From Paris to Havana, Ibeyi take beats from the past to create prayers for the future

“I’m so sorry for my English,” apologises afro-haired Lisa-Kaindé Diaz, sitting beside her twin Naomi who’s playing with her long curls. Together as Ibeyi, the nineteen- year-old sisters make sparse beat-driven music that’s as euphonious as their French accents. And the industry is addicted. As soon as our Skype call ends they’ll rush off to yet another important meeting. The interview is hectic – the ultimate cross-cultural experience: the French-Cuban artists from Paris, who sing in Yoruba, and the Greek journalist from Berlin writing for a London-based publication. We speak in English, a second language to all, but share a love for Jay Electronica – the US rapper the girls just covered with their version of ‘Better In Tune With The Infinite’. The sisters’ energy is infectious – even mediated through a screen.

Ibeyi means twins in Yoruba, a Cuban language that, as the girls explain, “is only spoken by priests these days.” Their father was Miguel ‘Anga’ Diaz, percussionist and conga player for the renowned Buena Vista Social Club, who died when the girls were eleven. The twins spent the first two years of their lives in Cuba and visited it throughout their childhood in the ’90s – a particularly difficult era for the island country that Castro termed The Special Period in a Time of Peace. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Cuba lost a trade partner in the Soviet Union and entered an economic downturn that unfolded as fuel shortages, daily blackouts and deepening austerity. But the sisters’ memories of childhood come with the usual feel-good nostalgia. The shortages in Cuba and the lack of a digital infrastructure provided them with an appreciation for the simpler things in life. “For us, experiencing France and Cuba was the best of both worlds. Cuba was just a different way to live,” says Lisa. “It didn’t matter that there was no digital life.”

As well as being vivacious, the twins are openly sisterly. They finish one another’s sentences and look to each other for help translating French expressions into English.

“We fight all the time, about tiny things and stupid stuff,” says Lisa.

“But on stage, it’s beautiful,” adds Naomi.

“We’re so different. I used to think it’s just because we’re young, but we are just two very different people making one thing that works,” says Lisa.

This dynamic and duality is obvious in their sound. Ibeyi blend a strong sense of tradition with a mission to break conventions. They combine classical afro-latin rhythms with jazzy, soulful melodies, then distill things down for contemporary ears with electronic elements and production techniques from hip hop.

They don’t shy away from existential topics, either. “Our debut is about family, prayers, death and life,” says Naomi, of new release on XL Records – an independent label that’s long had its ear to the ground. With a roster that stretches from Jack White to The xx, Sigur Rós to M.I.A, XL is the ideal home for Ibeyi in a culture that is increasingly non-linear.