The Many Layers of Sudan Archives

What does it take to feel free enough to be yourself? The road to personal freedom and growth is never easy, but Brittney Parks, the 28-year-old singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who performs as Sudan Archives, is here to show it's worth it. Last September, she took to the Late Show with Stephen Colbert stage to perform the track "Selfish Soul" from her latest album, Natural Brown Prom Queen. Dressed like a bondage goddess in leather and a draped skirt, she supported her signature violin with a harness to leave her hands free for performing. "I don't want no struggles, I don't want no fears," she sang. "About time I embrace myself and soul, time I feed my selfish soul."

There's nothing selfish about Parks's music, though. She's generous with her joy. "I want people to feel freely, and to be inspired to be what they want to be and do," she says. "I think a lot of people resonate with the violin because of the emotion it brings up. So I want them to find the emotion that they connect with, that will help them in whatever way."

Natural Brown Prom Queen is an ode to the pleasure of being yourself: a lush, eighteen-track sonic odyssey through the poignant, painful, erotic, joyful moments of achieving freedom. But not just any freedom—Parks's version brings to mind what social justice facilitator adrienne maree brown describes as more than just physical freedom, requiring "the mental, emotional, and spiritual freedom to feel content, happy, and present in our brief and potent lives." Beyond the aforementioned "Selfish Soul," a track ostensibly about hair but also a pulsating anthem about letting go—"Does it make sense to you why I cut it off?"—there's also "NBPQ (Topless)," an assertive declaration of self where she raps, "Just because I'm hard to manage doesn't mean I cannot have it."

There's also the cathartic opening to the music clip for "OMG BRITT," when Parks strides into the video's setting with her violin in hand and proceeds to raise it above her head and smash it onto the floor. I ask her about the violin—was it a prop? No, it was actually one her uncle gave her as a child. "It actually felt really cool because I've always wanted to [smash a violin]," she says. "I felt like it represented breaking anything that no longer served me."

Parks grew up with her twin sister, her mother, and her stepfather in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she was first drawn to the violin after the Canadian fiddler group Barage visited her school. She primarily learned to play by ear, and her mother encouraged her to use the instrument to accompany her church choir. As she grew older, her stepfather, who had previously worked with LaFace Records in Atlanta—the legendary nineties label that at one point handled TLC, Outkast, and Toni Braxton—pushed her to form a pop duo with her twin sister. But the pair wasn't offered creative control, which frustrated Parks; besides, she was more interested in psychedelic mushrooms, underground electronica, and learning how to produce her own music. At nineteen, her parents gave her an ultimatum to stop partying or move out. She opted for the latter, moving to Los Angeles to pursue a degree in general studies at Pasadena City College, eventually dropping out to focus on her music.

Parks has always been autodidactic, exploring her different inspirations through the internet and learning through observation. Unrestricted by the bounds of formal training, as a teenager she was already drawn to the pentatonic scales of Irish jigging and the syncopated rhythms of West African fiddling; later, her inspirations grew to include avant garde violinists Iva Bittová and Maarja Nuut as well as genre-pushing, technically innovative pioneers like the Cameroonian musician Francis Bebey.

She's not from Sudan—the nickname was given to her by her mom, she clarifies—but she counts the country's rich string instrument traditions, born from its former status as the African continent's largest, most geographically diverse nation (prior to South Sudanese independence), as influences. When she encountered musicians like the prolific Sufi multi-instrumentalist Asim Gorashi, she says, "I was like, 'Oh, I want to be like them. I want to play like that.'"

Parks has previously talked about wanting to "show the Blackness of the violin." She says to me, "The way [Sudanese fiddlers] played the violin was a lot different [to what I'd seen before]. Growing up I never saw people that looked like me playing the violin."

Natural Brown Prom Queen is the culmination of all these influences under Parks's vision. The tracks on her EPs, Sudan Archives and Sink, released in 2017 and 2018, respectively, feature discernible layers of violin melodies, lyrics, and syncopated percussion. The sounds are sparser, and as a listener it’s almost easier to hear her process at work. Her debut album Athena, released in 2019, is more confident: "This is my life, don't block the sun," she sings in "Nont for Sale." Natural Brown Prom Queen is unapologetically assertive: "You don't need those women, they are average," she raps in "Home Maker." "Only bad bitches in my trellis, and baby, I'm the baddest." It's also just a little bit horny, as the tracks "Freakalizer" and "Milk Me" suggest.

"I think of [the album] as showing another layer of myself," she says, "because honestly, I'm really laid back and introverted. But with this recent album, people can see another side of me, which is really funky and silly."

Parks's artistic process remains true to the DIY ethos she showed in "Queen Kunta," her 2016 cover of Kendrick Lamar's "King Kunta": Even now, she'll record a melody, loop it, and build around it. Often she'll work by herself, but she isn't afraid to rope in others for help. She's evolved and strengthened her vision to the point where collaborators can help it grow. Producing Natural Brown Prom Queen worked that way: "I have people that support all my work, and I come to them with the vision already and then they just add to it what I can't do yet," she says.

She started composing the album during the pandemic, working in her basement-turned-recording studio, getting naked and stoned while doing so. She laughs when I bring it up. "I'm already such a homebody, but I was even more of a homebody [during the pandemic]," she says. "I was making a lot of songs during that time, and it was kind of a very therapeutic process as well. There was just so much going on around the world and in our lives, it was kind of cool to be able to release it all." And now, we get to experience it too.

Natural Brown Prom Queen is out now. Sudan Archives will perform April 16 and 23 at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California. Read this story and many more in print by ordering our fifth issue here.

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