The Music Issue: Gen Aux | Kenga Magazine by Kenga Magazine

ON THE COVER

TEAM Publisher Arinze 'Obi' Obiezue Editor-in-Chief Desmond Vincent Design Director Jean Quarcoopome Managing Editor Kena Kamau Media Director Andrew Djan-Sampson

CONTRIBUTORS Choosing a cover for an issue like this was one of the hardest things we’ve done as a team. We wanted a cover that spoke to our audience, that represented them. We wanted them to show young Africans, being African, yet as influenced by Africa, and modern African culture as they are by modern Western culture. On the cover, we draw influences from the 2006 movie Dreamgirls inspired by one of the greatest musical groups in history The Supremes to illustrate how even with the overarching influences of Western culture, Afro Gen Z’s still remain undeniably original.

WORDS

PHOTOGRAPHY & ART

Yaw Dyro Natachi Mez Victoria Audu Tomide Idowu Jok Gwantang Melissa Kariuki Jenchat Avezan Prince Fater Audu Melony Akpoghene Conrad Omodiagbe Wale Oloworekende Jesutomisin Ipinmoye Blossom Maduafokwa

Phloshop Delore Yao Natasha Ayoo Andrew Antwi Paul Frimpong Nimo Wahome Grishon Njoroge Joshua Gbadago Daniel Ametepey Babs Photography Valentine Udemadu Andrew Djan-Sampson Whitney Chinonye Ernest Olamide ‘Lamilogan’ Rufai

Cover Model Tobi Bakare

Set Assistants Maruf Hossain

MODELLING

Aisha Ali-Ahmad Yasmine Kudowor

Lauryn Samson

Make-up Temi Segun

Photographer Andrew Antwi

MQ Calsmart Marcel Efo Tobi Bakare Lena Morton Nadia Kalinga Melissa Kariuki Jeremiah Nnadi Ohemaa Akosua Stacy Omwando Aisha Ali-Ahmad Yasmine Kudowor Michelle Ngelechei

COSTUME & STYLING Danny McEll Andrew Antwi

MAKEUP Temi Segun Judah Odei Samuel Kinyagia

DIGITAL COVERS

EDITOR'S NOTE Where do you start with music? As I write this, I’m playing a playlist I have curated over the years that help me write without being intrusive. It includes songs . Just recently, music has kept us sane through the global pandemic, soundtrack multiple pop culture moments — who can forget the 2020 phenomenon that was Don’t Rush or 2021’s silhouette — soundtracked so many political moments. Music has been everywhere, a part of everything and everyone. There are a few concepts as universal as music. Yet for all this, music is still specifically an Afro Gen Z phenomenon. In real time, we’re watching as a new generation finds themselves in music. For young Africans, thanks to technology and a blurring of community lines, music is limitless. They have almost as much access to global music stars like Dua Lipa as they do to even the local talents on their streets. For this issue, we chose to explore what this means, what this looks like. What does it look like when a generation of young Africans have access to all this music? How does that change them? Does it?

Choosing a cover for an issue like this was one of the hardest things we’ve done as a team. We wanted a cover that spoke to our audience, that represented them. We wanted them to show young Africans, being African, yet as influenced by Africa, and modern African culture as they are by modern Western culture. On the cover, we draw influences from the 2006 movie Dreamgirls inspired by one of the greatest musical groups in history The Supremes to illustrate how even with the overarching influences of Western culture, Afro Gen Z’s still remain undeniably original. This issue has been a real labor of love. It has had us all reaching within ourselves, looking through our playlists, finding out what our favorite sounds mean, how they influence us, our politics, our relationships, and how they stir up and maintain political unrest. We hope you enjoy it!

Desmond Vincent Editor-in-Chief

INSIDE THE ISSUE HOW JANNELLE MONAÉ'S 'DIRTY COMPUTER' SAVED MY LIFE • SPOTIFY'S MONICA KEMOLI-SAVANNE ON THE GLOBALISATION OF AFRICAN MUSIC • YAW DYRO: FINDING PURPOSE THROUGH AFROBEAT • WE NEED MORE FAT GIRL SONGS • MY PLAYLIST SPEAKS FOR ME • THE MUSIC IS ME • A TEMPORARY FREEDOM • MUSIC AS A TOOL FOR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION • SHUFFERING AND SHMILING • MUSIC AND PROTEST IN NIGERIA • GEN Z ON THE IMPORTANCE OF MUSIC • PRESCRIBED SOUND: MUSIC AS MEDICATION • THE KENGA GUIDE TO MUSIC AND SEX • UNDERSTANDING PROTEST MUSIC IN NIGERIAN POP POST-END SARS • MUSIC AND NFTS: WHAT YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO NOT KNOW • THE GEN ZS OF VOODOO MUSIC • ASI RENIE: MAKING MUSICAL MAGIC WHILE GEN Z

photo: Phloshop

photo: Ohemma Akosua

photo: Grishon Njoroge

Personal story

Kenga:

janelle monáe’s dirty computer saved my life by Tomide Odu “My name is Jane 57821. I am a Dirty Computer. I am ready to be cleaned.”

anelle Monáe and Tessa Thompson’s characters walk into an 80s-style club in the colourful music video for the Prince-inspired, guitar-heavy

Make Me Feel; the lead single of their remarkable album, Dirty Computer, filled with punks, goths, dancers in leotards, and arcade games. It is clear to me, a curious and repressed 16-year old on the verge of uncovering his queerness, that this is a celebration of the fluidity of humanity. This is Janelle’s acknowledgement of the journey that queer people embark on to realise the wholeness that already exists within them—the wholeness which society seems to deny us of. When Janelle Monáe released their third studio album, Dirty Computer in 2018, they were making a statement. The script wasn't written for them, so they decided to write their own. After releasing 2010’s The ArchAndroid and 2013’s The Electric Lady, they took a 5-year long break to focus on an acting career that lead to her featuring in films like the universally-

acclaimed Hidden Figures and Moonlight. These films imagined Janelle as assertive and sensitive female characters which included NASA mathematician and aerospace engineer, Mary Jackson, one of the women who is responsible for the first American moon landing, and Teresa, a woman who plays surrogate mother to a black gay boy with few escape routes from loneliness and violence. So when it was time for Janelle Monáe to make their own character and tell their story, it made sense for it to be something that felt truly honest to them and their journey as a queer

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When Janelle Monáe released their third studio album…they were making a statement.

person. Continuing with their previous themes of afro-futurism and a feminist world, they made an album that defied expectations and tackled the American and global ideals of living in a patriarchal society, and the issues that come with them. The album was released along with a 48-minute narrative film of the same name with stunning visuals and choreography with several nods to the dystopian film genre. The film is set in a surveillance state with a postapocalyptic feel and the characters are dressed in futuristic versions of 80s punkera fashion. The scene opens with a monologue where Jane 57821 explains that people in this universe are called "computers" and that people who deviate are found dirty and taken to be "cleaned"—a process that involves wiping their memories and making them into some sort of obedient zombie. The song Make Me Feel; where we are introduced to the characters Zen & Ché, played by Tessa Thompson and Jayson Aaron, as well as Janelle Monáe's Jane (57821), who seem to be in a

Personal story

Kenga: polyamorous relationship and are all at a party where all kinds of people look like they are enjoying themselves, dancing and voguing, before a "police force" arrives and arrests many of them. The song opens with an interpolation & excerpt of the Declaration of Independence used in a sermon by American preacher Dr. Sean McMillan: "You told us we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the—and the pursuit of happiness." It also includes these lyrics which encapsulate the theme of the album and film.

agency which is responsible for erasing memories of victims– Dirty Computers–and incorporating and initiating them into their society. This allegory portrays how (African) society manipulates tools like religion to justify cruel and regressive laws to force compliance into any “deviants”, something that a considerable number of young Africans, often tagged Gen Z, resist. A general notion of Gen Z is that it is a generation obsessed with labels and identity, and this is often used by other generations in attempts to shame us, something I find absurd because the need to identify with something cuts across the entire human race. Family, culture, religion, societies & clubs, all of these are attempts to satisfy the human desire to feel like part of something bigger.

“Remember when they told you I was too Black for ya? And now my Black poppin' like a bra-strap on ya I was kicked out, said I'm too loud In Take a Byte, Janelle Monáe Kicked out, said I'm too proud sings, But all I really ever felt was stressed out "I'm not the kind of girl you take Kinda like my afro when it's home to your mama now pressed out" Your code is programmed not to love me, but you can't pretend Janelle Monáe calls out Oh, what a surprise… discrimination in America using Just take a byte" compelling words which in turn highlight the unjust treatment of lyrics which allude to living people who are non-white, non- against society’s prescribed cisheterosexual, non-male, and norms. Words like “code” and who in general do not hold or “programmed” describe how contain certain qualities that give heterosexuality is the imposed them power in our hegemonic norm and any other expressed society. identity or experience is a “glitch”. They also ask their lover In a subsequent scene, it is to allow herself to take a bite, revealed that Zen, now Maryusing “byte” as a pun that fits Apple 53, no longer remembers into the theme of Janelle Jane, and is now an agent of The referring to their self as an House of The New Dawn, the android in the album’s context. As they sing, their memory is being wiped.

In Screwed, Jane seems to be recalling a memory where they are on the run with Zen from surveillance robots. Janelle Monáe uses the title to simultaneously refer to sex and the state of America with regards to the bodily autonomy of women. They encourage women to be comfortable with safe sex and call out the patriarchy’s abuse of sex as a leveraging tool over women. Lyrics like “We’ll put water in your guns / We’ll do it all for fun” see Janelle calling out America’s gun control problem and encouraging people to take control of their narrative. Janelle Monáe also uses Django Jane, complete with the dancers and Janelle dressed in Black Panther-esque attire, to call out the patriarchy and praise women and queer people who protest society’s norms by living their lives fiercely. They also call out the bad treatment that Black people face. And the song and visuals for Pynk are an ode to women’s sexuality and beauty. And vaginas. Make Me Feel and I Like That address Janelle’s pansexuality and see them loudly declare their attraction to people irrespective of gender and the Make Me Feel visuals use bisexual lighting to portray their fluid nature and how they are not really concerned with how other people might perceive their identity. In an album that explicitly portrays queerness and longing, it was hard for me not to ask questions about myself and the world around me. As a Gen-Z Nigerian, the album gave me solace at a time when I felt

Personal story

Kenga: isolated, scared, and hopeless. It helped me picture a reality where community and the expression of queer affection, is no longer farfetched. And that saved my life. Dirty Computer emphasised the power of finding love and community and the hope that it can give. It also allowed me to realise the power of defining myself and rejecting society’s boxes. It made me sit with the pain of looking into society's eyes and feeling like I'd never be more than a shirt stain to rub off. And the feeling swallowed me but I got up—parts of my body and my mind sprawled all over the room. I was no longer the same. The light had left my eyes. Something else had creeped in. "Me wickeda than dem. You no fit kill wetin don die before". My new resolve. "Get up. Find others with the stain. Drink from the crimson cup. Your sunken eyes contain something that no one else has. A kind of joy and warmth that is born from terror and unknowable pain. We are all dirty, our bugs and viruses form part of the whole that is who we are."

Dirty Computer RnB/SOUL 2018

Janelle Monáe

photo: Andrew Djan-Sampson

Kenga:

Interview

Spotify’s Monica KemoliSavanne on the Globalisation of African Music

Interview

Kenga: MONICA KEMOLI-SAVANNE is Spotify’s Artist & Label Partnerships Manager in East Africa and the founder of Tangaza Magazine, an online publication dedicated to highlighting East Africa's urban, contemporary and alternative music scene. In this interview, she shares stories about her foray into music, what she’s learnt since being in the music industry, and her thoughts on the role of Afro Gen Zs in the globalisation of African music. by Arinze Obi

What drew you to music, Monica?

focused on East Africa’s contemporary creative scene called TANGAZA Magazine. That This is going to sound very cliche was my first foray into the music but I’ve been in love with music industry. I have become from as long as I can remember. increasingly passionate about Throughout my primary and artist education and creating secondary school years, I spaces for aspiring music learned to play 4 instruments industry professionals to hone and was heavily involved in any their skills as I had the musical related activities. In opportunity to. I’m grateful that another life, I’m most likely a my current role at Spotify as an background singer. Somewhere Artist & Label Partnerships along the way, I became manager allows me to such as fascinated with the process that hosting masterclasses and goes behind getting a song from spearheading our EQUAL Africa the studio to radio. This program which seeks to amplify prompted me to seek out music female musicians across the industry focused courses for my continent and foster equity undergraduate degree and I was within the music industry. fortunate enough to attend The Bandier Program at Syracuse Since you took on this role at University and I went on to Spotify, what are some of the further specialise in Music biggest lessons you’ve learnt? Business Management at The University of Westminster. One of the biggest lessons I’ve Furthermore, having grown up in learned since joining Spotify is Nairobi, I was exposed to the the importance of failing forward. incredible talent present in Kenya and East Africa at large, particularly amongst new wave creatives through attending festivals such as Blankets and Wine. Therefore, due to a combination of homesickness and a strong desire to showcase the talent from my region especially as conversation about African music tended to centre West Africa, I founded an online music and culture discovery platform

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You have to become comfortable with taking risks

As a self-professed perfectionist, my preference is to have a plan A, B, C through G visualised before beginning work on a project. However, working in this fast-paced environment, which is the nature of the music industry at large, has taught me that you have to become comfortable with taking risks as well as the value of applying a scientific, experimentation and quick iteration approach to whatever you’re working on. Another key lesson I’ve learned is that of working towards establishing a healthy work life balance and taking care of your mental health. Anyone who works in the entertainment industry will tell you that whereas it has its glitzy perks, it can also be gruelling if you don’t learn how to establish boundaries and develop practises to preserve your well being. Because Africa has such a young population, young people have the greatest influence on culture. What do you think this means for the music industry? The youth of today play an important role in the music industry, not just globally but specifically in Africa. As a music platform, it is crucial that we understand what GenZ values

