How to become a music director: Kojo’s story

Kojo: My name's Kojo Samuel and I'm music director.

The primary role of a music director is to help facilitate transferring a recorded piece of music into a live piece of music and that's everything from the technical aspect of it through to the creative aspect of it, choosing band members. The job is really about everybody knows a record sounds like, everybody knows what it sounds like on your radio, on your TV, but when performed live there needs to be different nuances and different subtleties involved in making it work as a live performance.

In terms of prep work there's, I would say, the fundamental thing is you have to really be listening to the music of working on. You have to kind of know it inside out to be able to deconstruct it and be able to give people ideas and suggestions and, you know, in order to rework it and kind of make it work. You have to make it more exciting, you have to kind of build into things. So you might have a really big show intro, you know. And it's about creating a flow like a set list and you know making it work as a piece over like an hour and a half, making it interesting for the audience because if you're there, if you're watching a performance and it gets boring you just wanna leave don't you.

So, as an example, with Stormzy Glastonbury set. I was music director on that.

Watching Glastonbury come to life was amazing. It was a big moment for Stormzy, it was a big moment for all of us, really, because it's one of those one off performances were you have an artist that's super talented, but also super relevance on the Pyramid Stage, which is iconic and he's actually headline in as well. So it's so many things converging at one sort of time.

Once everything's rehearsed, everything's been worked out, everything's kind of playing out and doing what it's supposed to be doing, my role is actually in the broadcast room where the visuals are being broadcast. My role is to sort of overseen the sound. It's not the fun part I'm not in the crowd or at the front of house. I think there's lots of skills necessary for being a music director. I don't think you have to be genius musician, but it actually helps if you do play and have played well. And I think you need to have a good understanding of all the instruments in the band, really. Even if you don't play them. I'm gonna add into that computers and things of that nature are probably a part of music these days as well. You need to able to communicate with the band, also you need to be able to communicate with artists and everybody within all that there's a team of people.

I grew up in the United States until I was like a young teenage and I've been in the UK ever since. I had a very, I guess, normal education. I did my GCSEs. I did really well in music. I remember getting an A in music and maybe the same drama or something like that. And I didn't get bad grades, I was like, A, pretty much A's and B's and maybe I got C's in like science and Maths and things like that. But I mean they were still C's you know. They weren't like terrible. And then I went on and did A-levels, but throughout that period I was developing as a producer and as a writer and musician and then I decided to go straight to kind of work at 18. I was working as a keyboard player, a musician. Before I know it I was on a pop gig. I was doing a band called Sugababes and I was learning about the live music industry from sort of being on the road with them and touring with them. Along sort of working on that project I was able to observe what the music director did. And to me it kind of clicked with me immediately cos it seemed very much like what a producer would do. Which is what I've been doing most of my life, but it was just doing it with a live band. My god. I guess if I was talking to 14 year-old Kojo, I would just tell him to to be really patient because I think 14 year-old Kojo thought he was going to be a superstar at 18. So, and, I think that's how you kind of tend to feel maybe when you're 14 and when you're 18. You always think there's a rush to do things, but I think is to understand that whatever it is you're doing try and be good at it, try and be the best you can be at it, but also appreciate the journey, appreciate trip, because you know there might be lots of different things along the way. And I think you have to enjoy them as you’re going through them.