There’s a whole world in the sound of Colorado Springs hip-hop duo The Reminders. Not unlike The Clash’s outlook in the early 1980s, the husband-wife team of Big Samir and Aja Black take inspiration from the music and culture encountered in their travels around the globe, adding it dash by dash to their bubbling musical cauldron here on the Front Range.

The couple’s international bent isn’t just from their travels, though. Black — a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist — was born in Queens, New York, and after her father enlisted in the military, grew up everywhere from Portugal to England. Samir was born in Brussels, Belgium, and raised in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His stepfather was eventually stationed in Colorado, which he learned to call home. As fate would have it, Black’s father was stationed here the same exact summer.

“She globed her whole childhood [and] got acclimated to all these different spaces,” Samir says. “So we had this mutual feeling when we got here, like we’ve been all around the world and … here we are.” 

Colorado Springs was far from a cultural hub when serendipity brought the pair together in the late ’90s, but Black and Samir made do by sharing songs and experiences. Stitched together by these common threads, the two kept in touch when Black went off to college in Florida.

“When she finally came back and was done with school and we just started hanging out every day, she mentioned she had never really been to a concert,” Samir says. “She’d been to concerts when she was younger, like Whitney Houston, but we started going to Reggae on the Rocks. We started going to watch Steel Pulse whenever they were around … every weekend we were going to a concert, and eventually our love for music and also being artists individually, it just grew. We formed a bond that was just so powerful.”

Emcees without borders

Before they knew it, Samir and Black had formed a band that would eventually become The Reminders — plus a marriage, and then a family. But the couple made more than a life for themselves and their three children in the city they call home; they also helped create a scene.

On that score, Samir’s first musical offering to the Springs came in the way of an early project with his sister’s ex-husband. It was one of the city’s only hip-hop groups, alongside Fusion of Syllables (F.O.S.) featuring celebrated local emcee Black Pegasus, back when accessible stages for such local artists were few and far between. 

“We pretty much formed the hip-hop scene here,” Samir says. “We would go to different bars and clubs and ask if we could have a night. There was no hip-hop night. They didn’t want anything to do with hip-hop. A club called The Underground downtown gave us the basement to do whatever we wanted on Monday nights, which is an odd night. That’s probably why they gave it to us, but we turned it out.” 

From there, the scene began to flourish, and The Reminders surfed the new wave with the duo’s 2008 debut, Recollect. Bursting with poetry, beats, diverse influences and sharp intellect, the album served as the first showcase for The Reminders’ international brand of “conscious hip-hop,” a politically charged and community-minded subgenre pioneered by legends like KRS-One and Public Enemy. It’s a tradition The Reminders carry on today: balancing music with activism, touring not just as musicians but as “cultural diplomacy” educators in places like Morocco, Uganda, China and beyond.

“We do a lot of residencies where we will go into a town for three days. We’ll have a performance on Friday or Saturday, but then the days leading to it we’ll lead workshops or we’ll go into schools and do a performance for the kids who can’t necessarily afford, you know, a 15, 20-dollar ticket to go to a concert,” Samir says. “[It’s] something we do everywhere we go. We try to make sure we connect with that community instead of just, ‘Hey, I’m in your town; I’ll play a show and leave.’ We’ll connect with that community, and it makes a difference. You have an impact, and these people remember you.”

That sense of community shines through on The Reminders’ latest album Unstoppable (2019), mixing conscious hip-hop with elements of New Orleans and Latin music, desert blues and more. But while the duo has released a smattering of singles over the last few years, Black and Samir seem more focused on performing and community work than a new album. It’s that impact that matters most, says Samir.

“I tell people all the time, ‘Yeah, I was born in Belgium, but I was raised in the Congo. … And now, to be where I am — I’m a world-renowned artist, and there are times where I’ll perform at a school in southeast Denver, where there are little Congolese kids, and by the time I tell them I’m from Congo, they’re so excited,” he says. “They’re like, ‘Wait, and you’re on a stage and you’re singing and I can see you on YouTube?’ It means something to them and it gives them this confidence that they can be that as well. That’s my purpose — to light that fire in people.” 

ON THE BILL: Motus Theater Immigrant Heritage Month Performance with The Reminders. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 10, Dairy Arts Center, Gordon Gamm Theater, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Free