Maverick Sabre: "This hopelessness, powerlessness and voicelessness in people is now being taken advantage of and manipulated"

Evolution doesn’t always happen in a straight line. Sometimes, as Maverick Sabre knows better than most, you have to go backwards in order to move forwards.

When the London-born, New Ross-raised singer-songwriter re-recorded his debut album in its entirety two years ago, his main intention was to take back control over his art – after claiming to have received no royalties for the gold-certified LP, which debuted at No.2 on the UK chart upon its major label release in 2012.

But revisiting those 10-year-old tracks for the independently released Lonely Are The Brave (Mav’s Version) had some unexpected results too. As he delved into the original session recordings, he was struck by his younger voice, and the sense of “fearlessness” in it.

“Something happened in that process,” he tells me now. “I felt like that 18-year-old was injected back into me.”

So, when it came to the creation of his newly released fifth studio album, Burn The Right Things Down, it felt natural to channel the spirit of that younger Mav, and immerse himself in the music he had grown up on.

“A big part of the process was just listening to music,” he nods. “I went back over The Beatles; 2Pac; my nu-metal phase with P.O.D. and Limp Bizkit; Bob Dylan; and the jazz I was listening to, like Ahmad Jamal, Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley. And also the stuff that I picked up on the way, like Cymande, Stone Roses and Oasis.”

The result is Maverick Sabre’s most thrilling experimental project to date, combining those early influences with his more recent sonic explorations as a solo artist and in-demand collaborator – having worked with the likes of Nile Rogers, Jorja Smith, Joey Bada$$, George The Poet, Ghetts, Nia Archives, Vintage Culture and Chase & Status, to name a few. To get into that creative headspace, he swapped his busy schedule in London for a barn in the Sussex countryside, where, he says, he performed the musical equivalent of “throwing paint at the fucking walls”.

“The record is a bit of a psychedelic trip, as you can tell,” he smiles. “That was the purpose of it: to feel like, at moments, you don’t know what the fuck is going on, but then there’s also these moments of clarity. It was about making a project that had a bit of urgency about itself, and a bit of chaos and movement.”

The new album also follows in Maverick’s tradition of speaking directly to the times we’re living in, and giving a voice to the unheard – with even the title, Burn The Right Things Down, evoking images of the misdirected anger we’ve witnessed rising up in Ireland, and beyond, in recent years.

“The place society is in right now is the result of years of conditioning,” he reflects. “And this hopelessness, powerlessness and voicelessness in people is now being taken advantage of and manipulated. They know people need guidance, and need to place their anger somewhere, so they’re saying, ‘Here’s who you point your blame at!’ And it’s always the person next to you, or immigrants, or the poor, or the vulnerable. It’s always pointing sideways or downwards.

“When did we forget that the majority of issues in society are domino effects from fallacies placed by the powerful – and corruption and greed?” he adds. “We’re being manipulated for other people’s reasons, to fight against each other. Like burning down our towns. It’s just self-destruction.”

In response to anti-immigration protests across the country, Maverick Sabre performed as part of the #IrelandForAll Solidarity March in Dublin in February 2023. In November of that year, he penned an impassioned piece in the wake of the Dublin riots, which opened with: “Ireland we are being divided.” It was a statement mostly motivated by a profound sense of sadness, he tells me now.

“I’ve travelled around the world for the last 14 years, and I hope I’ve done as good a job as I can at representing Irishness, in the way that I’m trying to tell it,” he says. “What I always get met with, in every corner of the globe, is a deep love for Ireland and the people, and an understanding of our history of oppression and imperialism.

“So when I saw that xenophobic, anti-immigration and racist politics were coming into Ireland, it saddened me,” he continues. “Everywhere in the world can turn right wing and be racist, and everyone in the world can be fed the fear of the other – but it saddened me more to see it at home.”

He was also disappointed to see classist narratives creeping into responses to the riots.

“That makes things worse, because then you’re pushing people into these boxes,” he states. “And when we don’t listen to people’s voices, they get manipulated and groomed into those groups – and then we’ve lost them. Some more compassion needs to be implemented all round.”

