She is the hottest talent in town and she is none other than the beautiful Vanessa Mdee who was recently in the country for the recording of the second season of Coke Studio Africa with Nigeria’s Burna boy.You’ve
probably seen her in one of the many interviews she has already done
for Kenyan media stations. Other than her rising music career, Vanessa
is also an MTV Veejay , radio host, youth activist among other things
she does.
She has already recorded massive hit songs like Closer, Come Over (whose video
she released just a few weeks ago) and her latest single Hawajui which
has also been received very well and is currently enjoying a lot of
airplay. Speaking during an interview with The Star Newspaper’s Word Is
while in the country, Vanessa said that West African artistes had
mastered the art of fusing East African beats into their music to make
their music appeal to a larger audience and that East African African
artistes needed to wake up and stop sleeping on what they have.
This is what she said,
“Personally, I believe East African artistes have so much more to offer in terms of our styles and sound. If you really pay attention to what West Africans are doing right now in music, you’ll notice there’s a lot of influence from East Africa. We are not even aware that they are taking it from us, as we are busy backing them up, which is really sad. It’s time we stopped aping other people’s styles and focus on strengthening our existing unique identity. All the stakeholders of the music industry should also promote and believe in our brands much more than we already have.”
“Personally, I believe East African artistes have so much more to offer in terms of our styles and sound. If you really pay attention to what West Africans are doing right now in music, you’ll notice there’s a lot of influence from East Africa. We are not even aware that they are taking it from us, as we are busy backing them up, which is really sad. It’s time we stopped aping other people’s styles and focus on strengthening our existing unique identity. All the stakeholders of the music industry should also promote and believe in our brands much more than we already have.”
On whether she had any intentions to collaborate with a West African
artiste as was trend with other East African artistes, she was quick to
add that,
“Right now, I don’t want to be a part of that madness. I
am not gonna force it to happen. However, I do support good music so if
my music is crossing over and getting played on West African airwaves,
that’s amazing. However, I believe working with Burna Boy is going to be
exciting. I am a fan of his music and I am curious of what I will learn
from him and him from me. Our collaboration on Coke Studio is something
people will be talking about for a while.”
0 Comments:
Post a Comment