Kenga: and what they look for when it comes to a music streaming service or platform. Since they are our largest target audience, we have to ensure that we keep up and continually adapt to new music trends. The youth of today are different from those of decades before, in the sense that they value emotion and meaning, prefer playlists over albums, are not afraid to voice their opinions, and are innovative trendsetters. Gen Z has the ability to identify new and upcoming music through various social media platforms. Therefore, it is vital for us as a company to ensure we are on par and adapt accordingly. The same goes for other players in the music industry, they have to keep in mind the values that today’s youth hold dear. Afrobeats, with a focus on Nigerian music, is having such a global moment. Why do you think that’s happening, especially right now? Nigeria is the origin of Afrobeats, generating the majority of the stars who have made their way to the West in recent times. There’s a number of reasons why I believe this is happening at the moment. The world has become a global village and thanks to streaming services such as Spotify, it’s much easier for people anywhere to discover and consume content that they may not have been able to access a couple of years

ago. And with the globally appealing sound and aesthetic of Afrobeats, once you get a taste of it, you will definitely want to hear more. Social media has also contributed massively to the growth and exportation of Afrobeats. You only have to think back to last year when CKay’s Love Nwantiti was the soundtrack of many dance challenges on social media. The world has become more accepting, and even curious about different cultures and ethnicities, giving Afrobeats, and other African genres such as Amapiano, the chance to become popular.The genre has become a worldwide phenomenon and will only continue to grow from here. Additionally, collaborations between artists from different African countries (think Davido and Focalistic on champion sound) or between African artists and artists from other parts of the world (think Wizkid, Tems and Justin Bieber) might definitely be helping get our local genres abroad. These collaborations even break language barriers – think Adekunle Gold jumping on French Cameroonian singer TayC’s hit song Dodo very recently. This is a great example of what happens when we as Africans work together and join hands with others across the globe to spread love and good vibes through beautiful music. What role do you think Gen Zs play in the globalisation of African culture through music? Nearly everyone in Africa

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Interview

These collaborations even break language barriers – think Adekunle Gold jumping on French Cameroonian singer TayC’s hit song Dodo embraces music as a sociocultural activity. African values and beliefs are emphasised in music, which also features melodies that represent diverse customs. Music is often used to commemorate significant occasions, such as weddings and births. There are songs that tell stories of history as well as those that offer appreciation and critiques. GenZ plays an important role in the globalisation of African culture through music as they use their various social media platforms, and digital as well as creative abilities, to showcase African culture to the world. What’s Spotify’s plan for engaging the Afro Gen Z community? Gen Z is an important target audience for us at Spotify, especially in Africa which as you

Interview

Kenga: mentioned, has a mostly young population. They are the tastemakers and changemakers, and we have a number of plans, some currently happening, others coming up, in order to better engage with them. Our Fresh Finds Africa programme is for independent upcoming artists, and most of the artists featured so far are Gen Z, including Kenya’s Maya Amolo and Njeri as well as Ghana’s Kofee Bean. We are also planning events across our markets that are specifically aimed at Afro Gen Z, so keep an eye out for those. Through what programs or channels is Spotify Africa supporting young African music talent? I’ve mentioned our Fresh Finds Africa programme, which is aimed at upcoming artists who are not yet signed to a record label. We kicked off the programme in March this year, and have a different artist fronting the playlist every month. Spotify's RADAR Africa programme strives to promote and assist upcoming artists by introducing them to larger markets. Kenya's Buruklyn Boyz, along with DBN GOGO, Ayra Starr, Black Sherif, Victony, and BNXN, have recently joined the international set of RADAR artists. Through the RADAR Africa programme, we have also entered into a unique collaboration with COLORSxSTUDIOS, a Berlin-

based music platform, to feature selected African Artists. These artists will also be showcased on the COLORSxSTUDIOS webpage, where fans can learn more about their background stories and the motivation behind their music. The first artist featured is Ayra Starr, and you can check out her COLORS performance here. In addition to these programmes, we also have masterclasses coming up where we invite artists and their teams to learn more about Spotify and the different programmes we have for artists. The first one was held in Lagos in April this year, and we have others coming up in Nairobi, Accra and Johannesburg.

My favourite thing about Afro Gen Zs is our enterprising spirit - we are a generation of hustlers who refuse to conform. Despite the harsh economic, social and political climates that we find ourselves coming up in, we are persistently finding creative ways to become successful.

In what ways do you think new technologies are changing the music streaming industry that Spotify currently leads?

What artists dominate your favourite Spotify playlist?

The music sector has shifted significantly over the last few decades. Radio was once the most popular method for people to listen to music and learn about fresh artists.Data analysis, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are some of the tools that are progressively being used by the music sector to enhance the ultimate user experience. For Spotify to continue to be at the forefront of the music streaming industry, it is vital for us to adapt and embrace new technologies.

Furthermore, I love how passionate we are about not only getting back in touch with our roots and heritage, and proudly pushing our various cultures forward, but also our determination to change the narrative of our continent and how we are perceived globally. The successful export of African culture that is currently taking place is largely being driven by Afro Gen Zs.

I’m an R&B head so I spend a lot of my listening time sifting through Spotify’s R&B hub. My go-to playlists within that hub are our very own Sizzlers, Tantalizers and Nairobae which all showcase R&B artists from across the continent. Picking favourites is tough but Manana, Maya Amolo, Titose, Njeri, Iyanah Kiragu and Preye are amongst my top picks at the moment. I also have a preference for alt-leaning artists so I listen to the Alte Cruise playlist as well. Artists that I currently have on repeat from that space are Mau from nowhere, Ogi, Obongjayar, Jinku, and Tay Iwar.

What’s your favourite thing about Afro Gen Zs?

photo: Andrew Antwi

photo: Nimo Wahome

art: Delore Yao

Interview

Kenga:

YAW DYRO FINDING PURPOSE THROUGH AFROBEAT 17

article

Kenga: YAW DYRO is a 21-year-old Ghanaian musician who got on the music scene only two years ago and has already left his mark through his unique sound which combines rich Afrobeat sounds inspired by his childhood and a few African musicians who inspire him. In this article, he speaks candidly about his background, sharing stories about the people and experiences that have influenced his growth as an artist.

I’m Yaw Dyro, also known as the Afrobeat Commando. My real name is Abraham Nii Ayikwei Okai. My Dad is Ghanaian and my mom is Nigerian. "Dyro" was formed from my Nigerian name “Diran” which is pronounced as di-ron. Diran is a Yoruba name that means "brave". I started making studio records four years ago as “Lil B” until I found my own unique sound. I used to rap all way from junior high school but I started going to the studio in 2018. Then, as I experimented with Afrobeat, late in 2018 and discovered how easy and quick it was for me to make my first song . It was the first time I felt spiritual while making music. It was the first time I felt a real connection with my sound. At that point, I definitely knew that Afrobeat is what I was born to do. I took a break from music throughout the year of 2019 to learn more about the genre I was going into and to also improve myself and my skill. During that time, I found out that whenever I made new music it was better than the previous songs I made, so I started saving so I could get myself basic recording equipments, which included a sound card, headphones, and a microphone. Those were all I needed to start recording myself and start making new music almost everyday.

By making music consistently, I was able to discover my artistic strengths and weaknesses. I also learnt how to sing in key and I also came up with the name Yaw Dyro. On the 23rd of March 2020, I released my first Afrobeat single titled “Balance 4 me”. The reception was great and at this point I knew it was the beginning of a new chapter for my career. On the 12th of June 2020, I released my second single titled "Dey 4 me" which was produced by Bla Broda. After "Dey 4 me," I recorded some features and then I made a 4-song tape titled "After 18" which was released on the 13th of September 2021 . This tape speaks about my life from when I turned 18 in 2019 and left home that same year to find my path on my own. The four songs on that tape were "Enemies" , "Fall" , "Longtime" ft Black Sherif, and "Party".

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At that point, I definitely knew that Afrobeat is what I was born to do 18

Interview

Kenga: "Enemies," produced by Tclef Beats, basically spoke about the negative vibes and energy I received throughout the journey. "Fall" spoke about my Love life during that period. I had just met a girl after moving to that new

hood and I was already falling for her after seeing her for the first time but I never had the chance to express my feelings because I was too shy so I decided to put it in a song. "Longtime" spoke about the struggles and challenges I was facing after I left home. It was also produced by Tclef Beats. "Party" also spoke about the nightlife my friends and I experienced as young kids on our own. We didn’t have any limitations from parents because we lived on our own. I started attending parties and visiting the club with my friends who also wanted to explore life. That song, produced by Swaty Beats, still means a lot more to me than anyone could ever imagine. Anytime I listen to it, I see my life replay in my head. Fast-forwarding to more recent times, I released a new freestyle titled "Smile" on the 19th of April 2022. It was produced by Beats Vampire. The inspiration for smile came from some of the conversations I have with my mom anytime she calls and we talk about the kind of vision I have for her with my music. That song was about how I really just want to make my mother smile; she is the most important person to me in this world. I don’t play with my family because they never looked down on me when I shared my dreams with them. My family has been supportive of my career from the first day I decided to make music. Over the years, my career has just been getting better, and I’m forever grateful to God for this. I see my sounds changing lives and bringing people peace. My feelings, my experience and my environment are the three things that influence the type of music I make. With my music, my biggest dream is to use it as an instrument to change lives and touch hearts.

Kenga:

Photo: Babs Photography

Interview

photo: Olamide Rufai

article

Kenga:

we need more fat girl songs by Melony Akpoghene

usic is my soul sister. I listen to music when battling depressive episodes, social anxiety, or craving some alone time in crowded situations. Music is also a way for me to tap into my ‘baddie’ persona. I enjoy healthy doses of Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Ms Banks, City Girls, and all the many artists of this era making music designed to feel like a diva, flawlessly mimicking their musical inflexions, complete with gestures and all. However, the presence of temporary "sigh" moments never fails to disrupt an otherwise immersive experience when I listen to most of these artists. These "sigh" moments are usually triggered by parts of the songs where the "slim waist, fat ass" body standard is declared as unarguably the standard for every woman. It often causes an internal struggle because "this music is food to my soul but it is hurting my spirit " feeling. Best believe that it is pretty hard, not to mention awkward, to feel like a

baddie while listening to these songs when you're unmistakably othered and essentially told you fail to meet the requirements of a baddie. Historically, the representation of women in mainstream media has established only thin, abled women as symbols of beauty. However, changing beauty standards have propped the curvy-shaped woman right at the forefront, at times almost above the thin woman. Thus, it is no surprise that many songs, even those by female artists, are reflecting this by focusing, maybe even obsessing, over the current standard of beauty. Nonetheless, with the rise of body-positive movements and the self-acceptance discourse, artists, albeit very few, are tweaking their songs/music videos to accommodate people of all body types in ways that the misogynistic tinge of objectification may not largely influence. For example, in Davido's "Risky" with Popcaan, Risky by Davido (feat. Popcaan)

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Songs used as candid expressions against fatphobia are unique to me. where he addresses a love interest, he spirals away from the conventional description of women worthy of love by describing her using:" Big waist". This is in eye-popping opposition to the norm where men glorify and glamorise women with the regular "slim waist, fat ass" bodies, just like in Big Sean's "Ass", where he asks: "How your waist anorexic and then your ass is colossal?" Dance (Ass) by Big Sean (feat. Nicki Minaj)

Songs used as candid expressions against fatphobia

article

Kenga: are unique to me. Most significantly, songs are sung by fat artists who have been directly affected by the caustic fatphobic climate pervading the music industry. These artists include Busiswa, Lizzo, Kanda Mbenza-Ngoma, and Heather Mae. Even so, some songs have variations and interpretations of anti-fatphobia that do not settle well with me. These are songs that have disturbing, patronising tones; songs that 'encourage" you to "accept your flaws." Examples include: Who You Are by Jessie J: "I stare at my reflection in the mirror Why am I doing this to myself? Losing my mind on a tiny error." Crooked Smile by J. Cole (ft. TLC): "We ain't picture perfect, but we worth the picture still." Perfect to Me by Anne-Marie: "I'm okay with not being perfect 'Cause that's perfect to me." I find songs like these utterly reductive because they imply that there is a perfect model, a concession to that model when the raison d'être should be the deconstruction of appraised images of "perfect". They acknowledge and insist that you have a flaw, that even though you could do with some fixing, try to love yourself anyway. However, being fat is not a flaw — cellulite, stretch marks, saggy breasts, darker inner thighs, and underarms are not flaws or imperfections that ought to be championed into tentative

acceptance with pseudo-body positive mantras or movements. Hence, when songs with lyrics such as Lizzo's "Tempo" blast through my speakers, they help me refocus my perspective on my appearance and happilycome to terms with the fact that I do not need to fit into the "slim waist, fat ass" standard. These songs heavily ground my perception of my identity as a fat woman. As a result, I make conscious decisions to seek out songs that make me feel good in an overall, easy-glide manner — no lapses, pauses, or moments where I have to fight niggling bits of fatphobia.

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They acknowledge and insist that you have a flaw, that even though you could do with some fixing, try to love yourself anyway. 24

photo: Grishon Njoroge

photo: Paul Frimpong

article

Kenga:

My playlist speaks for me by Victoria Audu

All Of The Lights by Kanye West

here's this Basquiat quote I really like. ‘Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.’ It’s a bookmark in time. I can tell you what was going on in my life at a certain point by looking at what music I was listening to at the time.’