As a trailblazing force in Irish music, he’s been inspired to see the likes of The Mary Wallopers and KNEECAP using their own platforms to call out xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“They’re at the forefront of a really credible Irish music scene at the moment, and they both represent deep pockets of Irish tradition,” Maverick notes. “The Mary Wallopers with the traditional sound of the music that they’re making, and KNEECAP with the Irish language, as the first act bringing into this cool space. To hear English kids saying, 'I’m going to the KNEECAP gig tonight!' – that’s fucking great. That’s really breaking boundaries down. For them to be at that point with those eyes on them, to have that kind of stance is fucking important. We need more of that.”

He was similarly proud to be part of Bricknasty’s Nasty Sessions at the Sugar Club earlier this year – a night that served as a powerful testament to how much Irish hip-hop and R&B has diversified and expanded since Maverick was coming up.

“That was probably one of my proudest moments, centred around the Irish scene and where it’s come,” he reflects. “When we used to do hip-hop gigs back in the day, it was so pure – because no one was making any money. The people in the audience were mainly friends, or artists themselves.

“But to to see it go from that, to 15 years later, where you’ve got Aby Coulibaly, KhakiKid, Bricknasty, F3miii, and Kojaque – it’s just beautiful,” he continues. “The sounds are broad, and the audience is broad. Young people enjoying Irishness, and Irish music.”

For Maverick, the “warrior element” of hip-hop, reggae, blues, soul and traditional music was a crucial part of his own education, in terms of social issues – paired with important insights from his family.

“Whether they realised it or not, my mum and dad were quite outspoken at home,” he recalls. “There was a ‘no ignorance’ rule in my house growing up. That was across the board. My dad, particularly, always kept me up to date with current affairs, from the time I was a child.

“And I always enjoyed history, but I had my own conflict of identity growing up,” he adds. “It was like, ‘Am I English? Am I Irish?’ So trying to figure that out, as a kid, made me question stuff a lot more.”

Over the years, he’s used his own platform to speak out in support of oppressed communities, including the Palestinian people – joining Lowkey on the track ‘Long Live Palestine 3’ back in 2019, and playing a benefit concert in aid of Gaza earlier this year. But he’s also witnessed how responses to the genocide can differ on either side of the Irish Sea.

“It’s layered over here,” he says of the UK. “The Irish opinion on the Palestine situation is more clear cut – because they’ve got a recent history of oppression and division that they can associate with. Whereas over here, we’re still dealing with the hang-ups of the wrong-telling of the history of imperialism. There’s all these layers that are conditioned into society, to make people stand on teams – like one issue represents all these other things. So people feel like standing up for the Palestinian people means they’re anti-British, for some reason.

“And when you bring it into the music industry, it’s even more divided,” he adds. “A lot of people have opinions behind closed doors, because they feel like it will affect their money or their status if they become outspoken.”

That being said, Maverick has surrounded himself with a strong community of outspoken, like-minded creatives in London, and he’s been inspired to see a “diverse spectrum of people” showing up to marches and peaceful protests over there.

“A ridiculously diverse group of us turned up in Walthamstow, to stand against facism,” he says of the major demonstration against this summer’s far right violence. “A lot of the time ‘the left’ is represented as middle-class and middle-aged – whereas this was a lot of young people coming out, from all walks of life, saying, ‘We’re not standing for this shit.’ It was beautiful to see.”

That hungry 18-year-old voice he reconnected with during the Mav's Version process is also continuing to inspire the singer-songwriter these days – with Maverick currently approaching his work with a real sense of urgency. He tells me that he's already recorded another project, “a stripped acoustic folk album,” which he expects will be “coming out soon.”

“I’ve got 20 fucking projects on my laptop that I haven’t put out yet,” he reveals. “But I don’t want to be like, ‘I have this country album that only five people have heard…’ What the fuck is the point of that? I want to make sure that none of these things are just sat there anymore. Let me get this shit out!”

• Burn The Right Things Down is out now. Maverick Sabre plays The Limelight 1 in Belfast (February 12) and 3Olympia Theatre in Dublin (13).