Nyokabi Kariuki: Sonic alchemist blending african roots and global sound

It has received positive reviews from The Pitchfork, Resident Advisor and the New York Times. Her debut album Feeling Body was also met with similar acclaim. Her concert works continue to be performed by award-winning ensembles like Third Coast Percussion, Brooklyn Youth Chorus and Chromic. In addition, Nyokabi has received commissions from BBC Radio 3, Heartland Marimba, Arcis Saxophon Quartett and more.

From her qualifications, career achievement and progression, the svelte Kenyan songbird that is Nyokabi Kariuki is the perfect example of a prophetess more famous abroad than she is in her own country.

Upon realisation she wanted to do music, Nyokabi Kariuki felt like the universe around her was drumming into her that she would not be successful in the craft if she did it while in Kenya.

Growing up, she played classical piano, when she was 14, she remembers going to watch a movie with her dad, The Life of Pi. She found it boring because it didn’t have dialogue. She recalls the music score of the movie being the best part of the show. It was the first time she paid attention to scores and orchestration; it was also the time she decided she wanted to be a music composer.

She describes her childhood as growing up with an adventurous mother who would force them into different activities without notice. She got her and her brother into swimming and playing the piano which Nyokabi describes as coming very natural to her.

It gave her a good base which would manifest itself years later to a point she was writing pieces for different instruments like the marimba, the cello, saxophones, anything on an orchestra.

Her versatility as an audiophile has seen her write scores for films as well as release records as an artist. Nyokabi Kariuki is what you would best describe as a complete package musician.

Besides music, Nyokabi spends a large chunk of her time researching into African Music, art and traditions, because of the belief Africans have so much knowledge that was devalued by colonialism and its systems some of which were retained after independence and keep continuing with the harm.

“I have a call to keep being interested in indigenous knowledge and on finding new ways to center that knowledge in the way that makes us move forward, I think that is important,” she says.

Whereas classical music in which Nyokabi was trained in has a rich history and heritage, it also has rigid structures that are hard to steer from unlike other genres like Jazz that allow for improvisation, Nyokabi however has fashioned herself to be an outlier.

Her music has a whole horde of additives that give it a different twist. Her malleability in fusing, different sounds from different contexts and continents is perhaps her biggest gift and what endears her to global audience.

Everyone in a mixed-race crowd is bound to find something representative of their roots in Nyokabi’s performances, compositions and arrangements. She is a living, walking movie soundtrack that evolves with each scene.

“Even with a classical training, improvisation is a big part of my work, even with the classical musicians and performers I work with, I am very particular on who they are because I want them to be open to my work. In the contemporary classical music context, there is a whole scene, it gets crazier than the Mozarts and the ancient masters,” she notes.

Her score writing varies with every piece. She has been known to work with graphic scores which is a totally non-traditional way of making music that entails capturing the sounds of natural elements like an ocean tide, birds’ songs and even the wind, translating it into a score and eventually performing it on a stage.

In her unique scores, there are no time signatures with certain elements of the songs, an instrumentalist simply has to listen and follow her voice.

“When writing, mostly I am trying to communicate certain things and the rigidity of the western classical framework doesn’t give me the allowance to communicate as I want, mostly I work with classical musicians who have a practice of improvisation as well. I can always write a traditional classical score on cue but sometimes it’s not always the best way to send a message through a song,” she says.

When she isn’t singing, Nyokabi is probably collecting a kalimba or a lamellophone from a different part of the African continent. She has a reason for collecting these two particular instruments.

“These instruments can be found in different iterations across Africa. The Zimbabwean Mbira is the most famous one but in Congo, you will find the Likembe, in Cameroon, you will find the Kasanza, in Kenya, I had one that was made for me in Kilifi.”

These instruments she says have different tunings because most of the music amongst the African communities didn’t see the necessity of standardization of tuning which she says only showed up in Europe after the 18th Century where a piano in Amsterdam would sound the same as a piano in London or Rome in Italy.

“In Africa, there was no need for standard tuning, why would a xylophone in Uganda sound the same as a Xylophone in Tanzania? The communities are different in Africa and the purposes of the instruments vary.

“The only time you are tuning the instrument would be when you are playing with the person next to you and so your instrument is flexible enough.

“It’s why I enjoy collecting the Kalimbas because they are all very different which is in contrast to the western classical practice which I have been trained in where you are not in personal conversation with an instrument because the settings are already there. For the kalimbas, you are there to learn from them because they are all different.”