A prodigy, a connoisseur, or perhaps just a 19 year old with an intense love and passion for music. Cyril’s musical history began for him when he listened passively to the songs that played on his old PSP. These songs played on repeat during his games and like a subliminal message he began to enjoy and anticipate them. But, it wasn’t until his aunt began to add her favorite songs to his iPod that he truly started to appreciate music. ‘My aunt really liked Coldplay and Linkin Park so she put me on.’ The first song a person truly loves is like an epic first crush. For Cyril it was Numb by Linkin

Park. It begins with that first melody, transitions to the perfectly crafted verse just to explode at the chorus and reach its climax at the bridge. The effect of the perfect song resembles the scene from Ratatouille where Anton Ego tastes Remy’s ratatouille and it transports him to a moment in his childhood. Music transports a person just like that, if not better. Numb by Linkin Park

Cyril remembered his first concert in Toronto for a band called Good Kid. It was only a couple months since he moved from Nigeria for school. ‘I went alone because I didn’t know anyone here that listened to them and my friends that put me on were in America.’ There were almost no black people with the exception of a girl who introduced him to members of the band. Cyril spoke to two of the band members before the show, the drummer and bassist.

he had listened to a few songs by them on the way to the venue, but they were even more amazing live. After the concert, one of the band members introduced him to a song from the pre-concert playlist. It was The Difference by Flume ft. Toro y Moi. Every friend group has that one person who knows every song ever made. Basing his entire personality around music, Cyril couldn’t shy away from the role he was set to play. He became that guy who people would ask for song recommendations. Now, he’s diversified into fashion and film but music remains central to it all. The little things even in his daily life are highly influenced by the songs, films and shows that he consumes. ‘Even in films and TV, I still focus a lot on what’s being played. I’ve been able to create narratives just out of inspiration from music. Secret: I’m actually working on a TV series inspired by an Ed Sheeran song.’ The Difference by Flume (feat. Toro y Moi)

Kenga: Cyril believes that just like him, everyone is soundtracking their lives to something. ‘Whether it’s a new TikTok sound you’re obsessed with or a hidden gem you don’t want to share with the world, everyone’s always listening to something.’ This is especially important for the TikTok obsessed generation z. Being Gen Z means so many different things to different people. For some, it’s the year you were born. For others it’s your perception and comfortability with the internet. For Cyril, it means ‘being open and free, accepting others as they are and having the ability to be yourself unapologetically’. Mouthwash by Kate Nash

‘Music is sanity, it’s art. People who see me always see me with earphones on because it’s a level of noise I can control…I’m not really clear on who I am as a person but I can say with certainty that if you take anything music away from me, you’ve probably stripped like 80% of who I am.’ John had just finished a day of classes and as he walked to the campus’ student center, his locs bounced to the steps of his feet grazing the interlock blocks still damp from that morning’s rain. His eardrums were oblivious to the sound of voracious kekes speeding around him as he listened to Steady by Wizkid. As he sat on the wet slab, John hit his hand on his chin remembering

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validation from our families, school, friends and overall society. Beauty then emerges when we’re able to find a place for our obscurity in music because no matter the thought or emotion one feels, someone has written a song about it. So in 2022, music isn’t just a tool of socialization but has transformed to being a key part of a person's existence. When John is not listening to the first song he ever loved. Let it music, he’s making music; if not, he’s talking about it. And if none Rock by Kevin Rudolf (2008). of the above, it’ll probably be a Under the influence of his rap sad day for him. marinated older cousin, the His eyes lit up as he dragged the genre became his favorite. OGs like Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar words slowly, carefully, not wanting a misinterpretation, and J Cole now top his Spotify ‘music is joy for me’. playlists and hold a special place in his heart while he listens Sefless casually to electronic, by The Strokes alternative, RnB, soul and even dabbles in Korean alternative ‘Music is a formal medium of music. storytelling. It makes me a better storyteller, it gives me ideas, More than a single person, the influences the way I see the music of the time defines the world, it tells me other people’s entire generation. Music has point of views…You can inspired political movements basically people watch through and it does the same with music. So as a storyteller, I don’t influencing pop culture. Gen Z’s see much (of a difference) are able to consume so much between sitting down to learn music across a range of genres about people and listening to from alternative to pop rock to afro beats and amapiano naming music.’ but a few. ‘There’s a space for Maddie was in class and while everyone,’ John said. Popular the middle aged lecturer who music has become a doubled resembled Carl Fredricksen sided sword to defend the from Up went on about media bearer from being an outcast laws, her ears were filled with a and stab them if they get too post-modern symphony. It was close and lose themselves. August by Taylor Swift. As people grow older, it doesn’t Growing up, she was surrounded get any easier to fit in. Being by figures like Celine Dion, accepted is a major challenge Westlife and sometimes even for the afro gen z as we are got a glimpse of Mariah Carey. taught from birth to constantly She hadn’t met them in real life seek

More than a single person, the music of the time defines the entire generation.

Kenga:

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sadness, she curates her playlists to represent those different types strictly appropriate to that specific emotion. ‘I have more but she knew them through playlists than I can count…I have music. Her neighbors would play a playlist called Sounds from a early 2000s boy bands around lifetime I’ve never lived’. She even her echoing in her ears but has playlists to mimic a cinematic resonating with her soul, shaping universe matching the emotions her love for music to come. gotten from watching a specific film or reading a novel. ‘I also use Artists such as Wizkid, Davido, ‘Music is one of those mediums playlists to bring a character to that tend to reflect what’s going Tiwa Savage, Burna Boy and life’. As a writer, she creates a on in your life.’ Maddie, like many many more are topping Billboard persona in playlists to help keep charts and some even bagging others, finds it difficult to share her in the mind of the character grammy awards. On the other or open up to others and so she creates and it allows her to hand, artists like Ckay, Fireboy, finds comfort in the music she know that character ever more Ayra Starr are going viral in the hears that lets her know she’s deeply. millions for their songs on not alone. TikTok. Afro music is now so Skinny Dipping by Sabrina Carpenter Music reflects time, fashions and revolutionized from being obscure to popular and auxunspoken emotions that approved. although everyone feels they’d Music is beauty, identity, a hobby, rather not talk about. And that’s Sober II solace and many more. While why many people in this by Lorde some curate playlists to generation of heavy reliance and soundtrack their lives, others synergy with electronics, listen to sounds to intensify Music has become a new found connect more to their playlists feelings of the moment. Music religion and playlists are the holy than other human beings. allows Maddie to become a books of the new gen. Some better storyteller. She uses it to create playlists based on mood One of Maddie’s favorite artists view different points of views and but Cyril and Maddie create their is Taylor Swift. Her fascination realities. Cyril has been able to holy manual with more intention. with her as an artist and form an identity in himself he is Cyril has 58 playlists and individual is rooted not only in yet to find in any other medium her tastes but also in her feminist counting. He has playlists for through music and John is gloomy days, summer and even ideals. As a woman, she sees it intentional in what he listens to as an alternative Euphoria as natural to support and uplift a way to gain inspiration. soundtrack he curated himself. other women including those in ‘My Magnum Opus is this one music - specifically women in These Afro Gen Z’s have little in called Oh look you’re about to Afropop. She’s partial to the common but their music underground and alte sounds of cry. I made it at the worst time in applications and subscriptions my life and it carried me through Amaarae and Fave, but also which keep them sane, organize that period.’ The playlist, like a enjoys listening to Ayra Starr. their lives and grant them fun as piece of art, remains Cyril’s they stager unsure into Afropop artists have established favorite till today. adulthood. Sharing this similarity a transformative era where with many others of their peers, Maddie makes her playlists media and content considered they each continue to grow, almost similarly. She has as popular to the afro/black soundtracking their milestones to playlists from feelings of world, is also considered as their favourite songs. popular and trendy to the global euphoria and sadness but as there are different levels to scene. august by Taylor Swift

Afro pop artists have established a transformative era

photo: Nimo Wahome

art: Delore Yao

photo: Paul Frimpong

poem

Kenga:

THe music is me by Jenchat Avezan

I Learnt Some Jazz Today by Tesselated

Completely consumed by the jazz beat Indifferent to the reggae tunes You can tell by how I move my feet Not my face 'cause it reflects the blues I sing along with the makers of pop Dancing to the sound of talking drums Making merry to the sound of songs And sometimes, the village square gongs Melodies that speak to my soul Are forever memorable till the end of time I take these and etch them unto my being They become my identity, making me whole…

photo: Andrew Djan-Sampson

Photo: Joshua Gbadago

photo: Nimo Wahome

narrative

Kenga:

A temporary freedom by Jok Gwantang

n a Thursday night in Ibadan, boys and girls grind their waists on one another. They scream at the top of their lungs lyrics from their childhoods which they’d spent worlds apart in Abuja, Enugu, Lagos, Zaria, Jos. The red and blue light flashes on a lady's face, and just before you catch it, it’s on the hands of the boy holding her waist. What is the theme for this Thursday night that has these boys and girls filled with some kind of madness? Certainly, they are intoxicated. There is the thick smell of alcohol mixed with weed mixed with sweat mixed with fruity and woody scented perfume in the air. Mid-2000s and early 2010s afrobeats songs are playing across the different speakers in the building. Whatever the DJ is trying to achieve is effective because the crowd is filled with ecstasy at this familiar sound from their childhood. But what’s that thing about nostalgia that makes you think so lovingly about a former version of yourself? As they throw their hands in the air, they

remember that Saturday drive when they were ten and returning home from the common entrance examination, or that Christmas they first watched the music video for Iyanya’s ‘Kukere’ with their cousin who already owned a Nokia C1. I like this DJ who is saying, ‘murder this current self and bring back the old you when you had fewer troubles.’ But could that be true? Except that a remembrance of the old time only brings some sort of longing no matter how exciting or depressing it had been. I was at this club with my friends and some of my coursemates. We were celebrating our last days as undergraduates, and I had asked my boyfriend J. to tag along–a decision I spent half of the night regretting. My friends and I had never really been to a club, and before arriving that night we’d made jokes about the things we would do. The loud music reverberating on the chairs and floor and the disco light flashing on and off had an almost hypnotic effect on me that I wondered why I was here

and how people felt comfortable being here. Soon enough, I realized J. physically drifting away from me. First, it was a refusal to sit in the obvious space I made close to me for him. Then later, the complete performance to act like he couldn't see nor hear me. For example, when the waitress brought the menu for drinks and I moved to ask him what we would get, he pretended that he had not heard me and moved on to discuss with my friends what to get. Above the noise, I tried to ask what was wrong, but he said nothing. I wasn’t the only one who felt things were weird. When J. stood up to go to the bathroom, one of my friends asked if he was alright and I told her I wasn't sure. I followed J. to the restroom, but that got him really angry and asked me to stop following him. I left him, angry myself, and yet confused. Wasn’t this the same boy whose hands I held while we were in the car coming to the club? What had changed? Then came the usual question a lover might have when a partner

Kenga:

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I felt invisible and wanted everything to stop. The songs, the dance, the smiles, the noise, the entire energy in the building. dishes out the silent treatment, “what have I done?” When he returned, he left to smoke with a couple of guys at a different booth. I felt invisible and wanted everything to stop. The songs, the dance, the smiles, the noise, the entire energy in the building. I kept looking at the time wondering how long before it was all over, before we left the club and had a conversation about what this all was about. My friend who was dancing and had moved on with other things came around to ask me what was wrong, and although I said nothing at first, I soon opened my mouth and went on and on about how I felt so invisible to the boyfriend. She said she was sorry and tried explaining that she didn't think I was the problem. She said not long after we got into the club she noticed he was unsettled, as I had noticed, and also that he was actually fidgety, which I hadn't noticed. She left to discuss some things with him and he came over to ask if we could be apart just for the night. I did not respond. He came around again

narrative to ask if he could dance with a particular lady, a question which hurt me so deeply because we couldn’t even be together. I said sure. Later, when we left the club, and I told him how hurt and pissed I was, he would say that he was scared of us getting too close because the club was clearly filled with straight people who wouldn't mind harming us once they perceived that we were two boys in a relationship. I understood because I was queer and knew what straight people do to you when you're not straight. But I wasn't asking him to kiss me, just to speak to me as I did to my other male friends, as he did with other male people in the club. “It doesn’t make sense that you invited him here and you're being all sad,” my friend said. Everyone around was moving and swaying their hips, getting dance partners, and changing dance partners. I also wanted to dance, move my waist, and express myself because the music meant something to me. I was happy I was finally going to be done with uni. But I realized how scared I too was of these straight people who had succeeded in making my boyfriend scared of talking to me. When Wizkid’s Pakurumo came on, I began doing basic body moves. I was conscious of my body movements and didn’t want to give anything away. I’ve always been conscious of how I talk, walk, dance, and really just move in the world. I didn’t want this night to be another avenue where I am asked why I act like a

girl. In my first year, a girl in this club asked me why I was acting like a girl. I remember walking to my room crying and later writing in my journal that God was wicked because he allowed straight people to think they had some higher sense of morality than us. In my second year, the same girl, as a compliment, said I was looking more masculine. A few days later I sent her paragraphs stating why it was senseless to think that becoming more masculine was a compliment. Even when Davido’s Ekuro reached the chorus and the whole club went into a frenzy, mouthing the lyrics, I still found it hard to ease into the moment. I wondered what these straight boys and girls would think of me if I moved my hands in a certain way, if I got into the craze of the song. As a fucking homosexual? I realized then how much this double-guessing every action had affected my life up to that point. I watched the other boys who moved freely, holding girls, and I felt deeply hurt. It was as if a wrong judgment had been passed on me. Why did I still care about the same people who would probably have bullied or taunted me in my childhood and teenage years when these songs were released. I decided then that we all had the same right to these songs, and could express ourselves through them in any way. As the first line of D’banj’s Oliver Twist came on, I also joined the crowd mouthing it and fell into the madness of the night, tapping

narrative

Kenga: into the nostalgia that had everyone screaming at the top of their lungs. I moved my body how I liked, how my body told me to move. I moved from raising my butt to Iyanya’s Kukere to choreographing Azonto dance moves with other clubbers. These were songs that connected us together, kids born in the late 90s and early 2000s. It connected us in spite of the bad memory some of us have retained from that era. We danced around in circles, inventing new dance steps as the beat dictated.

