Sudan Archives at the Sinclair, 10/10/22
As I approached the Sinclair in Cambridge on October tenth, my heart was racing. It was the first time in a while that I was going to a concert alone, and the first time that I had been tasked with taking photos during the show. I arrived early, just a few minutes before they opened the doors, and awkwardly loitered outside, chatting with a couple who had also shown up on the early side. We were all here to see Sudan Archives.
Despite what her stage name leads some to believe, Sudan Archives is just one person, a singer and violinist who, similarly to myself, hails from Cincinnati, Ohio. I first caught wind of her music years ago, but just a month after the release of her most recent album, Natural Brown Prom Queen, she has been garnering more popular and critical praise than ever before.
I entered the empty venue and walked right up to the stage. It was set up simply enough; a few instruments, most notably a violin, were propped up around the stage, bookended by two columns of balloons. In the back were four shiny, gold-colored balloons in the shapes of letters, spelling out “NBPQ.”
While I leaned against the front of the stage, fiddling with my camera and chatting with another photographer, a man crawled out from backstage in order to plug a few things in before disappearing. A few moments later, he reemerged. “Who’s excited to see Sudan Archives?” he asked. “Well, y’all will have to wait.” As the crowd chuckled, he introduced himself as Byron, or The Growth Eternal. He explained that he uses a vocoder in his music and cracked a few brief jokes before beginning to play.
As he stood over a loop station, he began to sing. His vocoded voice mixed in with warm walls of noise and washed over the crowd before each song tapered off. Every so often, a kick drum beat or a drum pattern of some sort would start to play. It seemed as though everyone in the crowd was unsure whether to nod their heads, sway in place, or stand completely still.
The Growth Eternal’s set was succinct, and it felt like a blur—waves of sound crashed into his song title announcements, and each track bled into the next. As he concluded his set to applause that sounded one part enthusiastic and one part confused, he restated his name and announced that he would be selling cassettes at the merch table after the show.
My anticipation built as the speakers inside the venue began to blast an eclectic mix of R&B, rap, and house music for what was probably around fifteen minutes but felt like hours. I thought to myself about the music, in an attempt to distract myself from worrying about my lack of photography experience. A few more songs began and ended, and the lights went dark. A familiar flute sample began to play: the opening of “Home Maker,” the introductory track of Natural Brown Prom Queen. As the drums began, Sudan Archives herself walked out and began to sing.
Wearing a leather garment that I can best describe as leotard-adjacent, decked out with belts, chains, and hoops, Sudan Archives immediately commanded the crowd. As she strutted around the stage, performing “Home Maker,” she sang the lines “Only bad bitches in my trellis / And baby, I’m the baddest,” and in the trellis that was the Sinclair that night, these lines rang true. She kneeled down right in front of the crowd, singing directly into fans’ faces and phone cameras, met by many excited screams.
Accompanied solely by Byron of The Growth Eternal playing bass and tapping on a drum machine, Sudan Archives continued her set. A few songs in, she announced that she was about to play a throwback. She walked towards the center of the stage, and picked up her violin before beginning to play a few of her older tracks. Miraculously, she was able to balance something as painstaking as playing a fiddle with keeping up an energetic, exciting performance.
Later, as Sudan Archives put her violin back on its stand, she stopped the music to quickly tell the crowd that this was “our prom” before throwing a sash that read “Prom Queen” to a girl standing just behind me in the crowd. Before anyone could even react, the next song, “Freakalizer,” began. As the song progressed, and the second chorus was coming, Sudan Archives suddenly disappeared from the stage. Once again, before anyone could even react, I turned around, and she had run into the middle of the crowd, dancing with the girl who had just been crowned as prom queen.
Just a few songs later, once Sudan Archives had retaken the stage, she took her fiddle once again and played a brief instrumental, before transitioning into a slightly lower-energy portion of her set. She performed a few cuts from her new album before playing two older tracks: “Iceland Moss” from her 2019 album Athena followed by one of my personal favorites, “Nont For Sale.” I thought back to being a teenager in Cincinnati and how cool it was to learn that an artist I love is also from there, and just for a moment, I dwelled on how ironic it was that I was finally seeing her live now, in a completely different city.
I did not have that much time to dwell, though, as she announced her next song by exclaiming “this next song is about… tiddies.” The audience erupted in cheers, and the opening of “Milk Me” began. As it concluded, Sudan Archives announced her next song: “this one… is also about tiddies!” The audience, once again, erupted in cheers as she began to play “NBPQ (Topless).” While performing, she held up her own merch—a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “I just wanna have my tiddies out.” I watched a middle-aged couple to my right awkwardly glance at each other when these songs were first announced, but by the end of the second track, they were dancing, too. By the time the encore came around, the Sinclair was filled with satisfied cheers.
At some point around the end of the concert, I looked around the crowd, and it seemed as though everyone around me was dancing, swaying, and above all, smiling. I would find it hard to believe that anyone in the building went the entire night without dancing at all. It really is not difficult to see where all the infectiously positive energy was coming from throughout the show; between the danceable, house-tinged beats and Sudan Archives’ incredible crowd work, there was room for nothing but joy and movement. Sudan Archives managed to create her own personal prom that evening, full of love, beauty, and sexuality, and frankly, I am just thankful that I was invited.