. Collaboration, whether with Nocentelli or Calexico, is a driving force in his life. “I love to create,” he attests. “The guitar was my first instrument, but then I had to explore, and I think that’s how it’s going to be with me. I just love sound.” On “Fuck You, I’m Black,” he even plays the banjo, tuned in a Tuareg style. “It’s tuned the same way the Tuareg tune their lutes. Tuaregs have nine or 10 different [open] tunings based on the songs. Probably the easiest one, and the one we use most, is the low ‘E’—you tune it up to ‘G.’ And then you play in ‘G,’ and you have all kinds of scales and stuff to do.” [A typical Tuareg open G tuning is G–A–D–G–B–E.]
But Farees points out that he is a completely self-taught guitarist and doesn’t know anything about Western music theory. “I don’t know what notes I’m playing,” he admits. “I don’t count the rhythms. I just do everything by instinct, so there’s a lot of mystery to it. Most of the things I do, I don’t know how I’m doing them. I just do them. I guess it comes from above, as they say.”
Farees’ Gear
Seen here tracking bass parts, Farees says he wrote most of Blindsight at the keyboard.
Photo by Rafaelle Serra
Guitars
Numerous customized Squier Strats with Q pickups
ES-style with vintage-type Q humbuckers
Squier Starcaster
Greco 1978 triple-humbucker LP copy
Greco 1979 S-style
Danelectro 12-string electric
Amps
Vox Pathfinder 10
Custom 25W head based on Fender Bronco circuit
Replica JTM45 head
1963 GEM Deluxe combo
1973 Davoli Tuono combo
Custom 4x12 cabinet with Celestion Greenbacks
Effects
Custom-made Fuzz pedals
Two custom-made Univibe-style pedals (one has more output and a stronger preamp section)
’70s Jen Phase Shifter
Rocktron Banshee Talkbox
Wahs
Custom-made or modded wah pedals
1966 Vox Clyde McCoy wah
Various ’70s Italian-made wahs
Strings and Picks
GHS Strings (.010–.038)
Planet Waves Medium 0.70 mm picks
He also doesn’t ascribe to a single playing technique. “I play every style—fingerpicking, picks,” he attests. “Usually, for a pick, I use the butt of the pick, not the front. It gives me more speed and fattens the sound.” And when it comes to gear, Farees makes sure that his instrument choices align with his thinking—a kind of a practice-what-you-preach methodology. “People are starting to watch what an artist says and does,” he explains. “It has to align with what you say. I’d rather go to a small artisan that produces quality stuff by hand. That’s why I endorse Q Pickups. For a set of pickups, the most pricey are maybe $150. They don’t charge you for the brand. No bullshit and real quality. That’s what I’m about.
“The sound is part of the song for me, so it’s really important. I work a lot on my sound,” he continues, explaining that he finds “incredible sounds using incredibly cheap gear” and cites the rhythm guitar track on “Hey Joe.” “That’s the Vox Pathfinder 10, and it’s an awesome amp. I don’t know how they did that circuit, but it sounds like a big Marshall amp, and it’s just a transistor, super-small practice amp.” He mostly plays Squier guitars, as well as a pair of ’70s Greco guitars from Japan. “They’re incredible,” he says. “The Japanese craftsmanship in the ’70s was incredible. If you do a blind test with a vintage ’68 Strat, you probably won’t notice any difference.” For the outro solo on “Hey Joe,” he used an unnamed vintage Italian-made phase shifter and a custom-made JTM45-replica head with an Orange bass cab. “I love bass cabs, rather than guitar cabs, because they add more fat to my tone.”
“I love bass cabs, rather than guitar cabs, because they add more fat to my tone.”
Farees’ values are reflected in all aspects of his music. He’s put in his time hustling to set up his own label and distribute his records worldwide, and feels that he’s now a truly independent musician. Farees says that his 2020 release Border Patrol was finished for two-and-a-half years before it came out as he prepared the infrastructure needed to be truly free of record companies and the hierarchy that goes along with that side of the business. “I was contacted by major labels, but they wanted to censor me and change my whole persona,” he explains. “They’ve tried to change my song titles, change the album titles. I wanted a double LP, and they were like, ‘No. It has to be a single LP.’”
The music and the message are important to Farees, not marketing or sales concerns. “I make music because I really believe in good music and good values,” he explains. “It’s about bringing something good and something new to the table, and not doing what everybody else is doing or imitating. I think that’s an artist’s responsibility. Not that you have to revolutionize or change everything—just bring your own thing to the table.”
Blindsight
Blindsight opens with a blistering, funky version of “Hey Joe,” but Farees rejects the idea of using Hendrix to self-aggrandize: “I don’t like the way Jimi is used. It’s profiting off of the image of Jimi to promote someone else, and it’s bullshit.”
