“The album title, Intra-I, means ‘within self,’ since this is a record all about journeying within and the lessons we learn when we self-reflect,” Theon Cross tells Apple Music. The tuba player and composer has been at the forefront of the London jazz scene for half a decade, collaborating with the likes of the collective Steam Down, drummer Moses Boyd, and saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings’ Mercury Prize-nominated group Sons Of Kemet. Highlighting the use of the breath itself as the medium for his instrument, Cross transmutes the rich bass frequencies of the tuba into a bodily experience. His second album, Intra-I, following 2019’s Fyah, sees him skipping freely between the genres of the African diaspora, from the grime instrumentals of “Play to Win” to the deeply emotive dub of “Forward Progression II” and the boom-bap of “We Go Again.” “The tuba is the sonic backdrop to our explorations of the self, a means to exemplify yourself through the breath,” he says. Here Cross provides insight into each of Intra-I's tracks.
“Intro” (feat. Remi Graves)
“I wanted a poem to open the album, to set the scene for the inward-journeying themes that are to come. I've known Remi Graves for a few years, ever since we took part in the same jazz workshop, Jazz Alive, and I came across some of her work recently and loved it. Me and my producer Emre Ramazanoglu decided to make a spacious, droney backdrop for her to speak over and she did a fantastic job.”
“We Go Again”
“On tour, one of my hobbies is to make beats, and a lot of the tracks on this album started there. This was one of the first tracks to come from GarageBand that I decided to take seriously. Conceptually, it's based on the texts that my friend Jeremiah would send me as I was going through a difficult period of my life. At the end of it, he would write, ‘We go again,’ and that was a phrase that I started to use almost as a mantra.”
“Roots” (feat. Shumba Maasai)
“This was a spontaneous jam between me and Emre, who is an amazing drummer too. The idea of having roots came to me straight away—the need to stay grounded when you're going into the self. I'd met Shumba Maasai through Steam Down, and he really spoke to this theme of using your roots to move forward, as well as exploring his own story of coming from Zimbabwe.”
“The Spiral" (feat. Afronaut Zu & Ahnansé)
“I went to South Africa in 2019 and found an amazing jeweler who I bought a spiral chain from. She said that the spiral means taking the journey inside, from which we come back with more power and wisdom. I'm an extended family member of the Steam Down crew, and Afronaut Zu is someone I always heard on this track. It is musically somewhere between dancehall and Afrobeat, and when I had a writing session with him and Steam Down founder Ahnansé, they expressed exactly what I wanted in the ‘spiral is vital’ phrase.”
“Trust the Journey”
“I was improvising freely in the studio and Emre cut this bit out where I was beatboxing on my mouthpiece. It was in an irregular time signature and we both thought it was an amazing beat that I should write to. The whole process of making the track ended up being like a journey, because it was something I didn't gravitate to straight away, but that I worked towards. The concept of trusting in the journey came just from making it.”
“40Tude”
“This is a salute to the Windrush generation, which my grandparents were part of. When I was in Saint Lucia with them, I asked them what the experience of coming to England was like and they were saying they had actually only planned to be here for five years but they ended up staying for 40. I was imagining if they had only stayed for five years, I wouldn't have been born and so much culture that generation ended up bringing Britain would have been lost. It's a celebration of that journey but also a reflection on how much culture has come from the mass migration from people.”
“Watching Over (Bless Up Dad)”
“My dad passed away in March, so it was important for me to make something that represented how I felt about him and that represented the emotions of grief. I used a more classical or technical way of playing to express a drawn-out melody, and I've arranged it in such a way where I made the chords feel emotional. The album is filled with a lot of beats and uptempo tracks, but it was important to have a song of reflection as well.”
“Forward Progression II”
“This is a celebration of my dad. He was a reggae musician and he had his own band called Nyanisis in the 1980s. Unfortunately, they never released any recordings, but I've got a lot of tapes of his, and when I was listening to some of his old music, I came across one of his songs, which is called ‘Forward Progression.’ The chorus goes, ‘Forward progression, you've got to know yourself first.’ I thought that was a beautiful synchronicity while I'm making an album about knowing yourself first too. When I played it to my mother, she said it is a real tribute to how he wanted to be remembered.”
“Play to Win” (feat. Consensus)
“Grime is a genre that represents my teenage years, so it was important to have it as a sound on the record. Conceptually, this track was born out of when George Floyd was killed and there were so many conversations about race. We had a lot of white allyship, of which some was genuine, but I thought a lot was for show. ‘Play to Win’ is a means of addressing my own people, since if the system is a game and things are going to be unfair for us, we have to organize ourselves and have the mindset to play to win. Consensus is an amazing lyricist that I've known for a long time and he's someone who spoke to this really intelligently.”
“Universal Alignment” (feat. Oren Marshall)
“When I was making this record, I invited Oren to play a long improvisation with me. We played for about an hour, and the segment that we cut out for ‘Universal Alignment’ was just a one-take free improvisation, which felt like the perfect way to close the album. Oren is very much an elder in innovating on the tuba in British jazz, and I've always looked up to him. I wanted to show love and respect to the people who came before us and who make us who we are. It was important to have him as part of the journey.”