Sudan Archives’ favourite Christmas song: “I really fell in love”
Los Angeles’ electronic violinist Sudan Archives is quite possibly the most innovative string player in pop since Nash the Slash.
The moniker of Brittney Denise Parks, a self-taught master of the violin, Sudan Archives melds a synth-heavy R&B popcraft and soulful croon, bringing a new and intriguing intersection between the instrument’s long stuffy confines in Western classical academia and the Black music communities across the African continent, wielding the violin as a central sound of many a roof-raising party.
Such a unique slant on her craft, and a distinctly forged presence among the pop charts, has ever pushed an artist like Sudan Archives to reveal an equally intriguing source of music recommendations and selections when pushed for her favourites.
So it was that the topic of her favourite festive number came up. Eschewing the typical Yuletide songbook, Sudan Archives lifted deep into the recesses of jazz’s esteemed canon for a characteristically atypical choice on the tune that signals the arrival of the holiday season for a 2024 Vulture feature.
“I love John Coltrane’s version of ‘My Favourite Things’,” Sudan Archives revealed. “I was introduced to the song through The Sound of Music, but I really fell in love with this remake as a kid. I grew up in a musical household and my mum always loved playing different types of music, especially jazz. This Christmas song is nostalgic and I love the arrangement of the song and instrumentation accompanied by the saxophone and piano.”
She added, “I used to play it on my violin all the time for fun when I was in high school. I loved the way the melody sounded on the violin and experimented with speeding the song up and making it faster. This song will always remind me of Christmas and the warmth of being home with family during the holidays.”
Coltrane and Broadway may seem surprising to fans of modal jazz spirituals. Yet, three years before his lauded A Love Supreme, the famed composer and bandleader indeed took a chance on Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 1959 production, lifting the festive standard whereby Maria von Trapp entertains the extensive Austrian family with a wintry list of seasonal decorations from warm mittens, sleighbells, kittens, and of course, snowflakes.
Quite where Coltrane wrestled such zen inspiration from is hard to discern, but the saxophonist expertly reimagined the material from light entertainment music hall to a hypnotic piece, amorphously gliding across its over 13 minutes in all its confounding and unorthodox nebula. Christmastime’s warm and fuzzies may be hard to discern, but ‘My Favourite Things’ certainly scores a festivity away from cliché or formulaic, Christmas card impressions.
Coltrane was happy with his piece, describing his take on ‘My Favourite Things’ as “my favourite piece of all those I have recorded,” adding, “This waltz is fantastic: when you play slowly, it has an element of gospel… when you play it quickly, it possesses other undeniable qualities. It’s very interesting to discover terrain that renews itself according to the impulse that you give it.”