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I moved my body how I liked, how my body told me to move…I felt really free One hand up, then your legs, then freestyle it. I knew on that dance floor that I could have had a better life, a different life if I had not been restricted by my gender expressions. But that night it didn’t matter because in those minutes when I moved my body I felt really free.

photo: Nimo Wahome

Essay

Kenga:

Music as a tool for freedom of expression by Prince Fater Audu

ore than ever, the assertion of Henry Wadsmorth Longfellow that "music is the universal language of mankind" has received the most validation by the recent transcendence and intermingling of different genres of music globally, despite geographical barriers and cultural differences. Long before now, the language of music has differed the seemingly artificial distinctions that divides humanity along cultural lines and tongues. Contemporarily, the profound impact of music on humanity is far beyond incited emotions and invoked thoughts - it is more fluid than that. To the average Generation Z person (colloquially known as "Gen Z" or "Zoomers"), music is among other things, a significant tool for the realisation of human rights. For a generation whose prime is in the heart of a widespread digital revolution, where the internet and social media have bestowed enormous influence on musical figures and freedom

of expression and propagation of social change is beyond mere entertainment alone. Music to an African Gen Z like others around the world, is a significant medium for the expression of thoughts, delight, and grievances. Generally, music plays an indispensable part in shaping the behaviour and social orientation of an African GEN Z, just like those from other parts of the world. Emphasizing how music plays a pivotal role in the life of an African child, Ikenna Emmanuel Owuegbuna, a musicologist and senior lecturer with the department of music at the University of Nigeria in an exclusive interview with BBC rightfully stated thus: “The African child is conceived, nurtured, and raised in rhythm. Pestles pounding, dance, and singing [conveys] rythm to [the] foetus. The first communication between a mother and child is music. Music follows us from the womb to the tomb.” The words of the above quotation are not just a true

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Music to an African Gen Z is a significant medium for the expression of thoughts, delight and grievances reflection of the magnitude of influence that music wielded on Africans in times past alone, it also mirrors the reality of how music shapes the identity, interests, and behavioural patterns of most Africans presently. It is undeniable that music moves us in a way that words alone cannot. In a similar but much more profound way, young Africans (including the teeming GEN Z population) have also harnessed the power of music as a formidable weapon for the propagation of the right to freedom of speech and expression. Advancements in Information and Communication Technology

Kenga:

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The consciousness of most African Gen Z’s on several issues has been sharpened by music have vehemently aided this course. All across Africa, several experiences of public expression of delight or grievance have been orchestrated through the use of music and chants. This is a proof that music can mobilise entire communities to action. The gospel of most revolutionary African socio-political movements in the past was communicated through music. Anti-apartheid movements in South Africa thrived on the songs of the likes of Johnny Clegg, Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Brenda Fassie and a host of others. Similarly, music has played a key role in the expression of people's opinions on public issues and the medium of protests against unsavoury public policies in other African nations such as Malawi, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanganyika (now known as Tanzania) and many others. In recent times, a monumental incident that highlighted the strong connection between music and freedom of expression is the EndSARS public demonstrations that shook the foundations of Nigeria.

Essay The consciousness of most African Gen Zs on several issues has been sharpened by music. For a generation that is most enthused by the beauty in sound and rhythm, it has become easier for music to suffice as a dominant medium through which they are impacted. Their idolization of some musical figures through social media trends and influence has even made this easier. Building on the momentum of the past, African artistes such 2baba, Loyiso Gijana, Falz, Cohbams Asuquo, Angelique Kidjo, Burna boy, Sauti Sol, and a host of others have employed the use of conscious music to comment on a plethora of socio-political issues bedeviling the African continent. From these songs, a good number of GEN Zs have found expression on topical issues, and this has contributed to the shaping of their interests, opinions, and behaviours. A recent incident that demonstrates the impact of music on GEN Zs, as well as other youths in Africa, is the collaboration between the European Union (EU) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Nigeria to organise free "Youth Vote Count Music" concerts so as to prop them to actively participate in the country's forthcoming general elections in 2023. This is yet, another proof of how music is been used as a veritable tool for the creation and expression of the stance of Afro GEN Zs on topical issues.

for the creation and expression of the stance of Afro GEN Zs on topical issues. Indeed, it is an undeniable fact that music has become a global tool in the general orientation of minds and realisation of human rights. On occidental shores, in Africa, and the rest of the world, the behaviour of many young persons is shaped by music as much as their interests are swayed by its levelling force. The average African GEN Z is not an exception. Just as Edward Bulwer Lytton once said: "music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit and never dies.”

Indeed, it is an undeniable fact that music has become a global tool in the general orientation of

photo: Grishon Njoroge

photo: Andrew Antwi

photo: Valentine Udemadu

Art: WCE (Whitney Chinonye Ernest)

story

Kenga:

shuffering and shmiling by Jesutomisin Ipinmoye

Gentleman by Fela Kuti

ela’s saxophone pulsed through the walls of the bungalow as Pa Titus unfurled from his cooling corpse, sliding out from each bone through thick flesh, into the warm evening air. He floated gently, eyes still closed, softly tugged by the wind that poured into his bedroom through the window, riding on golden rays of light. Confused, he reached for the left bedside bannister to steady himself, one of the bannisters that had held the mosquito net over his head for the last fifteen years, and found that his fingers slipped through it. He braced himself instinctively, expecting to hit the floor and shatter. Instead nothing happened. He simply floated above the floor, sunlight and dust pouring through him. It was at this moment, Pa Titus realised that he had woken outside his body. He had died in his sleep.

Pa Titus lived alone, so no one found his body until the next

day, when Tope, a local boy who often came by to play ayo, [b] did not find Pa Titus seated on his rocking chair outside the house. He entered the still house, his lips pressed into a downwards curve. [c]He had never once come here and not found the walls alive with music. ‘Pa Titus?’ He looked around the small living room and frowned again. It was a small room, every square inch of the floor carpeted in a bright red synthetic affair, with a huge green flower in the middle, thinning and shedding. A small coffee table sat above the flower and it was surrounded by four peeling, tan leather couches, each with white worn dollies with fraying tassels placed over their tops. At the back of the room, behind one of the couches, was a huge shelf packed with records, a kaleidoscope of thin, coloured, vinyl jackets pressed against each other to form a library Tope had always found impressive. Next to the shelf was the Gramophone. This had

always been Pa Titus’ prized possession. He had once made Tope watch in great detail how to take a vinyl off the shelf, wipe it, place it on the plate, and position the needle just right. He had only trusted Tope enough to do this himself once, and the shared anxiety they both experienced that day was more than enough to ensure that it never happened again. The sleeve for Fela’s ‘Roforofo Fight’ lay on the couch and the disc was static. Tope felt a palpable opportunity grip his chest, and he called out for Pa Titus one more time.

‘Pa Titus? I dey come play this record oh.” When no response came, Tope reached for the lever of the gramophone and carefully set its lever down on the groove of the record just as it began spinning. Tope held his breath for a second, before a loud saxophone rattled the louvres. Then he smiled and started walking towards the bedrooms, humming excitedly.

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Kenga: ‘Pa Titus, You see I sabi how that thing work!’ He stepped into the bedroom, a strange smell immediately assaulting his senses. He glanced at Pa Titus on the bed and smiled. ‘Ahan, Pa Titus you still dey sleep?’ It took a minute of no response, a playful shake of the arm, several rigorous body shakes, and a panicked search for a heartbeat, before Tope finally understood what was happening. And Pa Titus, who had been floating above Tope this entire time, trying to answer to his name, watched as Tope brought out his phone to call his son, the only family he had left. Let Nas Down by J Cole

Korede had not spoken to his father in a month. This is not meant to insinuate that he had a bad relationship with his father on the contrary, Pa Titus had lost his wife very early and as such his son had to become even more family than he already was. He was a son, but he was also a brother, and best friend. And in most respects, this was good. It meant that Korede did not hear the same tremors of violence that his friends often reported hearing in their father’s voices. There was no fear. But what it also meant was that Korede tended to grow tired of his father a lot quicker than most other children. You see, Pa Titus, having no one other than his son,

had turned to music for shelter. He had bought his first record in a small store the first time he went to Lagos, and had found comfort in filling the air with music. Soon, the walls of his little bungalow were alive, humming in tune with Titus, the thin silk curtains billowing in time with his dancing. A passion is an overwhelming thing, and sometimes that can mean you get lost in it, swallowed by it, consumed in ways that are indescribable. And to people without that passion? It can mean trying to hold serious conversations about your future with your father as he shuffles and swayes around the house, telling you to breathe, to feel the music. Korede loved his father, yes. But he also quickly grew tired of all the loud music, and hours of drinking and dancing, and inviting the neighbourhood over to last minute parties. Whenever quiet descended, a shocking intrusion in their household, Korede would find himself turning to the sky and asking God for a more serious father. And so when he got a good job in Lagos and married a good woman, he moved out of his father’s house and set the new parameters for their relationship. They talked once a month on the phone. He would visit four times a year. It was what he decided he could handle - make his father crave his presence enough to listen. Korede had just been thinking of calling, when his phone buzzed. ‘Hello? Uncle Korede?’ ‘Hello? Who’s this?’

It’s Tope sa. Omo Awon Ogunfowora.’ Korede briefly scanned his memory, quickly remembering the Ogunfowora family that lived three houses down their street in the village. He’d visited their house a few years ago with his son, and watched, sipping cold bottles of Star with the other adults, as his child and some other children played football in the yard. ‘Ahn. Tope, bawo ni?’ ‘Mo wa sir.’ Korede could hear the boy’s voice trembling over the phone, concern slowly crawling through the phone, into his ear, and settled in his brain. ‘Tope kilo sele? What’s wrong?’ Sorrow, Tears and Blood by Fela Kuti

Earlier that week, Pa Titus’ son, his son’s wife Tola, and grandson Henry, had arrived at the house. They climbed out the car, Korede with mucus running down his nose, his wife at his side with soft words of comfort, and his son looking into the distance, a headset clamped around his ears. Their son stood in the yard, hands in his pocket, while husband and wife stood at the door to the house, staring but not moving. But eventually they pushed the door open, gently stepping into the building as though afraid to rouse spirits. The house had taken on a new sanctity with his passing. One

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Kenga: that, even with his body no longer being in the bed but in a mortuary, meant that people floated their hands above everything without touching it, standing instead of sitting, whispering instead of talking. Titus, fairly accustomed to being dead now, floated in a corner of the house, his pale cheeks glittering with ethereal tears. His heart ached as his son walked across the living room, intimately knowledgeable of it, but not of it. Not the way he used to be. Korede had now stopped in front of the albums and was now running his fingers across the spine of all the record covers ever so lightly, almost as though touching them would disturb the memories he shared with his father of the music they carried. He had just stopped to pick out ‘Double Trouble’ by the Lijadu Sisters when Pa Titus felt a familiar vibration in the air. He floated through the window and saw his grandson, relaxed against the hood of the car, eyes closed, listening to music through his headphones. Everything Pa Titus knew about his grandson, he knew through his son: ‘The boy won’t pay attention in school. It’s just to blast music everyday and say that it’s what he wants to do.’ ‘Papa, he can’t play an instrument. I’ve tried all of them: Piano oh, Drums oh, Saxophone, ko le ko. La ti ma k’orin sef, he can’t do. It’s school that he needs.’ Titus could never really remember being extremely

interested in Henry. Whenever Korede came with him in tow, the little boy would shy away and not respond to questions. Even as he grew, he’d always have his head in a video game or book or eventually his phone. And Korede never took his advice to send Henry to him for one summer, so Henry was as much a stranger to him as he’s sure he was to Henry. But now, he watched the boy with a slight interest as he pulled away from the hood of the car and started walking towards the house. ‘Daddy, when are we going to eat?’ Korede whipped around to face his son, whose voice was still reverberating throughout the room. The stillness and vacuum left by Pa Titus’ death was suddenly filled by Henry’s presence. He had now lowered his headphones and the drum patterns from his amapiano playlist leaked out, staining the antiquity of the room. Korede sighed and turned round to face the records. Tola sensing the tension, spoke instead. ‘Henry, my dear, please give your father and I a minute.’ Henry shrugged and put his headphones back on, returning to the car, with Pa Titus floating behind him in tow following the music. Ye by Burna Boy

The morning of the funeral began with Korede and Tola having a quiet discussion in the

living room of Pa Titus’s bungalow, as Korede was slowly packing the records up, pausing to admire each one. The conversation had started with Tola asking her husband a simple question as softly as she could: ‘My dear, what are you going to do with those?’ Korede kept quiet for a long time, before shrugging. ‘I’ll keep the most valuable ones to me. Maybe sell the rest.’ Tola raised an eyebrow, but continued gently. ‘Sell them?’ Korede was now clearing out the third shelf, pausing to smile softly at some covers. ‘Yes. A few of them are probably worth quite a bit.’ ‘Have you considered that you can give all this to Henry?’ Korede paused, bent over, hands still in the box full of records. Tola pressed on, walking to her husband. ‘I mean you’re always saying you don’t understand his fascination with music? And why he’s obsessed with it. I think this can be a healthy way for you to connect with him, just as your father used it to connect with you.’ Korede scoffed. ‘That boy wouldn’t understand.

