Category: Emerging Artists
Showcase rising stars and emerging talents within the African music scene.
Onyach Pala’s Gweth Is A Reflection on Gratitude, Belonging and the Will to Become
The Watendawili member takes a more personal route on his four-track solo EP, Gweth, drawing together faith, love, cultural expression and the determination to keep moving. There is a particular kind of confidence in recognising how far one has travelled without losing sight of how much further there is to go. It is an understanding…
Nairobi Grooves: Onyach Pala Leads November’s Playlist with “Gweth”
Nairobi Grooves opens November with Gweth, from Onyach Pala’s second studio project. The Dholuo word (local language) for blessings sets the tone for a playlist that moves between gratitude, love, ambition and experimentation. This edition also features new collaborations, regional connections and producers shaping Kenya’s current sound. From Vic West’s production work on records by…
Nairobi Grooves: Detours, New Directions and the Sounds Shaping Nairobi
Nairobi Grooves ends October with a selection of music that captures the range of sounds coming out of Kenya and its wider creative community. This edition moves between hip-hop, Afropop, R&B, Afrohouse, electronic music and contemporary Kenyan sounds. It also brings together established names, emerging artists and collaborations that connect different parts of the East…
Custodian Conversations: Guta Wakuma Chimsa on The Sound That Connects Us, CHIKKA and the Search for a New East African Identity
After years of researching musical traditions across East Africa, Ethiopian producer and creative director Guta Wakuma Chimsa is developing CHIKKA, an ambitious cultural project that draws on the region’s shared rhythms, instruments and histories. In Custodian Conversations with Music Custodian, he reflects on the discoveries that shaped its sound, the people who guided its creation…
Nairobi Grooves: What If Nairobi’s Sound Is the Conversation Between Its Genres?
From Wakadinali and Buruklyn Boyz to Njerae, Tina Ardor and Keemlyf, the latest Nairobi Grooves maps a city whose musical identity is becoming harder to reduce to a single sound. There is an old temptation when documenting a music city: find its sound. Give it a rhythm, a genre, perhaps a movement with a name….
Solana Tii Marks One Million Spotify Streams for ‘Okunkun’ as Her Yorupop Journey Gathers Momentum
For weeks, Solana Tii has been doing something deceptively simple: showing up for her music. Across a steady stream of videos and social posts, the Nigerian artist has continued introducing audiences to her sound, performing it, explaining it and repeatedly carrying the language of Yorupop into public view. Now, according to the singer, that persistence…
Custodian Gems: KAESTYLE Leads 12 Records Worth Hearing Before Consensus Arrives
With KAESTYLE on the cover, this week’s Custodian Gems moves through 6uff, Kayode, Taene, Pabrymo, OluwaMillar, Ef Moon, Abefe, Sigag Lauren, Lil Frosh, Lasmid and Hunnyboy – a selection interested less in who already commands the conversation than in where attention might be moving next. Discovery becomes less useful when everybody has already agreed on…
Jua’s “Eshi” Finds Pan-African Connection Without Asking Africa to Sound the Same
Bringing together Maa, Swahili, Sesotho and Amharic alongside musical traditions stretching from Kenya and Ethiopia to Lesotho, Mozambique and North Africa, on Eshi, Jua’s latest CHIKKA experiment asks a more interesting question about Pan-African music: what if connection does not require sameness? Africa has spent generations being described through its differences. Different languages. Different borders….
Xenia Manasseh, Ukweli and Ywaya Tajiri Ask “AJE?” as Nairobi’s R&B Ecosystem Keeps Building Outward
The new collaboration AJE? arrives as one of the early releases emerging from Cinq Music and Nairobi-based Soul HQ’s developing relationship – bringing three distinct creative voices into a record whose significance extends beyond the song itself. There is something increasingly interesting happening around Nairobi’s contemporary music ecosystem. Not simply more releases. Not simply more…
Blaqbonez Leads a Borderless New Music Friday on Afrobeats Heat Different
From Blaqbonez and Seyi Vibez to KiDi, Sarkodie, Sofiya Nzau, Phyno and King Paluta, Music Custodian’s latest playlist update captures African music moving confidently across scenes, borders and generations. The final New Music Friday of August does not arrive with one dominant story. That might be its most interesting quality. This week’s Afrobeats Heat Different…