Samir Zarif, aka FKAjazz (short for Formerly Known As), is not afraid to try new sounds. The born-and-raised Texan, now residing in NYC, makes music that doesn’t adhere to a single genre. Sometimes it’s jazz, or hip-hop, or electronic, but mostly it’s just Samir in the moment, and his friends. The freedom to experiment has kept the artist busy– he had ten releases last year, and so far in 2022 he’s put out Saxually Active, Vol. 1, FK3, and has an NFT-based electronic release coming up at the end of the month. We got to chat with FKAjazz about composing, DJing, and exploring new sounds.
(Revisit FKAjazz and other dynamic Sofar artists on our February New Music Alert Playlist)
Sofar: Right off the bat, I want to know how you arrived at your moniker, FKAjazz.
FKAjazz: I’ve been playing saxophone since I was about 8. When you’re a saxophonist, the first thing you’re taught is jazz. I love that music, that I was able to learn how to improvise and how to communicate with other musicians on the bandstand. But, I grew up in the hip-hop era, electronica era, [and] after a few years of doing the tour thing with different jazz groups, I was like ‘this is cool, but it’s not really my passion.’ I got to do this collaboration with a friend, and that led to this deep dive into producing music– more electronica, house music. After a few years of doing that, I decided to create an artist name. I decided on FKAjazz because everything, if you think about it, was jazz. That for me was an aha moment. I never wanted to peg myself as just a jazz musician, or just do one type of music– I could keep creating based on how I felt.
That’s interesting, that was part of my second question– your bio mentions exploring electronic music, and taking that experience into Black American music to create personal compositions. It sounds like that was part of the process?
Definitely. As life is, it’s kind of a zig-zag, it’s never a straight line. It was through collaborations that I gravitated to one thing or the next. The first person I really learned from how to produce music was heavily into electronica. Because of that, that’s the type of music I was learning how to create. And when I wanted to move onto the next chapter, that’s where I started to take everything I learned and bring it together into something I felt was closer to, really diving into my own foundation of how I grew up– I was in school learning jazz, but I was at home listening to Tupac and Snoop Dog.
Your approach to music feels so collaborative and communal, I’d like to know about what the live performance experience is like for you.
It’s really fun, to say the least. Especially now, I’m doing a lot more DJing. It’s so fun to tell my friends, ‘I have a DJ set coming up, let’s have you on for a couple songs.’ I’ll get DMs all the time for people that want to collaborate, and 9 times out of 10 they don’t work out for some reason, but the ones that do, they end up working out because those people become a part of my life. With those people, like BD3, Uncle Nephew, Marcus Machado, Brooke D, these are all people that’ve become an integral part of my life. The idea of collaborating and taking it to the performance is a no brainer.
I was curious about your work as a DJ, and how your composer self and instrumentalist self come into that performance.
I DJ and play saxophone at the same time. It’s really fun to be able to in a way shock people when they come to a club and I’m performing and all of the sudden my saxophone is above the DJ booth. I kind of in a way reinvent the track. When I do a Sofar gig, I’m usually DJing and playing saxophone, and I’ll have one or two featured artists.
What’s your experience with Sofar been like?
It’s really amazing. Not only do I get the opportunity to perform for a crowd full of people that’ve never heard of me– which is great for my own development, getting to connect with more people– but the really fun part is that every Sofar I’ve ever attended, I’m always falling in love with the other performers, because they’re always different. Grace [Pozniak], who books New York, I think she’s the mastermind behind putting these together, so big shoutout to Grace. My experience has always been such a discovery. All my friends are doing Sofar gigs. It’s easy to get, especially now, bogged down by doing zoom calls all day, not being able to go into a studio with the band, feeling the angst. The Sofar community has really been holding strong through all of this and it’s been really beautiful.
Photo credit: FKAjazz, photo by Noah MacNeil