Farees - HEY JOE (Isolated Guitar)
PG Exclusive: Check out the isolated guitar tracks from "Hey Joe" off Farees' new album, Blindsight.
When so many cultures converge, creativity is bound to flourish.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any that some of the most groundbreaking styles of music have emerged from unique metropolises where people, cultures, and ideas collide and intermingle. There’s nothing groundbreaking in this. It’s exactly what we humans have done ever since we became human, or perhaps even before. Thus, every culture, person, and music on Earth is actually a remix of something much earlier. As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun, but some things are certainly unique: the balti gosht (curry) from India, the guaguancó (dance) from Cuba, and epics of the Sahel from West Africa. There have always been regions known for attracting peoples from all over, and without fail these “melting pots” became perfect environments for new and exciting sounds.
I was born and raised in such a place—London. Even in terms of melting pots, it is somewhat special. The U.K. has been a major player in a number of transformative musical movements, particularly throughout the 20th century. The thing that makes it special is the way that this place has transformed whatever arrived at its shores. In every case, from reggae to drum and bass, rock ’n’ roll to prog rock, and hip-hop to grime, cities like London have smashed together the disparate sounds of their constituent parts in some of the most unpredictable ways.
The London that I grew up in was a place where one could find a little of every place that the British colonized. Ironically, the thing that made the U.K. such a great place for culture is that for around 500 years the British tried their very best to dominate and homogenize everywhere else, annexing peoples where possible and displacing where not. Inevitably, just like the capital of the Roman Empire, London ended up becoming a metropolis where people from throughout the empire came together. The Brits achieved the exact opposite of homogenization.
From reggae to drum and bass, rock ’n’ roll to prog rock, and hip-hop to grime, cities like London have smashed together the disparate sounds of their constituent parts in some of the most unpredictable ways.
Thus, my East London community featured traditions from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Barbados … and that was just my street! (My home was one of three Trinidadian households on that street.) This is all to give you some idea of the level of integration. If you imagine growing up with so many cultures co-existing together, then you can understand why re-mixing became so second nature. What do you get when you cross Chicago house, Kingston dub, New York hip-hop, and Indian bhangra? Jungle aka drum and bass!
A typical Friday night for 25-year-old me might have included going to hear some music at the Blue Note, packed with an audience that was beyond excited to check out the “Jungle Beat” set, featuring Talvin Singh, a young Indian tabla genius educated in the Indian Carnatic tradition; Squarepusher, a young bass virtuoso who sounds a bit like Jaco, but also chops up James Brown’s “Funky Drummer” into microscopic pieces, rearranged on the fly into densely configured 180-plus-bpm drum patterns, which seem to go on forever and never really repeat; and a young, quirky Icelandic vocal gymnast who was somewhat unknown at the time named Björk.
On a Saturday night, I may have gone out to see the Jazz Warriors, a 20-piece big band that featured some of the hottest names in British jazz, such as saxophonist Steve Williamson, drummer Mark Mondesir, bassist Gary Crosby, pianist Julian Joseph, marimba player Orphy Robinson, and singer Cleveland Watkis. The Jazz Warriors were a collective of world-class, young, Black British jazz musicians, who came up with their own unique mix by blending bebop, reggae, funk, Afrobeat, and more.
Sunday night I may have spent onstage at the Jazz Cafe with my own band, Quite Sane, which featured members from South Africa, Mauritius, Jamaica, Zimbabwe, St. Kitts, and, of course, Trinidad and Tobago. Though this band was influenced by jazz, and in particular the M-Base I heard coming out of New York while growing up, we were also very influenced by hip-hop (Public Enemy, Mobb Deep, A Tribe Called Quest, etc.), as well as by Parliament-Funkadelic, Chaka Khan, Cecil Taylor, Miriam Makeba, Beenie Man, Fela Kuti, the Jazz Warriors, and even Igor Stravinsky! Want to know what this crazy mix sounded like? Check out our 2002 release, The Child of Troubled Times.
The thriving U.K. scene still continues to churn out a dizzying number of sub-genres (grime, AB-groove, broken beat, acid jazz, nu-jazz), and artists (Sons of Kemet, Soweto Kinch, Sona Jobarteh, James Blake, Lion Babe, Stormzy), who are the product of combined elements from all over. Who knows what will come next?
We polled our readers to find the coolest guitar shops in the US, and here are the first half of the results, in no particular order.
"We asked PG readers what is the coolest guitar shop they've been to in the US. And while long-gone favorites like Manny's Music (New York) and Black Market Music (San Francisco) came up again and again, there were even more current shops topping readers' favorites list. We compiled the 20 most mentioned stores and quickly realized there were too many great photos we'd have to cut in order to get them all in one gallery. So here's the first installment in no particular order. If you're wondering where your favorite is, it may be coming next time, or we might not be aware of it, so feel free to leave your faves in the comments section."