When creating her music, Nyokabi isn’t bound by audience expectation with regards to the nature of the sound. She considers this as a privilege partly fueled by her release of her first music in musically mature audiences and markets which have more experimental artists and spaces.

“I make music that I like to listen to, if it feels good to my body, then I am happy. When I started, I wasn’t thinking about who was listening, I was creating because it made me feel something and when I shared, I trusted that there would be people who would resonate and that is what has been happening.”

She considers herself as a musician in a niche space which has infrastructure and allows for freedom.

“The biggest experimental artists are big in the space but they are not filling up stadiums in the mainstream music which is okay. It is a different scene and it has own crowd, just like every other industry. Releasing music in these spaces allowed me to have an audience that understood my work,” she says.

Experimental music is quickly gaining traction in Africa and Nyokabi Kariuki is part of the bubbling movement that is churning out others who are big names in the global scale of the genre.

Joseph Kamaru’s grandson Joseph Kamaru who goes by the moniker KMRU is one of the names causing ripples in the music scene. He is an ambient music superstar who has multiple records on vinyl.

Other names include Slikback, a Kenyan electronic musician and DJ who is known for his experimental club music, which fuses the skin and sinew of techno, grime, footwork, and other genres. He's recognized for his prolific output and forward-thinking sound, and Abush Zeleke from Ethiopia who on his own accord is holding fort for the horn of Africa.

When it comes to experimental music, Nyokabi feels there is a need to have more spaces like The Summit and The Mist which she says are programming the music that is in the fringes.

“The alternatives and experimental scenes are always feeding the mainstream. Everything that is mainstream now started with the alternatives. The is a need to protect those scenes. The goal doesn’t have to be mainstream success. It important to have a small scene where people are trying out and taking bigger risks,” she says.

In spite of the global acclaim as compared to back home, Nyokabi doesn’t feel underappreciated or underrated. She relishes in the prospect of building her brand from the bottom, the vagaries of fame be damned.

“For the longest time, I was hearing the narrative that I couldn’t be based in Kenya and do music and I didn’t feel like there would be people who understood my music, but I met people who did and were doing cool things. I feel like I have found my people. Other people will find me when they do.”

What has kept her going all this while she says comes from a point of privilege.

“There is a joy in hard work but for me it comes mostly from a point of privilege that I want to acknowledge. Mostly I get my gigs from abroad and I am not at home most of the time and so I am not frustrated by the lack of income here. I feel like I have the energy and space and capacity to give to the scene when I am here.”

Our conversations seep in between her records some of which are in Vinyl and are almost selling out. Apart from Blinky Bill and KMRU, Nyokabi is the only other modern Kenyan artist I know of that is still printing vinyl records.

This is in the backdrop of a record printing press which used to be in Nairobi that would serve mostly Congolese and Kenyan musicians. At the time of writing, Nyokabi has to press her records in either Europe or America.

Her life oscillates in between planes and tour buses and sharing stages with known acts like the American Indie musician called Julia Holter.

Last year alone, she had 3 tours one in which she had 10 shows in 14 days. Her typical life on the road is sleeping on a bus and waking up in a different country. Because of the expenses involved and low fees, she runs everything by herself, sometimes selling her own vinyl records during her shows.

For the experimental music scene to grow in Kenya, Nyokabi believes that we need to invest not only on funding but more importantly in spaces.

“Art makes people show up, its not about what the tangible product is, art brings people together regardless of the outcome which is why we need more spaces which is what enables us to build the infrastructure of an industry. Our government needs to be more creative with how they are supporting creative endeavors. Putting youth sports and culture in the same docket is absurd, our national theatre should be the sexiest building in town, if you go to a place like Vienna, there are people whose professional titles are acoustic designers, every piece of wood in a concert hall in Vienna is built with very specific conditions in mind,” she notes.

In the local music scene, Nyokabi would love to work with Nabalayo, a fellow experimental musician, a maverick by all means who is the inventor of a genre called Changanya which is the idea of looking into different traditional music and piecing them together, hence changanya.

Currently, she is working on a Kikuyu album and writing a book about the project. Part of her repertoire is being an avid reader and researcher of the music and traditions that form her ensemble and compositions.

“I dig deep into projects I embark on. I love contexts and the understanding of where things come from,” she says.

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