‘How do we put an end to gen­er­a­tional trau­ma?’ – Saul Williams on Akilla’s Escape

Saul Williams is a mas­ter of many medi­ums – poet­ry, hip-hop, act­ing, activism – and through­out his career he’s exhib­it­ed a keen instinct for know­ing which will best serve his mes­sage of love and lib­er­a­tion. As a musi­cian, he’s record­ed with Nine Inch Nails and Allen Gins­berg; as a speak­er, he’s vis­it­ed 30-plus coun­tries; as an actor, he’s reached Broad­way (in 2013’s Tupac musi­cal Holler If Ya Hear Me) and starred in a Sun­dance prize-win­ner (1998’s Slam).

In Akilla’s Escape, which pre­miered at this year’s Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, Williams plays the lead role of a mar­i­jua­na deal­er who is robbed on the eve of his retire­ment and endeav­ours to help one of the young thieves (Thamela Mpuml­wana) escape the same cycles of gang vio­lence he nev­er could.

The crime-noir is height­ened by Williams’ hyp­not­ic score (co-com­posed with Mas­sive Attack’s Robert ​“3D” Del Naja), cap­tur­ing those cycles as night­mare loops, weav­ing between its protagonist’s trau­mat­ic youth and his tor­tured present, with Mpuml­wana also play­ing young Akil­la. For Williams and direc­tor Charles Offi­cer, a thriller explor­ing mas­culin­i­ty and mytholo­gies of gang vio­lence allowed both to advance pre­vi­ous con­ver­sa­tions they’d had.

“As Black men in the Amer­i­c­as, we’re think­ing about these things off-cam­era more than we’re giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to think about them on-cam­era,” explains Williams. ​“How do we put an end to gen­er­a­tional trau­ma? How do we suc­cess­ful­ly ques­tion patri­ar­chal ideas and ideals that have been pro­grammed into us? How do we thwart sys­temic sup­pres­sion and oppres­sion when we birth chil­dren who are once again born into it?”

Ear­ly on, Offi­cer asked Williams whether he would con­tribute music to Akilla’s Escape, but it was only after film­ing that Williams was able to dis­as­so­ci­ate from the scenes he’d act­ed in, putting him­self in the right space to pro­vide the soundtrack.

An open­ing mon­tage of archival footage and news­pa­per clip­pings, set to Bob Mar­ley and the Wail­ers’ ​‘Punky Reg­gae Par­ty’, depicts Jamaican his­to­ry as a gale of polit­i­cal unrest, insep­a­ra­ble from colo­nial intru­sions and the rise of drug traf­fick­ing. Head­lines chart­ing the CIA’s 1976 efforts to desta­bilise the Man­ley gov­ern­ment flash as a hand reach­es for an Uzi sub­ma­chine gun. Inter­cut with these images, Williams dances in a ware­house to the same bounc­ing nee­dle drop.

“It was eas­i­er to choose that song than it was to clear it,” Williams reveals. No oth­er sound­track choice made the pro­duc­tion jump through as many hoops – in fair­ness, no oth­er sound­track choice was Mar­ley. The sound­track broad­ly explores Jamaican musi­cal his­to­ry while chart­ing its dias­poric exten­sions: includ­ed are ​’60s bal­ladeer Jack­ie Edwards; ​’70s roots reg­gae group The Glad­i­a­tors; and mod­ern EDM duo Zeds Dead (specif­i­cal­ly, their bass-heavy ​‘Rude­boy’, from the Jamaican slang term).

“From the moment the script came, I used it as this won­der­ful excuse to dive into Jamaican archives of sound,” says Williams. Mar­ley, the glob­al flag-bear­er for Rasta­fari sound and ethos, was kept in heavy rota­tion, as were two oth­er ​’70s island icons: dub pio­neer Lee ​“Scratch” Per­ry, and Burn­ing Spear, whose roots chants exhib­it­ed a brac­ing polit­i­cal anger. Williams adds that he was equal­ly inspired by Miles Davis’ spaced-out sound­scapes, as well as min­i­mal­ist com­pos­er Ter­ry Riley, not­ed for inno­v­a­tive uses of rep­e­ti­tion and delay.

He’s also a not­ed trip-hop fan. When Williams was approached by Offi­cer, he was already deep into trad­ing unre­lat­ed son­ic exper­i­ments with Del Naja. Get­ting the go-ahead, he test­ed out their com­po­si­tions in the mix – haunt­ing synth­scapes dri­ven by skele­tal beats and an air of dis­tort­ed men­ace that seemed to fit per­fect­ly. ​“It made sense in deep­en­ing the nar­ra­tive and bring­ing out qual­i­ties Charles want­ed in the genre of a crime-noir,” says Williams. ​“There was a depth nec­es­sary in the sound to com­ple­ment that. It came about not eas­i­ly but clear­ly, how those two worlds might connect.”

Iron­i­cal­ly, the place­ment Williams ago­nised over most is the only instance in Akilla’s Escape where we hear his musi­cal voice. An ear­ly scene of young Akil­la being inter­ro­gat­ed in a New York police sta­tion segues into neon-lit present-day Toron­to, where the old­er Akil­la is intro­duced. Bridg­ing the time­lines is ​‘Skin of a Drum’ from Williams’ 2007 record ​‘The Inevitable Rise and Lib­er­a­tion of Nig­gy Tar­dust!’. Over clang­ing crate drums and anx­ious vio­lins from Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, Williams con­tem­plates his rela­tion­ship to his father (“His com­ple­tions won’t com­plete me / I’ve divid­ed me by one”).

“That’s prob­a­bly the one thing I fought Charles on,” says Williams, who was more focused on cre­at­ing new beats than repur­pos­ing old ones. ​“It’s prob­a­bly what led him to think­ing I should work on the sound of this film, but it was too on-the-nose for me to see.” Between the song’s inclu­sion and Williams’ per­for­mance, Akilla’s Escape dou­bles as a meta-med­i­ta­tion on his career inter­est in break­ing patri­ar­chal cycles through art. He wel­comes this reading.

“To play with these ques­tions in a cre­ative sense is lib­er­at­ing. You feel the pos­si­bil­i­ty that, by fac­ing this chal­lenge pub­licly, it may touch some­thing in some­one else who’s also been in that unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry of self-ques­tion­ing. Maybe that will lead to some­thing clos­er to an answer.”