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Kenga: This is different.’ ‘It’s literally still music, Korede.’ ‘Not the kind he and his generation appreciate, that’s for sure. You’ve heard the nonsense he’s tried to pass off to us as his work now? Abi you were not in the room?’ Tola rolled her eyes and tried again. ‘I’m very sure, it’s what Pa Titus would have wanted. I’m sure he would have appreciated someone else who was as passionate about music as he was, owning all of this.’ Korede was about to retort when he had a moment of clarity. Packing up the last row of records, it occurred to him that just as he had grown to dislike his father’s music habit, he had also attached the same to his son. Now he could never share a moment with his dad again, but he still could create those with his son. So he sighed and told his wife a tight okay, and left the remaining records to collapse on one of the couches, his eyes closed. At the funeral service, Pa Titus floated through fluttering swathes of black, taking note of who was there and who was not. Ehen so Kola didn’t show? Ko buru. But see, Mummy Halima! It shall be well with you. He was just floating past the last pew in the church, when he caught an unfamiliar face in the back next to the entrance. A person was standing in a black suit, studying the church. This puzzled him. He

knew everybody. Curious, he floated closer studying their features. Thick, wide nose. Bushy eyebrows. A wide, smilehappy mouth. Tightly coiled hair, cut close to the scalp. Small build. He was just floating up to the person to study more, when they turned and locked eyes with him, smiling with recognition. ‘Ehen, there you are Titus. I’ve been looking for you since the service began.’ Their voice was velvet. Titus looked around in confusion. ‘Yes, I’m talking to you oh. But don’t worry, I understand your confusion. It’s always interesting for first-timers. Okay, take my hand.’ They held out their hand, and Titus looked at it.

apology. ‘Thank you, thank you. Okay without further ado, I would like to introduce you to the Ancestor Associate Program. When you die and are being buried-’ Titus raised his hand. ‘Excuse me, please sir, I’m confused.’ They sighed, before speaking again. ‘That’s alright Titus. But kindly let me finish next time, as you’ll find that there’s a section for questions at the end. And you don’t need to refer to me as sir.’ ‘Sorry madam.’ ‘No, not madam either.’ ‘I’m confused again.’

‘Titus, abeg, I have a few thousand other people to see today. No be only you dem dey bury in Ekiti right now sef.’ Titus took their hand and suddenly everything collapsed around them, the pews, and priest, and congregation dressed in black, folding in on itself until darkness remained. Well darkness and the mysterious person in the suit, whose hand Titus had now realised he was holding onto for dear life. After a beat, the person spoke again. ‘Okay you can release my hand now.’ Titus let go, muttering an

They took another deep breath, and this time spoke in a very slow and weathered voice. ‘Titus. Let me just finish talking, and then I’ll let you ask the questions you want.’ Titus nodded, so the person started talking again. ‘Again, welcome to the Ancestor Associate Program. Upon your death, from the moment you’re buried, you automatically become an Ancestor. This means that your descendants can call on you for supernatural aid and interference in matters concerning their lives, and you’ll be able to weigh in however you deem fit. The program

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Kenga: has had an overhaul in recent years, due to problems beyond our control. It is because of this, that we now have this little onboarding session, so you don’t encounter the same issues. If you stay in the program successfully for the next ten years, you rise the ranks to become your family’s ‘Ori’ or personal god. However you want to put it. Your first step is to pick a family member and make a connection. In these days of little faith, people aren’t seeking their ancestors out anymore. It’s important to establish connections in people that would believe in you. There’s two things to be made very clear of: make sure your family remembers you. But not too much. Is that clear?’

‘You’ll vanish.’

service was just coming to an end. However, Henry was pacing the room, black tie loose and top button undone, headphones quiet around his neck. Pa Titus watched him and remembered what the person told him. He floated to the box of records on the floor in front of the shelf. How does a ghost draw someone’s attention? He tried lifting the box and then an individual record to no avail. Frustrated, he instinctively floated over to the gramophone and lifted the lever onto the disk. He felt the solid heft of the lever underneath his fingers, almost as though he for a moment grew skin again. Trumpets blasted into the room, shaking the walls and Henry jumped, turning around to find the record on the gramophone spinning. Curious, he walked towards it, almost stumbling over the records behind the couch. As he bent to thumb through them, Pa Titus smiled and floated over the boy’s shoulder, whispering.

‘And if they remember too much?’

‘Oh, Olaiya’s Papingo Davalaya. That one. Play it.’

‘Along with memory, comes your faults. You can't be exalted if people think of you as fallible.’

Almost as though Henry heard him, he picked up the record and slid it out its sleeve, holding it carefully. As grandfather and grandson moved towards the gramophone, Korede walked into the house ready to explode at the loud music. But before he could talk, or stop his son from using the same musical equipment that he had never used, Henry, coached by the spirit of his grandfather, wiped the disc, placed it on the plate, and positioned the needle just right.

The person blinked at Titus and he blinked back. ‘What happens if they don’t remember you?’

The person smiled at Titus as he scratched his head. ‘Is that clear? Do you think you can get started?

Pa Titus re-materialised in his living room. In the distance, there were bells tolling from the church. He figured that the

And just then, as the needle settled and music started playing, Korede could almost swear he saw his father in his son. So, for the first time, he took a deep breath and tried to feel the music.

photo: Grishon Njoroge

photo: Andrew Antwi

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Kenga:

Music and protest in nigeria by Conrad Omodiagbe

hile 2023 might seem like a nondescript year for the rest of the world, for young Nigerians like myself, it could signal a hopebringing turning point for the future, or worse, the breaking point that would catalyze the beginning of the end. With all hands on deck and eyes focused on the country's upcoming general elections scheduled for February 25, 2023, now, more than ever, we are passionate about political participation, going as far as throwing free concerts to motivate our non-voting peers.

At the height of the country's primary elections aimed at selecting presidential party flag bearers from a junta of old men — whose political hold on the country predates the arrival of the internet, Nigerian nonprofit, The Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA) announced the second edition of its Youth Vote Count concert. To increase voter participation in the upcoming polls, the group opted out of the profitable ticketing route, asking young

Nigerians to use their Permanent Voter's Card (PVC) as an invite to one of the hottest parties of the year. And like clockwork, Nigerians flooded the registration booths, with The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announcing an unprecedented surge in citizens looking to join the country's voting community. This concert, however, isn't the first time music has played an indispensable supporting role in political and social actions. For Nigerians, music and politics have always had an intimate connection. A connection so radical that several Nigerians have lost their lives with protest lyrics on their lips. In October 2020, Nigerians took to the streets to peacefully protest against against a rogue police unit, the Special AntiRobbery Squad (SARS) that had been known to arbitrarily extort, kidnap, harass and kill young Nigerians with impunity for non-crimes like having an iPhone or laptop, driving a nice car, having tattoos or dreadlocks, looking queer or dressing "indecently." Over time, the protest

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several Nigerians have lost their lives with protest lyrics on their lips ignited an international movement as it morphed into a call to end police brutality and bad governance in Nigeria. While the protest gained notoriety for being faceless and crowdfunded, one other character maintained a strong presence on the grounds from Port Harcourt, Rivers state to Ikeja, Lagos state, fueling the movement and providing comfort for irate protesters when needed. It was hard to visit a protest ground and not hear music playing. Originally intended as a diss track towards another popular Afrobeats artist, FEM by acclaimed Nigerian singer Davido quickly became an

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the last song that could be heard over the screams and gunshots was the Nigerian National Anthem anthem on protest grounds. The song's title loosely translates as "shut up" with the lyrics: "Small boy you don dey talk too much, FEM!" So it came as no surprise when Nigerian youths used it as a message to the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide SanwoOlu when he attempted to speak to a crowd of protesters that year. Songs like Koroba by Tiwa Savage, Ye by Burna Boy and Ogene by Zoro were also regulars on protest grounds, with each divergent track tapping into myriad emotions— the prevalent pain, joy, anger and resilience coursing through Nigerians at that moment.

article older protest songs that captured struggles still prevalent today. From Fela Anikulapo Kuti's anti-military anthems like Sorrow, Tears and Blood to Eedris Abdulkareem's Jaga Jaga — a not-so-subtle dig at Nigeria's first democratically-elected president, Olusegun Obasanjo, young Nigerians chanted, danced and made a statement through music that came from long before they were born, but still directed at the same men who have held onto power. Music was so important to the protest that on October 20, 2020, as government officials allegedly cut security cameras, turned off the lights at a popular protest point at the Lekki tollgate, and soldiers shot into a crowd of protesters, the last song that could be heard over the screams and gunshots was the Nigerian National Anthem.

comprehend, but their existence is a protest in itself. Music's political power does not solely reside in its ability to mobilize protests or address a popular political subject matter. Instead, protest music crafts communities of mutually invested participants, fostering an intense level of activism beyond the physical spaces where protests occur. With life as we know it is about to change come 2023, now, more than ever, we need protest music. Music that is incendiary while also acting as a social glue that binds the minds and bodies of those who create it and those who feel inspired and motivated by it.

Rather than relying on long speeches or statements, music has become an impregnable tool for expressing political messages. It creates an emotional connection and social coherence, even among The protests weren't just about resonant work from big names; it strangers. Simi is singing about also saw the rise of a new voice equality for women on Woman, while queer artist Temmie coming to the fore with Ajebo Ovwasa explores the Hustler's breakout hit, Barawo. complexities of being a queer While the remix also features woman in Nigeria through her 12Davido, the original left an indelible mark of its own, echoing tracked album, E Be Like Say sentiments Nigerians have been Dem Swear For Me, a local expression that means, "I feel unabashedly vocal about for cursed." years. It made a statement, calling corrupt politicians and government officers barawos, a These new songs may not be protest ground anthems yet as local word for thief. they support rights most Nigerians also reconnected with Nigerians are still failing to

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photo: Olamide Rufai

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Kenga:

Gen z on the importance of music by Desmond Vincent

hen you open Tiktok, one of the first thing you’ll notice is the music.’’ Iyesogie Oierahki, a 23

year old photographer tells Kenga. ‘‘Every video has its own sound, every trend comes with its own sound. Now when people think of a particular period in time, they think about a particular trend and its accompanying song or sound. That’s how vital sounds have become to the Gen Z community.’’ For young people navigating a world wrought with COVID-19, political and social unrest, and a heighted new level of communication and global community, music has become a global tool for unity, archiving eras as well as a . In the past few years, Gen Z music stars have made their mark on the global stages. Internationally, stars like Lil Nas X, Olivia Rodrigo and more have soundtracked the last few years and culture eras. Within the continent, Ayra Starr, Rema, Victony and others are going toe-to-toe with afrobeats biggest stars. Has there ever been this global participation of youth in music?

In writing, producing, performing and generally participating in the art of music creation? Even as a casual listener, one must doubt so. Generation Z has come into a world where everyone can soundtrack their lives. It is easier than ever to pretend to be Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman while Roxxette’s It Must Have Been Love. All it takes is playing a song on your Instagram Story while walking to class, sharing it in between tweets about your sad day, posting it with your tik tok and the examples go on and on. And even better, we have the numbers to prove this. According to a 2019 Spotify study, listening to these playlists increased 45% year over year, but 49% of participants in the study said they find camaraderie in sharing their feelings of sadness and loneliness. ‘‘Music for us is kind of a way to really sit in our feelings, in our emotions and really feel it,’’ Folarin Ade, a 19 year old living in Lagos shares. ‘‘But also, it is a great way to communicate exactly how you

feel without saying too much. If I share ‘de ja vu’ by Olivia Rodrigo to a friend and say ‘very that’ they immediately get what i feel, how i feel and probably why.’’ However, it isn’t that emotions and feeling them alongside musical artists is a new concept - it is just easier now more than ever. It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who has paid passing attention to Gen Z and their fascination and affinity with identity that identity plays a role in what they listen to and what they share. Culture publications like i-D have reported on the ‘death of the genre’ - a culture phenomenon that refers to a decline in rigid lines that defined things into specific musical genres like pop, RnB, etc. Instead, more artists and listeners are embracing genredefying and genre-fusion sounds. But how then does identity play a role in deciding what people listen to? ‘‘People like listening to music that talks about things they’ve gone through. Or at least from people who have gone through things

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Instead, more artists and listeners are embracing genre-defying and genre-fusion sounds…how then does identity play a role in deciding what people listen to? they’ve gone through.’’ Austin Obi tells Kenga.‘‘During the ENDSARS protests, people needed music from people like Fela Kuti and Burna Boy. It’s the same reason Nigerians in the diaspora are steadily listening to afrobeats. It’s a way to connect with their Nigerian identity.’’ In the same breath, the digital global world has shattered the lines of identity allowing genres like amapiano and afrobeats to establish themselves on the global scene with an ease that one would bet would have been harder post-internet. In an interview with Billboard, Nigeria’s leading producer Don Jazzy had noted “The digital revolution has had the most impact on the [African music] business,” Jazzy shares excitedly. “See, when we started, streaming wasn’t even a big deal in Africa. Social media? How many people even had the Internet! Now, everything is digital. Everyone is on social media. Then, I can remember how ring back tunes was one major way of promoting music to phone users. Then, radio and TV were the holy grail for visibility. Now just take a look at the scene. Afrobeats’ global expansion owes a lot to the digital

revolution. The viral potential that social media has presented and the tour side of the business is aiding our bid to take over the world.” Ultimately, for Gen Z, music plays a role that it has always played albeit perhaps more intensely. Music is a way to connect and to find community, it’s a way to capture emotions and share them, it is a way to document and archive eras and it is a business. Music has never been more important than it is now, there isn’t a generation that has needed music more than Gen Z.

photo: Grishon Njoroge

Personal story

Kenga:

Prescribed sound: music as medication by Natachi Mez

ome days, I apply music like a balm for the spirit, thus the name of my recently developed

playlist — Spirit Balm, featuring songs like “Closer to My Dreams” by Goapele and “Friday Morning” by Khruangbin. I am not alone in my belief that art carries medicinal properties. From Ngoma drumming ceremonies conducted to heal community members to the poetry prescriptions in the Paris Review, art and rhythm have countless times been applied as healing tools. On the song “Sun in My Mouth,” included in my Spirit Balm playlist, Björk croons an E.E Cummings poem over a sparse, crackling, eery yet bright instrumental, singing “will I complete the mysteries of my flesh?” This question feels like an invitation, to deepen my intimacy with uncertainty, to bond with curiosity and marvel at the abundance that I have yet to experience. Some days I reach for music, other days, it reaches me —

either way, I am transformed. Spirit Balm is 8 songs long, but the amount of musical medicine that I have engaged with cannot be quantified. Below, are three different doses of music that connect me across time and space, and perhaps, connection is the healing component of music. A Dose of “Buffalo Soldier” by Bob Marley: For Connection Across Generations and Diaspora Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley

When I think of a quintessential song from my childhood, I think of “Buffalo Soldier” by Bob Marley. I think of those “long car rides” that felt like an infinite space of possibility to my kid self, who packed her bag of snacks, papers, and books, to make the journey from Sacramento to San Francisco, a drive that should take no more than 2 hours. My dad would be behind the wheel, driving us to a wedding or graduation party or baptism or funeral, and the

cassette was in the tape player, and the choir that was my siblings would sing along with Bob Marley: Buffalo Soldier, dreadlock Rasta There was a Buffalo Soldier In the heart of America Stolen from Africa, brought to America Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival What did I know of this song back then, except that it felt good in my heart? Except that I would hear it multiple times during the ride and be ready to sing each time? As I aged and sang, the words became louder, the themes of war intertwined into the song becoming more clear to me. I did not know then that the song was released posthumously —one of the many ways in which music bends and stretches and resists time. And weren’t we also resisting time? On our way to whatever event it may be, was there even such a thing as being on time so long as we made it safely and the food wasn’t

Kenga: completely gone and the music plenty loud and the people we loved present? Back then, I did not know what a Buffalo Soldier was, but I would come to find itwas sort of what it sounds like. In the Americas, buffalo were killed in mass as a way to further disenfranchise American indigenous populations. In the Americas, Black soldiers were deployed to war against American indigenous populations, they themselves disenfranchised. In the Americas, Black people were warred against. Whether or not they were fighting for their somewhat-country, they were fought by their somewhatcountry. So much can live in a song. What did I know then, except that I was alive, and this song and singing it, made me feel alive. This song, telling of migrations. Of forced migrations. Of people stolen, sold, traded. Of oppressed people set up to fight against oppressed people? What did I know? Me, descendant of Nigerian immigrants. Me, Black in America, which contains a certain kind of theft. Oh, Black in America, a certain kind of soul. I was singing, I was singing, and I was not the only one. A Dose of Anything by Flavour, Phyno, and Zoro: For the Culture Nwa Baby by Flavour

My mouth might not speak Igbo, but my body does. Okay, my

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I am energized by dance circles, by lifelong and temporary dance partners body might speak broken Igbo at best. Growing up Igbo in America, there were different Igbo and Nigerian associations in Northern California that my parents either belonged to or were adjacent to. One such organization, hosted an annual Igbo Day celebration, which included a cultural dance by the youth. This cultural dance performance was preceded by weeks of Saturday practices in someone’s backyard. The soundtrack of a traditional Igbo song that I’m convinced never ended would play, and every time Coach Aunty blew her whistle, the collective would switch dance moves. We girls trained to shake multiple body parts in parallel: shoulders, backs, hips, legs. These practices were often followed up with rice and stew and maybe a slice of cake and cold drink. And on Igbo Day, we danced, we heard the whistle, we watched money fall down like rain, and we hoped there might be some jollof rice left after we completed our duty. My dad often emceed the Nigerian parties in the area. From Nigeria to America, from youth to his current age, my dad is known for his hefty, bellowing

Personal story laugh, and his skill, agility, humor and endurance on the dance floor. Descendent of my father, dancing became and remains one of my comfort zones. I am energized by dance circles, by lifelong and temporary dance partners all the same. When I went to my village for the first time as an adult and saw my uncles and cousins move, I recognized the same comfortingly dramatic, life of the party energy that I witnessed in my dad, that I knew existed in myself. Last year, when I went to Nigeria, my cousin could not process any of the words that escaped my mouth. She absentmindedly nodded at something i said, and then in Igbo, told her brother, I cannot understand anything this girl is saying. Understanding her, it was clear my Igbo practice had been paying off, yet those words filled me with a quiet loneliness. Sometimes connection is slow to happen and awkward in the happening, if it happens at all. But at some point we danced. Perhaps Ogene or Ijele was playing, and I became puppet in the music’s hands. Something in my body activated —some intergenerational, familial memory. I am not alone. At some point, movement becomes language. At some point, neither of us have to be translated. At some point a prayer is answered, even if only for two songs in a row: may we all find ways to speak to each other. A Dose of “I Don’t Wanna Feel No More” by Reggie Because Honest Articulation is Healing In Itself

Personal story

Kenga: I Don’t Wanna Feel No More While this song isn’t upbeat in by Reggie instrumentals as Abdurraqib’s

Detailing aspects of depression, addiction, and isolation, the healing energy I feel when singing along to “I Don’t Wanna Feel No More” produces a cognitive dissonance. Sometimes I feel good in my chest, but II can never get that to my head Sometimes I feel good in my bed, get upAnd I don't feel good no more My sing-alongs submit to the emotionality of the track, to the recognition of dread. I almost want to be careful as I sing it. I wonder if there is harm in the repetition of singing, “I don’t want to feel no more.” The song breaks my heart while simultaneously cracking it open. It feels dismal and holy in the same breath. There is something soothing about vulnerability, and the track itself is an acknowledgement of pain, and in that confrontation, perhaps there is a hope for the easing of that same pain. I think of Hanif Abdurraqib’s notion of the sad banger that he defines as songs whose lyrics of grief, anxiety, yearning or some other mild or great darkness are washed over with an upbeat tune, or a chorus so infectious that it can weave its way into your brain without your brain taking stock of whatever emotional damage it carries.

definition offers, Reggie’s voice feels like sandpaper gospel –a textured, love-filled voice even as the song reflects feelings of lovelessness. Here a song, specific in detailing the speaker’s suffering, yet broadly reflecting that none of us are alone in our suffering. When I was in college, I performed at an open mic where I invited people to sing along with me: my tank is empty empty empty I have no more to give my tank is empty empty empty I have no more to give These lyrics were conjured by my own exhaustion and the audience communicated to me that they related to it. Though I sang I have no more to give, the song was my giving. And though the audience sang it too, their singing with me was their giving. There is some sort of abundance that exists as we articulate how we are doing and what we are going through even when we are going through it. Me and the audience, singing to each other, gave to each other, even as we confronted that feeling of emptiness that echoed through us.

struggle. Sometimes the truth is healing and holy in itself. Conclusion These days, I’ve been reaching out to music a lot more for nourishment. I bring my speaker into the bathroom and have multi-song dance sessions before I finally make my way to the shower, washing myself in music and movement before I wash myself in soap and water. I think of the song Beautiful Rain by The Cavemen. Mmiri ozuzo Mmiri ozuzo Sachapu ihe ọjọọ m Mmiri ozuzo Oh oh rain Rain down on me Heal all my flaws Beautiful rain

Some days, I need a small baptism. Some days, I dip myself into music.

This song too, though not a direct form of asking for help, makes me think of the ways in which we are helped by others’ words, even when the words themselves are a description of

photo: Grishon Njoroge

article

Kenga:

The kenga guide to music and sex by Desmond Vincent

illiam Shakespeare, a British writer whom you might have heard of at some point, once noted,

‘If music be the food of love, play on.' This illustrates that as far back as when Shakespeare was running around creating potential English assignments for us, a relationship between love, sex and music had been established. The power of music itself is simply undateable. Music allowed David to infiltrate the Palace of Saul, and music allowed him to hold control over the demon terrorizing the king of Isreal. Today, music and sex are hardly far from each other. Sonically speaking, many songs are described as 'sounds like sex' while visually, many artists depend on sexual cues and insinuations to sell music videos. Many of our favourite pop and RnB divas have crafted an image that drips and says and screams sex. Sex sells (music). The point of all this is to say that music and sex go way back and are still going strong. We've decided to curate the songs to speak to some of our favourite sexual scenarios,

hopefully to inspire you to add a few to your sex playlist - and if you do not have a sex playlist, start one. One Night Stands Let's face it. Most of us have or will have or have had casual sex with people we were never going to fuck again. Often with the hope that we will never see them ever again. It's a fact of life and a reality that many of us enjoy. Sex without the strings or expectations to be anything more than a good lay? Inject it. It's an appealing opportunity. We highly recommend the extraordinarily filthy and explicit Or Nah by Ty Dolla Sign, The Weeknd, Wiz Khalifa, and DJ Mustard. But if you want something that makes it clear that you're here for a good time and not a long time, can we interest you in dtf by CKAY? Bonus: Last Name by Carrie Underwood is a great morning song following a one-night stand if you feel dramatic. We Shouldn't Be Doing This

According to sure folks on social media - not me - nothing slaps harder than sex with someone you should not be having sex with. This means having sex with someone outside your current monogamous relationship or with someone you know having sex with would lead to opening Pandora's box. However, while we don't condone or encourage this behaviour, may we suggest Secret feat Jeremih & Serani, Burna Boy to soundtrack you as you make a potentially horrible albeit hot decision. And for those especially cheating with someone who has them considering breaking off things with their current partner, may we draw your attention to Jumping Ship by Amaarae, Kojey Radical, and Cruel Santino. Committed Relationships There's no reason why the joy of soundtracking your antics in the bedroom should shun people in committed relationships. Several artists have perfected the art of capturing the beauty

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Kenga: of sex within a committed relationship, including one of the world's most prominent artists Beyonce who has repeatedly given us some of the most sexual mainstream songs about sex with one partner with songs like Partition and Dance For You, however for this list. We want to single out 'Blow' simply because she manages to be unbelievably raunchy without using a single cuss or explicit word in the song. If you're looking for a piece that communicates how good your partner makes you feel [wink wink], we want to draw your attention to So Good by Mannywellz. Substance-Induced Sex Now when it comes to playing songs while having sex under the influence of substances, we might be spoiled for choices if we're being honest. The songs are explicitly about drug use in bed to the songs that might not be about but still fit the mood perfectly. For the latter, we highly suggest the moving joint that is Two Weeks by FKA Twigs. While, of course, there is the line 'higher than a motherfucker, dreaming of you as my lover', not much else is said about drug use, so it isn't nearly as explicitly as Can't Feel My Face by The Weeknd, a titillating song about sex so good it feels like drugs or just drug-addled sex. Who knows?

Art: WCE (whitney Chinonye Ernest)

Art: Whitney Chinonye Ernest 76

photo: Olamide Rufai

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Kenga:

Understanding protest music in Nigerian pop post-endsars by Wale Oloworekende

or many people that I know, the 2020 protests against the Federal Special Anti-Robbery

Squad ended on the night of October 20 on Instagram. It didn’t matter that we promised to keep going on in memory of the murdered, it didn’t even matter that donations for the protests continued to pour in after that night. There is something wrenching about watching young bodies neutered on the same route that you’ve plied on the way to a sneaky link or business meeting or even a late-night drive to clear your head. It is sickening to imagine what dreams faded into oblivion on the day, cut shot by government-sanctioned forces then disappeared the bodies of the deceased to obfuscate the facts of the matter. In many ways, the true tragedy of the EndSARS protests and 20/10/20 is that we still don’t know the full cost of what we

lost human-wise. We can’t put faces and a number to the scope of our tragedy but many of us still carry an ache in our hearts. There is pain that comes with knowing and there’s a gaping sense of catastrophe in not knowing what has been lost. I don’t think I exaggerate it when I say that record-keeping is shit in this country and, so, we must all turn to music as a repository of our lived history. Prior to October of 2020, I don’t think anyone could accuse Nigerian pop of having a political moment for the better past of a decade; sure there’ve been instances when the bruising social and economical reality of the country has seen two or three lines mustered by our singers in bemusement or disdain but nothing to move the needle or that might be classified as protest music. I think that the best protest music is simply music that meets the moment. An anthem, a lullaby,

or a ditty to give people something to line their mouths when the strains of protesting threaten to get overwhelming. For the better part of the last decade, Nigerian pop mostly concerned itself with the hedonistic and materialistic, but in the immediate postEndSARS moment, we watched a flood of protest songs spring forth. Nine days after the shootings of October 20, Nigeria’s most talented act in a generation, Burna Boy, released “20.10.20,” a missive directed at the Nigerian political infrastructure,

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Since these songs, Nigerian pop has casually slid back into its hedonistic impulses

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Kenga: carrying the wrath of young people everywhere. In the brief moments after October 20 when people still toyed with the idea of hitting the streets again to air their grievances at the government, there’s little doubt that “20.10.20” must have served as inspiration, urging, prodding us on to take a stand on whatever broken foundation Nigeria was offering.

institutional wickedness.

