Here at Mobius we are a creative bunch and are all on a journey to make the best creations for our clients. Whilst we continue that journey, I have been on a little adventure of my own with my band Bud Sugar as we recently went to Gambia.

Heres a little into why we decided to go as a band…

Myself and my Brother are mixed race, but unfortunately our fathers were never in our lives so my white single mother started to take us there for us to connect with our family members and to learn more about our roots and heritage. From as early as 1 years old, she would make a pilgrimage to Gambia multiple times each year, just her along with myself (a baby at the time) and my older brother.

Although none of our fathers are from Gambia, my brother is from Senegal which is Gambias neighbouring country, but back in 1990 it wasn’t possible to fly direct to Senegal so we would fly to Gambia and await his fathers arrival… and when he failed to come, we would find ourselves in Gambia alone for 2 weeks in the heart of the bush. So my mum, being the legend she is, decided to forget about this so-called father and embrace Gambia instead! And so begun our annual visits, 3 times a year for the first 10 years of our lives, where we would go to our adopted country and eat, breathe and live as Gambians, moulding us in ways that would only become clear many years later!

After 10 years of us visiting the motherland, my mum and her Gambian family had a falling out, a small thing got blown way out of hand as they often do with families, resulting in us not going again, and that was 18 years ago…

One day this year, I was sat in the studio and my brother had come to tell me how he had started writing a song inspired by our travels all them years ago and how we should work on it and write about it together. It came to us really natural as not only is this a very authentic story but we had also really started to embrace the African influences within our music so everything felt right.

We played it to our mum and she loved it! This really was an ode to Gambia with references to the food we used to eat, the people we used to stay with and the determination our mum had to take us. Not long later, we released a video of us performing the song live onto Facebook and Gambians loved it… Within a week or two of uploading it we had received messages from people we hadn’t seen since we were children & used to play with, now with families of their own all showing love and support from our music.

Me and my brother had talked about how we wanted to film the video to the song in Gambia when we first made it and now, with all of the support pouring in from people, we really felt as though it was possible. So the mission began! We started raising funds from wherever we could with the aim to fly to Gambia, reconnect with family & friends and create a film about our story. Just 4 weeks later we had managed to raise around £10,000 which got the full band along with a crew out there and it was the most amazing week ever! Visiting as kids always felt special but there was something way more eye opening about this trip returning as adults. Since returning, we’ve all felt like its enriched our lives and has started a fire burning in us to explore more stories and create more memories together.

My mum is one of a kind and truly inspiring to me doing everything she did as a single mum. So this video is dedicated to her, Jatta Kunda (the family/compound we used to stay with) & The Gambia Vibe Tribe (Our new Gambian family who looked after us on this trip).

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