Working with family can be a beautiful process; my brothers and I discovered this through working together on this film All Roads.

While we all have a history and background in dance, taking our first steps (for me literally) with ACE Dance and Music in Birmingham, only the oldest of the three of us, Rudi, has pursued dance and choreography as a lifetime venture. For Azizi and me, until more recently, our dance came as an expression through our music.

My latest record Ibeji features seven duets with percussionists from the African diaspora, one being Azizi and another being Ian Parmel, artistic director of ACE Dance and Music; in one of his skits on the record Ian says, “You see the music and hear the dance”. This idea is a core part of West African diasporic dance/music traditions and has been inherited by my brothers and I in our various fields.

The music on All Roads was co-created by Azizi and myself in Sansom Studios in Wythall, Birmingham. Arriving with only our instruments and trust in each other’s creative processes, we flowed organically, carving out this emotive piece that centres around brotherly trust, joy and love. Azizi has an uncanny (and very Caribbean) way of de/reconstructing our language: “If you can't beat em... leave em.” One of his favourite sayings at the time of recording was ‘all roads’, as an abbreviation of ‘all roads lead to the same destination’. Upon completion of the record I knew that there was some hidden visual work involving me, Azizi and our older brother Rudi that was a reflection of the music we had created.

As I say, working with family can be a beautiful process but it can also be extremely challenging, as some of our attempts in the past have proven. We are three strong and wilful creative forces and with such things arise particular challenges. The day before we embarked on a week of co-creating and choreographing the piece I was nervous as there was a lot more on the line than just a nice visual piece – these things have the capacity to forge new relationships or reinforce old patterns. It soon became clear that what we were doing was a very important healing process for the three of us.

We all had creative freedom to bring our various expertise and artistic flair to the forefront, while also having a surprisingly similar and compatible way of creating. The music is from our hearts and likewise is the dance. The narrative is that of our process growing up together – not explicitly but by virtue of the fact that it is something that we have created together with care and love. It explores themes of brotherhood, intimacy, mixed heritage culture and experience, support, love, Birmingham and more. We filmed at the Gravelly Hill Interchange aka Spaghetti Junction in Aston; a very imposing yet flowing feature of Birmingham’s brutalist industrial roots. The final sequence of the film was all self-documented and follows Azizi talking about his name and how it has changed, and how it has been shaped by him, and shaped him, over time.

My only relationship to dance in the past has been through live performance, but creating a film is a different challenge. To maintain the intimacy of live performance and connection while also appreciating and utilising the creative capacity of film and editing is no mean feat. I approached a long time friend Mat Beckett, the creative director of River Rea films, with not much more than a concept and he jumped on board, becoming the director and backbone of the filming and editing process. It's a difficult and vulnerable thing to entrust someone with so much raw emotion but Mat expertly and gracefully produced what I honestly standby as a wonderful piece of work. Following the filming day I frequented Mats office and got stuck in with the editing process alongside Shaun Hill, whose creative and knowledgeable eye exposed more potential in the film.

I love the title All Roads, it’s so open and yet so fundamentally strong; much like the strength I get from knowing that I share this life with my two brothers. I pray that all roads will continue leading us back to each other.

Read Francis Gooding’s 2022 interview with Xhosa Cole in The Wire 465. Subscribers can read the interview via the online magazine library.