On “Are You There,” a standout off his debut album, Rave and Roses, Rema touches on his disillusionment with protesting the many ills of Nigeria, curtly singing, “People dey talk say na only woman I sabi talk about/ So lemme make I just dey talk about am.” And I can imagine that this is why one cannot expect Nigerian protest songs to be about the ********* government or what they have One month after Burna Boy’s done or haven’t, most of the “20.10.20,” Chike released people I know have given up on “20.10.20 (Wahala Dey),” another any form of change coming from pointed critique of Nigeria that our present political arrangement begged the question of who so why should our musicians be ordered the shooting. Dremo any different? There is a bigger spat bars over some drill beats probability for failure than on “OMG,” Dwin The Stoic made success in Nigeria today and so a stunning hymnal on “The Fight,” any success that comes your and Ibejii archived his agony at way is a political act of protesting the waste of Nigerian–and against a state that would rather black–potential on “Gonto.” see you in the throes of endemic Since these songs, Nigerian pop lack. has casually slid back into its hedonistic impulses, serving up I’ve written and talked songs to pull us away from the extensively about the dearth of weighty job of dealing with the protest music in Nigeria and spectre of Nigeria’s impending maybe the problem is directly rupture. linked to the lack of protest culture. The job of protest music There are largely two broad is to meet people at the moment reactions to trauma. First, there is of their needs and Nigerians have desolation, surrendering to the not needed that sort of music for nihilistic impulses of doom that a minute, what we have too often might play through one’s mind needed is music to get the rave and waiting for the quiet to come going, music to propel our feets and then there’s avoidance, living forwards among our community it up and taking one step after the of friends, and music to carry us other in the hope that one can away to a better place. Someone outrun whatever problems lays in once said that living in Nigeria is a the rear. Even a casual observer daily protest, it would follow that can tell that this is the brand of singing about living in Nigeria is a response that Nigerian pop has work of protest. to the problem of Nigeria, a politics of avoidance that hints at the tiredness of pop stars to lead the fight against bureaucratic malfeasance, corruption, and

photo: Andrew Antwi

photo: Grishon Njoroge

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Kenga:

music and nfts: what you can’t afford to not know by Melissa Kariuki

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been all the rage since 2021 and have become one of the

hottest topics in the music business. They have gained worldwide attention with some selling for millions and artists like 3LAU, Grimes, Steve Aoki and Tory Lanez releasing music-related NFTs. What’s not so often discussed is what legal rights are conferred on the buyer of an NFT. If you are a music artist considering selling your music or album art as an NFT or you’re a consumer considering buying a music NFT - you cannot afford to not know what your digital rights will be. That’s precisely what this article will address. The Technicalities But first, what exactly is an NFT? A non-fungible token is a digital asset that has its authenticity certified on a blockchain. ‘Non-fungible’ means that it is one of a kind and unique and thus

cannot be replaced. This is in contrast to a dollar, for example, which can be replaced with another dollar and thus is fungible. One piece of work can form one NFT or multiple. The token, that is, the unique ID, is generated and stored on a blockchain network. NFTs can be a variety of asset forms but today, we’ll focus on music NFTs. The Opportunities The creative and entertainment industries have historically struggled with managing copyrights, royalties, and intellectual property. For example, a song typically has two copyrights. One copyright for the sound recording, also known as the master, and the other for the composition, also known as the lyrics and melody. Typically, publishing companies handle the composition copyrights and record labels manage the sound recording copyrights. Publishers usually

license the works and register them with the relevant rights organization. They give a portion of royalties earned to the songwriter and then keep a portion as compensation. Similarly, record labels promote a song, collect royalties, and distribute a portion to the artist, keeping the rest as compensation. Record labels typically provide artists a monetary advance. Thus, while artists earn a portion of the royalties from their work, they typically only earn a small fraction and they do not own the copyrights. Additionally, there are millions of dollars in unclaimed royalties owing to challenges with tracking the relevant publisher or songwriter. NFTs give artists an opportunity to own the copyrights to their work and better track royalties. For example, Bluebox leverages NFTs to enable artists to register copyright, publishing, and mechanical splits upfront

Kenga: via a smart contract which instantly copyrights the content. A smart contract is “a computer program and transaction protocol which automatically executes, controls and documents legally relevant events and actions as per the terms stipulated in an agreement” explained Levi and Lipton (2018). Bluebox divides each song into 100 NFTs, which represents a 1% split of that song's copyright. The artist can then choose to sell some or all the NFTs to the public and choose what portion of copyrights to keep for themselves.

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Another key use case of NFTs is that of enabling a new business model for creators what rights are attached to an NFT, and in turn the viability of the above opportunities, remains an opaque area. In theory, NFTs have the ability to make all music copyrights transferable and tradable instantly. However, in reality and from a legal perspective, purchasing a NFT does not equate to purchasing a copyright. Generally, the digital asset, in this case the music, linked to the NFT is protected by copyright. What many often do not understand is that purchasing an NFT does not automatically transfer the copyright of the linked digital asset. That is to say that changing ownership of the NFT does not necessarily transfer the right of use or exploitation of the digital asset to the new NFT owner. Thus, buyers and sellers of NFTs need to consider what (copy)rights are included in the NFT.

Another key use case of NFTs is that of enabling a new business model for creators. Traditionally, creators struggle to raise funds to support their projects. Furthermore, generating revenue from their works is typically only possible once the work has been completed. NFTs offer creators an opportunity to fund their projects upfront by selling NFTs to generate capital. An example of this is 3lau, a musician, who generated $11.6 million in revenue by selling NFTs which conferred 50% of the rights of the streaming royalties of his album to buyers of the NFTs. In use cases such as this, NFTs act as a method of sourcing capital as well as a method of engaging consumers as their purchase of a NFT can Assuming property rights are also enable them to vote on conferred on NFTs is simplistic. In creative decisions. fact, a lack of clarity on the legal rights attached to NFTs is the The Confusion cause of a number of current These opportunities sound court cases. Consider the Damon transformative for artists but Dash case. Damon Dash issued unfortunately, they’re not as an NFT containing music artist’s straightforward as they appear. Jay Z’s debut album. The NFT While there has been a great deal detailed that the album copyright of hype around NFTs, clarity on

article and rights to its future revenue would be conferred on the NFT’s new owner. While this initially seemed like an exciting manifestation of the opportunities enabled by NFTs, it quickly turned sour when it was established that Damon Dash did not own the initial copyrights to begin with. The hip-hop record label that owns the copyrights filed a lawsuit against him last year. The case is currently in court and the outcome is yet to be decided. Regulators in different countries are tackling the issue of rights conferred on NFTs differently. In the USA, regulators are handling issues on a case by case basis as they work on a draft for controllable electronic records which would give NFTs property status. Notably, USA regulators still insist that “ownership of the NFT does not necessarily translate to ownership of the files”, such a music piece, contained in the NFT. On the contrary, China has banned secondary trading of and attaching royalty rights to NFTs. Thus, the confusion is heightened as different countries take different approaches adding even more complexity to the issue of music NFTs and rights. The Answer: Licenses Needless to say, it’s important for music artists and potential music NFT buyers to take the time to understand the NFT-related regulations in their country. That said, licenses are a tool which can be leveraged to effectively realize NFT opportunities. This is how that can be achieved. Connecting an NFT to a license,

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Kenga: which clearly stipulates the rights included in an NFT, is an effective way of endowing rights on a NFT. Furthermore, the license creates clear guidelines for how to handle future disputes relating to usage and other rights issues concerning the digital asset. On OpenSea, for example, the terms of service explain that the copyright owner of the works shall remain the copyright owner regardless of a change of ownership of the NFT. Thus, a license would be required to confer any copyright-related rights to an NFT buyer. Consider the Kings of Leon example, which illustrates how licenses can be utilized to clarify the rights attached to an NFT. There is a Kings of Leon NFT on sale on OpenSea which gives buyers access to an MP3 version of one of their albums among other things. While a buyer may assume they are buying a share of the copyrights of the album, that is not the case. The terms and conditions, which are unfortunately quite hidden, stipulate that “you acknowledge and agree that as between you and the company, Kings of Leon, the company owns all legal rights, title and interest in and to the art and associated merchandise, and all intellectual property rights therein”. That is to say that buying this Kings of Leon NFT does not equate to buying any copyrights and the NFT creator maintains control of everything they send to the buyer as part of the sale. If one digs even deeper, one can find that the NFT includes a Kings of Leon license which stipulates that buyers get a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free, nontransferable artwork. That is to

say that its buyers have a license to use, copy and display the art and included merchandise solely to use it, copy it, and display it. This means that buyers cannot modify the artwork or use it to advertise or sell third-party products. The license also explains that buyers also cannot associate the artwork with anything that could potentially damage their reputation or use the artwork in any movie, video or media. Thus, for example, a buyer could not publish a YouTube video which contains the artwork. In this instance, the license serves to clearly stipulate the exact rights and allowances conferred to the buyer of the NFT.

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Kenga:

The gen zs of voodoo music How the Young Signees of this Afro-Spanish Label Embody Diaspora Through Sound

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by Blossom Maduafokwa

hen I ask Zarhan Lagosian, Afrostreet artist, and Voodoo Music signee - just what it is

that inspires his gritty sound, he responds to me with ease. “My spirit,” he says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You know the spirit don’t lie.” This adage - The spirit don’t lie is the heart of Voodoo Club, the Afro-Spanish collective who has the city of Barcelona in the palm of its hand. Founded in 2018 by Nigerian transplants in Spain, Voodoo has dedicated itself to carrying Barcelona’s African diaspora on its back, hosting vibrant functions in the bustling city featuring sounds both continental and global. Blasting the diasporic sonics of Afrobeats, dembow, Amapiano, and baile funk in a city where they would not have been heard before, Voodoo quickly became essential in cultivating for Africans in Spain a sort of extra-continental home. As though left with no other choice, the collective insistently grew, representing talent through the Voodoo Agency, flexing premier Afro-dance moves through the

While there are not many of them, their impact is potent Voodoo Dance Club, and, now, nurturing the craft of African musicians under the Voodoo Music record label. The sounds coming out of Voodoo Music are just as eclectic as those that resound through the halls of any Voodoo Club party, featuring everything from the Yorubalaced Amapiano of their artist Oseka to the Latin-trap of their anthem “Negro con Estilo.” The label is a vast, complex constellation of all the cultures that comprise it - a testament to the creative self-sufficiency of people who, struggling to find places where they could hear the music of their homes, decided to make that music for themselves. And while Voodoo may have a whole

roster of signees that comprise this vastly transnational sound, at the very center of its work are its Gen-Z’s. These signees, because of the defiance afforded by their extreme youth, are even more unflinching in the face of radical, syncretic sound. While there are not many of them, their impact is potent, forming the very heart of the record label’s diasporic essence. So: here are the Gen-Z’s of Voodoo Music. LUA Raised by a Mozambican father and an Italian mother in Barcelona, Lua Fernando has been captivated by music ever since she was just a kid. “My first memory involving music is my dad playing the guitar and singing as I was coming back home from the kindergarten,” the 20-year-old reminisces. “I remember I used to hear him from all the way down the building, and once I was home I used to sit in front of him to listen without even taking my backpack off.”

Kenga: Having a musician as a father helped, of course, filling her home with the most rangeful of genres - from Mozambican roots music to jazz, 80’s Western classics, salsa, and soul. “The fact that I had music so close to me because of my dad, made me a fan of every single note or chord he was playing. From the very beginning I really loved to sing, but I was very shy. But when I got the chance I started taking drum classes, then bass classes and now I’m taking singing classes to keep improving my skills.” Even with the array of sounds running through Lua's home, it was the stirring sounds of R&B, jazz, and neo-soul that stuck most. She pulls from the most expansive of influences - from Beyonce, Erykah Badu, Mindless Behavior, and Ne-Yo to Latin jazz artists Ruben Blades and Buika. Lua relishes the range afforded by R&B and the unending space it provides her to toy with her voice - mimicking the fluidity of all the sounds that streamed through her childhood home.

Her music echoes this boundlessness. Her premier track “Kiss Me” is a slow, dark R&B number that exudes passion, while her sophomore tune “Talk is Cheap” is a more upbeat yet still sultry message to a deadbeat man. Her most recent single “Don’t Wanna Know” is led by speculative and light vocals while punctuated by a low, jazzy piano. What’s more, in the spirit of R&B, all of Lua’s tracks are deeply intimate. “I honestly am a person who is always guided by my feelings,” she admits, “and you can tell in all of my lyrics.”

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Kenga: Her music unfailingly features layered vocals and an indulgent silky, alto - all calling on the limitless range of the music that made her. Indeed, regardless of what music Lua makes, the influences of her upbringing always remain central. “Even though right now my sound is not exactly the definition of ‘Mozambique,’” she says, “the rhythms and sounds that my dad taught me are always in my head.” Since joining Voodoo, Lua’s sound has only expanded, grown even more complex. “Voodoo is just magic. I discovered so many things, such as music, beautiful people, and I also understand myself better. For now my sound is more neosoul, but I’m planning on hopping on an Afro-vibe soon.” With her old influences and the fresh sounds of Voodoo, there’s really no way that she can lose. “In my head I have big plans for me,” Lua admits. “And I’m working with the right people, so things are gonna go really, really good.” BRISA NUNJO For R&B vocalist Brisa Nunjo, joining Voodoo was practically destiny. “It actually was a fluid connection,” Brisa begins. “Lua met Corneille Imounga, who’s also part of Voodoo, at a jam session in Barcelona. From there, we made contact too and started working together.” Brisa and Lua, besides now being signed to Voodoo and joined at the hip and heart, both had veteran musicians as fathers through whom they met. Brisa’s

father, however, is Cameroonian, one who made sure that music was a consistent presence in his home. “To be honest, the amount of different musical genres that have been played in my house is very wide,” Brisa recalls. “However, what I listened to the most was jazz, blues, funk, reggae, and afrobeat. When we lived in France, my father had a studio at home, so I was always playing with the instruments and devices he had.” With a childhood where music was ever-present, it became deeply personal for Brisa, as necessary for her survival as breathing. “I believe that music is about sharing vibrations with others, but it is also my way to express myself and my thoughts and experiences.” As she grew, music stopped simply being something that she was surrounded by and became something that gravitated to on her own, citing Lauryn Hill and Nina Simone as the key influences of her blooming R&B sound. “The music that impacted me the most was Black music,” Brisa says, “As a teenager, I kept getting closer to references that I could identify myself with and look up to.” It only makes sense, with a fresh career at 21 years old, that her music would exude the raw emotion expected of R&B, complete with careful vocal layerings, lyricism about gentle love, and the soft, leisurely tempo of jazz. “Stupid Love,” her first single, is an R&B love confession, soothingly minimalistic with only an electric guitar and a voice to guide it. “Take Me Home” is a more sultry number, filled with

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Kenga: ambient synth, warm harmonies, and lyricism about self questioning and discovery. Her latest track “Can’t You See” is much more representative of the genre-meshing of Brisa’s household, starting off with an ambient R&B instrumental and ending with the buoyant percussion expected of a coupé decálé or salsa tune. It is clear that Brisa’s approach to music is well-rounded, robust, just like the sounds that made her. Of course, it helps that her newfound community at Voodoo, steadily presenting her with new, thrilling sounds and experiences, provides her with the rich emotions that keep her sound going. “Voodoo is a vivid reflection of the love and energies that unite us as a community,” Brisa says, “The empowerment, strength and joy you experience at these events is what leads me to create music. It’s beautiful to be part of a community in which I feel represented in so many ways and that supports its people like this.” ZARHAN The last of these young Africans churning out global sounds is Zarhan. He, like all members of Voodoo, is quite taken with this idea of the spirit, claiming that it was nothing at all earthly that led him to the label. “Nobody found anybody, the spirit brought us together,” he explains. “I’m not even tryna sound deep or anything, it just happened.”

