How do a Swedish producer and a Malawian singer end up collaborating? The partnership that became The Very Best was sparked several years ago, when Johan Karlberg stopped into a London secondhand store that was run by the Malawi-born Esau Mwamwaya, and the two started talking music. But Karlberg says his interest in African music traces back decades further — beginning with the first time he heard Paul Simon‘s Graceland.
“I must have been 4 or 5, I think, when it had just come out,” Karlberg tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered. “I think more than anything it was Ladysmith Black Mambazo, like the a capella part of it, that really hit home with me.
“It’s not like I can say, ‘From then on my whole life has been around African music,’” he clarifies. “But still, I grew up wanting to be a nature photographer, so Africa was always close to my heart because my dream was to work in the Serengeti and film lions. I guess subconsciously, the music went with my other dreams. So it doesn’t feel like a coincidence or like a strange thing that I’m sitting here with Esau as The Very Best these days. It all looks like this beautiful journey of things working out — just a little bit differently than you would expect.”
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