Biography
After accumulating a range of musical and travel encounters during his formative years, multi-instrumentalist Joel Wästberg stepped forward under the name sir Was, bringing an adaptable sensibility to his boundary-crossing sound. He shapes his material by fusing hip-hop beats, textural synths, pop structures, and ambient production flourishes, a breadth of identity made clear on his 2017 debut album Digging a Tunnel and on Let the Morning Come, which arrived in 2021.
Wästberg spent his early years in Frillesås on Sweden’s western coast and began playing music in childhood, taking up the saxophone at age ten. At 18 he moved away from home to study jazz saxophone at a Folkhögskola in southern Sweden. Following those studies he appeared with numerous ensembles and once joined Sean Lennon for a session in New York. Still driven to move, he headed to South Africa and spent time at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, where his interest in Pan-African rhythms grew stronger. That interest intensified during travels through Mozambique and Zimbabwe, prompting him to begin creating his own music.
He tracked his first album, Digging a Tunnel, entirely on his own between autumn 2014 and spring 2015. Ahead of its early-2017 release, sir Was issued the 2016 EP Says Hi, which included the single “A Minor Life” that later reappeared on Digging a Tunnel. The collection already signaled the range of styles and influences Wästberg drew upon, incorporating bagpipes, synths, samples, and his own sweet and fragile vocals. His second album, Holding on to a Dream, came out in 2019 after the lead single “Deployed,” a collaboration with Little Dragon. The next year he released the EP Letter and received a diagnosis of a rare genetic disorder. Adjusting his perspective, he began writing his third album with that condition in mind. Before the album’s arrival he put out the collaborative EP Marasi with Falle Nioke in April 2021, then issued Let the Morning Come later that year.
Wästberg spent his early years in Frillesås on Sweden’s western coast and began playing music in childhood, taking up the saxophone at age ten. At 18 he moved away from home to study jazz saxophone at a Folkhögskola in southern Sweden. Following those studies he appeared with numerous ensembles and once joined Sean Lennon for a session in New York. Still driven to move, he headed to South Africa and spent time at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, where his interest in Pan-African rhythms grew stronger. That interest intensified during travels through Mozambique and Zimbabwe, prompting him to begin creating his own music.
He tracked his first album, Digging a Tunnel, entirely on his own between autumn 2014 and spring 2015. Ahead of its early-2017 release, sir Was issued the 2016 EP Says Hi, which included the single “A Minor Life” that later reappeared on Digging a Tunnel. The collection already signaled the range of styles and influences Wästberg drew upon, incorporating bagpipes, synths, samples, and his own sweet and fragile vocals. His second album, Holding on to a Dream, came out in 2019 after the lead single “Deployed,” a collaboration with Little Dragon. The next year he released the EP Letter and received a diagnosis of a rare genetic disorder. Adjusting his perspective, he began writing his third album with that condition in mind. Before the album’s arrival he put out the collaborative EP Marasi with Falle Nioke in April 2021, then issued Let the Morning Come later that year.
Albums
Singles