Born Ajisafe Marvelous Oluwabukunmi, Zarhan has spent his whole life in Lagos - a long way away from Barcelona. While he doesn’t live in Voodoo’s

base city, it was his connection with Voodoo’s label head Yemi Alaran that brought him under its wing. “Yemi & I have been friends for a minute, then he and some friends started this collective and then I hopped on you know. We just fly guys on our normal p, heading to the top. Too easy man, no stress.” The 22-year-old’s approach to music is different from his label mates’, grittier, straddling a range of genres like rap, Afrobeats, and Alté with an edgy Afrostreet sound at his center. He brings a fresh voice to the realm of street music featuring captivating culte (street-driven Alté) with his single tactical “Tactical,” and a furious trap flow with his most popular track “Only Me.” While mostly coming from a singular locale, Zarhan’s influences are just as eclectic and complex as Lua’s or Brisa’s, owing to the unending complexity of Lagos itself. “It’s crazy how Lagos opens your mind, there’s literally nothing you won’t see here, trust me,” Zarhan says. “When you’re exposed to all of these vices, there’s no way your horizon won’t widen.”

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That’s literally what Lagos does to you. As long as there’s a beat… omo, it’s going. Just bring the mic

For Zarhan, the first of these influences was the church. “I was born at a church,” he begins. “My first contact with music was from the church, then I started playing the drums at church eventually. Being at church, soaking in all the sounds and melodies, it was always an ecstatic feeling for me. That’s how I knew.” “My dad’s a huge Panam Percy Paul fan. The disc was always loaded up in the car so whenever we had to ride anywhere, even for the shortest journey, omo na Percy Paul we dey jam. King Sunny Ade was also a strong hold in the house.” While it was the Nigerian church that taught him that music was a key piece of his future, his teenagehood is what allowed for that future to take shape. Coming up, he made sure that his ears were receptive to all types of music - whether they were old, foreign, or new. “I listened to everything that came my way. There’s literally no type of music that I don’t listen to, from Ayinla Omowura to Madonna to Tye Tribbett to Asake.” Naturally, then, Zarhan has explored a vast array of sounds with his own music, even with only 5 official tracks. His newest single “Hasta La Vista” represents his genre-expansive slant, leaning closer towards standard Afrobeats while still possessing the infectious bounce of street music. His ability to digest and spit out sounds is intimately tied to his Nigerian identity, or what he calls a “cheat code” that being

Kenga:

article exposed to African music gives you. “Absorbing all these sounds and exposing myself to all these genres of music makes it so easy for me cus being Nigerian makes me so flexible. That’s literally what Lagos does to you. As long as there’s a beat or there’s a rhythm, omo, it’s going. Just bring the mic.” Above all, though, what is most important for Zarhan is jaiye - in short, that enjoyment takes center stage in his music. “In Lagos, everyone is always on the move, always on the go,” he explains to me. “You can’t be making music that will dull people’s ginger. My people just love to chill, to party, just have a good time; and what’s a good time without music? I make music for this sole purpose.” Zarhan, in sum, shows what Voodoo’s Gen-Z’s are all about: daring, boundless creativity, and joy. His scope, like that of his fellow signees, like his sound itself, is limitless. “In one year, I'll be causing trouble,” he promises. “With God’s grace, I go don trabaye. No man can do it, no label, no Voodoo, no nothing. Only God can - and I'm too certain He will. Wallahi, just watch.”

art: WCE photo: (Whitney Grishon Chinonye NjorogeErnest)

93art: WCE (Whitney Chinonye Ernest)

photo: Grishon Njoroge94

Kenga:

Interview

ASI renie: making musical magic while gen z

Interview

Kenga: RENIE ASI BAMPOE-ABU, more popularly known as Asi Renie, is a 22-yearold Ghanaian singer and songwriter whose music career began in 2019. Asi’s unique style cuts across Neo-Soul, Afro-soul, South African house, EDM, R&B /Soul, and Afro-Blues. In this interview, she dissects her music and explains its initiation, inspiration, and its journey so far. by Arinze Obi

How would you describe the place music occupies in your life?

own way. For example, if you were in a space where you heard constant chants and drumming, your attention is stuck to it whether you understand the language or not. So I will say music is definitely the universal language. We all get it.

I think at this moment, it’s almost everything. I wake up thinking about my rollout and everything that I need to do for that: checking if it sounds right, confirming who’s mixing and How did music speak to you? mastering, seeing if I’ve taken the How did Asi Renie the musician right pictures, and yeah. For me emerge? right now, it’s everything really. It started with piano lessons. My Has it always been this allover-sabi parents wanted their consuming for you? child to be able to play classical piano, so it really started from When I finished school, that’s there. But I think being when it got to this point. introduced to the piano also Because I was thinking to myself opened me up as an artist. My that there’s nothing occupying parents also love music. My dad my time as much as music, and is a huge jazz and R&B fanatic; it’s giving me a hundred percent he actually also used to be a DJ. fulfilment, so it eventually So it’s like all of those things just became the master of my life, came to play into making me a which it is now. musician. I think it started in high school, when I joined the music Do you believe that music is club in my school. So they’ll tell truly the universal language? me to sing and I’ll sing, and everyone seemed to like it. You I think it is. It’s more or less like a see, I liked the attention that time capsule that preserves time came with that because I was and things. For example, when also a very shy person and for you hear apartheid music, you the very first time, I did can hear the pain they went something and I was in charge. through without even having I’m hitting notes that nobody been there at that time or even else is hitting, and everybody just understanding most of the lyrics. wants to talk to me because of That’s music. It does something. that thing that I’m really good at. It’s also a certain kind of high It created this confidence and that you can’t really describe safe space for me that has got because everyone feels it in their me here. But even though I’m here now, I really

didn’t think being a full-time artiste was ever something that I was going to do. It kind of caught me off guard basically. During the COVID era, I got my biggest reality shock because everyone around me thought it’s a passion project for me, but I knew it’s the only thing I think I’m very good at and I think that I’m supposed to do. So I had to come to terms with the fact that it can’t remain a passion project. It’s something that’s going to feed me, fulfil me, and going to fulfil others by sharing your gift. So at that point, I was like do I want to be in an office? No. Do I believe this is going to work? Yes. Will I thrive regardless? Yes. But I still needed to come up with a game plan to make sure this is something I’m doing and actually doing it well. Realising the importance of the craft made me realise that it’s in fact a job, and one that I take seriously. When you make music, what do you usually want your listeners to feel? Honestly, I don’t always have an expectation of how I want them to feel. It’s a bit selfish at the beginning. When I create, if I’m addicted to the song myself, I’m like ‘oh this is good!’ haha. So once that happens, I’m like okay I like the energy I’m feeling and I

Kenga: himself at heart, he would always say that he doesn’t understand what I’m doing but all he can do is pray for me. With my parents, I can still sense a bit of fear. There’s always the question of how I’d survive based on their idea of who an artist is and also the thing of being a child from a Christian household. I think they’re still under-convinced, but they’re now at the point where they’re letting me do what I want. Funny story is that sometimes I come back from a show at like 2am, my mum knows I’m an artist and that I have shows that I’m still curious. When you’re recording, what’s it that you’re sometimes run that late, but feeling that makes you feel like she’ll keep yelling till the next day about it. So I don’t think she’s you’ve gotten exactly what fully gotten with the program you’re looking for from the and fully trust that I’m going to sound? be okay. But they’ll eventually get there. Once I start bringing in Have you ever listened to the stacks, they won’t complain Michael Jackson’s 'Wanna Be anymore. Startin’ Somethin’ on a loop? There’s a 13-hour loop on YouTube that does something to Despite your parents’ concern you. You don’t want it to end; it’s about your interest in pursuing like some euphoria where it’s like music, how have they once you’ve heard the song, you supported you so far? keep going back to it on constant repeat. You don’t know what it is When my dad realises I’m going through a lot, he’ll come to my you’re searching for in the song room and ask: “Are you okay? Do but the feeling it’s giving you is very nice and you don’t want it to you have everything you need for your shoot today? Do you stop. When I make a song that need money?” Then he’ll be like does that to me, I’m always like “Don’t tell your mother.” My mum ‘Yeah, you’re going on the is the kind of person who likes to project. You’re supposed to be heard.’ It has to be an ear worm. see something happening before she supports it. So when I As a Gen Z, how were you able received my first music nomination from 3Music, she to convince your Boomer posted it on Facebook. She’s like parents that music was what a clout chaser haha. Once she you wanted to pursue? sees that something’s I think they’re still in the process happening, that’s when she’s endorsing it. So it’s little things. of being convinced, honestly. When her friends say things like Even though my dad is a “Ey, Renie can sing o,” that’s musician when she knows that her hope that whoever listens to this song feels the same energy I’m feeling. And then normally, you’d hear different things, different people feeling different ways about the same song, and that’s beautiful too. Even though I leave the music open-ended, as long as you feel something that translates specifically to you, that’s cool. I don’t feel like I need to convey a specific feeling with my music. I just prefer to use my music to show life in all its randomness.

Interview

Kenga:

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I don’t feel like I need to convey a specific feeling with my music. I just prefer to use my music to show life in all its randomness. daughter is an artist. Between the two of them, I’d say my dad has been more supportive. How have you balanced pursuing your music career with completing your engineering degree? Honestly, I’m being a bad child. At first, I thought engineering was what I wanted to do. But when I started making music, I realised that at some point, you have to choose a master. Something has to consume you, and music consumes me more, so if you’re asking about how I’m balancing both of them, then I’m really not balancing them at all. Right now, I’ve completed all my coursework though, so I’m just waiting for my final results. But yeah, I thought engineering was a great career to pursue especially as a 21st century woman, but I’ve accepted that there’s something bigger I want to see through and pursue with even more passion. I’m also grateful for my engineering background because it’s opened by eyes to wider possibilities, because even with

Interview my music, I’d usually want to get into the more technical bits of it, the software bit of it, and those kinds of things. So I really think my engineering degree is still of use. What are your thoughts on music schools? Would you ever consider attending one? Honestly, yes. But it’ll be more for the music business. But I think during my leisure time, I’d want to continue playing piano classically, getting more advanced, and writing music. But that’ll be for when I have my house in the Cayman Islands and I have time to do that. But if I was to go to music school now, it’ll be to just understand the music business and everything that it entails. I’ve realised it’s a pressing need for a lot more artists and people who want to be in the music space. Why did you choose to go for a more Afrosoul music signature? I think that’s just what came out. The time, the space I was in, the music I’d been listening to, and so on played a role. At the end of the day, you’re a sum of your environment. So when I started making music, afro soul is really what just came out. Who would you say are your biggest musical influences? Right now, I listen to a lot of Burna Boy and Cavemen. But honestly, I go on a musical fast when I’m creating because I don’t want anyone else’s style to enter my head when I’m in the studio.

Interview

Kenga: But if there are people whose sound I admire, it’ll definitely be Burna Boy, Obongjayar, Tems, and Efya. On the international side, it’ll be Fetty Wap, Lauryn Hill, and Beyoncé. I’m a Beyoncé stan. In 2020, you released Chapter V, which was released with much acclaim. Since then you’ve performed on really big stages in Ghana and abroad. But now you’ve left us hanging. Why the silence? I think I’ve just been finding my sound and making sure that everything is perfect because this is going to be my first release while not being in school. It’s my first project as a full-time musician, as an artiste, and not as a part-time student. I believe good things take time, so I’m really taking my time with this. I felt this project just needed time to allow for breakdowns, restructurings, and those type of things. But this year, I promise, we’re having new music.

now possible. You can do anything now. It’s like we’ve just been given everything that’s been tried and tested, and then also given a chance to do whatever we want to do. There are no more rules. This is the time for creativity, and that’s something we channel a lot in this generation—we are creatives at heart. We create new What can we expect from your things but are still very inspired by upcoming project? the past. We’re also very ambitious while so young, and I think you can expect something we’re really coming for anybody. soulful yet experimental in terms We’re aggressively saying that it’s of my voice. I’ll be changing not about our age, we know what tones in a couple places, we’re capable of and we know sounding more masculine in what we’re doing. I really love that some places and more feminine energy. in others. It’s something I’ve been exploring during this time. I’m What’s an opinion you have honestly really excited for it. I about music or the African can’t wait for everybody to hear music industry that most people it. may disagree with you on? What do you love the most about being Afro Gen Z? I think it’ll be how “impossible” is

I don’t think people will disagree with me now, but as much as we love the art, I think the marketing

of the art is just as important as the art itself that is being created. It’s something I came to realise as I understood that there are many talented people, but making it a business for yourself and a sustainable one, you’ll have to find that balance of marketing it strategically, which is an art form itself. That’s something I think artists need to pay attention to. Sometimes, it’s like people are telling you “just feel the music.” But I think it’s a balance thing. Cos people feel the music and then they’re like “ok, cool.” They have something unique about them, but the whole world isn’t hearing them. It’s not about them not being talented, it’s about them needing to be intentional and smart about marketing their work and talent.

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photo: Joshua Gbagado

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photo: Andrew Antwi

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The Music Issue: Gen Aux | Kenga Magazine

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