Last month Helen Ganya released her second album Share Your Care, and since we’ve been covering Helen’s various projects for over ten years it was only right that we caught up to have a chat about it, and about other things she’s been up to since we last spoke.

The origin of the album came around four years ago, when Helen’s Thai grandmother – the last of her grandparents – passed away. “It made me quite emotional – Not just sad, but also really wanting to remember everything about my time as a child and spending my summers in Thailand. So it was a really nice way to like go back into childhood memories and think about those times and the sounds. And that’s kind of where I started thinking about actually incorporating Thai instruments”. Helen has never hidden her heritage – even during her days as Dog in the Snow it was always noted that her background was half Thai and half Scottish – but musically, for the most part, her Thai side hadn’t come to the fore. “this is part of my background but I thought it might be a bit fraudulent or might not be seen as authentic. But the Thai traditional sounds on Share Your Care are the sounds of some of my childhood”.

photo by Sonia Abbas

There have been a couple of songs that have been translated into Thai – a reworked version of the title track from her last album Polish the Machine appeared on 2023’s Repolish The Machine EP, and in 2020 she released ทอง, a Thai version of Gold from Vanishing Lands. “These were more of an afterthought, where the Thai words were translated to a song that was already written, as opposed to working from the ground up as I have done on Share Your Care. There’s one song on the new album that’s written in Thai, as well as having Thai instrumentation, and that was really nice to think in that way”

There isn’t a Thai musical community in Brighton, so Helen reached out to contacts she’d made through ESEA  Music – the East Southeast Asian Music Collective – a group that formed in 2020 following anti-Asian backlash from Covid. Through them she was introduced to Artit Phonron at a Thai temple in Wimbledon, who took Helen’s parts written in midi and played them on ranat ek (a sort of Thai xylophone), saw duang (a bowed two string traditional instrument) and khim (a dulcimer). “He was amazing, not only was it him just learning by ear and just playing it, but also dealing with the tuning issues as well – because Thai scales are different from western musical scales – which was quite a challenge.” Anglo-Thai artist John ‘Rittpo’ Moore also contributes flutes and saxophones to the record.

photo by Sonia Abbas

The only other voice on the album is British Nigerian. Helen explained how that come about: “The last song, Myna, is about a Myna bird. My grandad used to keep a Myna bird, which is kind of like a south east Asian starling, but it’s known for mimicry, so it  can parrot a lot of human voices. And after my grandad died, the myna which he had kept in a cage started sounding like him. It was quite moving but also really strange so I wrote that song thinking of having a second voice that would kind of be my grandad but almost like a third grandad rather than the real grandad. I was trying to think of a voice that I sort of someone I knew that was low and reminded me of my grandad –  even though I think Tony’s probably younger than me!”

The album was produced with Rob Flynn who Helen has a long working relationship with. “It was quite funny when we first met, he was always asking whether I would consider making music utlising Thai instruments. And I shut it down all the time and was like, no, I don’t want to do that. I just want to do make contemporary Western music. So when I came to him with this idea, I felt like he was just ready for it.”

Drums on the album were played by Hilang Child, who’s worked with Helen since playing together in Simon Raymonde’s collective Lost Horizons in 2017. As well as playing drums on the record and live, Hilang Child is also one of the supports at next week’s gig, along with Alex Painter.

As well as connecting with other Thai musicians over lockdown, Mixed Tapes, her show on Slack City Radio, was born. “Slack City got in touch with me and asked if I would be up for doing a radio show? I thought, oh that could be fun, and like many people in the creative industry during lockdown, it wasn’t like I had a lot on.” The show is a platform celebrating artists and people in the music industry of mixed heritage, featuring interviews and music, but without preaching to it’s audience or being negative, which over time has grown to the extent that for the last two years the search for for artists who fit the brief has become easier as people have got in touch directly with her. Mixed Tapes goes out roughly once a month on Slack City – check their schedules for the next episode.

Share Your Care is out now on Bella Union. Helen Ganya plays at Alphabet on Wednesday 12th March