![]() Initially, I didn’t see many female or non binary DJs to look up to while growing up in Kenya. ![]() What barriers did you face getting into DJing? The Flux mode is such a great tool too as it enables me to scratch, backspin, and chop things up without losing my position in a track – I love this for adding some spice to my mix and keeping things unpredictable. I don’t over prepare my playlists and like to be spontaneous, even throwing in tracks friends give to be on flash drives during the set. I like the fact that it immediately analyzes tracks when you import them, as I like to move through different tempos and I sometimes choose tracks on the fly. What features do you most appreciate about it for your style of DJing? It’s the first software that I learnt the basics of DJing on. What was your first interaction with TRAKTOR? This really helped me develop my style as a DJ/producer. What would you say has been a key moment in terms of your development as an artist?ĭuring the pandemic, I did a residency at the Nyege Nyege Villa in Kampala, Uganda where I got time to focus on music production while also being surrounded by a very talented community of artists. Mixing African rhythms, experimental music, hardcore techno, industrial noise, psy-trance, and my own beats. I would describe it as experimental, as I like to play lots of different genres, experimenting with dark, hard, and heavy sounds. It wasn’t the best DJ set of my life, but I played for almost 2 hours and I really loved it and I’ve never looked back since. I had to quickly figure out a way to still make my performance happen, so my friend helped me make a playlist and showed me a few things on the controller minutes before my performance. On the day of the event, my guitarist told me he wasn’t able to come. The actual reality of playing out in the world happened unintentionally as I had organized a party where I was performing live and I had booked other DJs to come play. At this point, it was just something I was trying out for fun as I was really heavily involved with the live music scene – singing and sometimes performing with various bands. ![]() When I moved to Kampala I did a DJ workshop with Femme Electronic, where I learnt the basics of DJing. I remember while I was growing up my Mum would ask me what my career of choice was and I would tell her I wanted to be a DJ. I’ve always wanted to be a DJ since I was 11. One of the breakout artists of the past two years, Makossiri is a Kenyan DJ and producer who cut their teeth at the Nyege Nyege residency villa, but recently returned to Kenya to attend the Santuri Electronic Music Academy (SEMA). We’ve seen artists such as Slikback blow up on international platforms and tour circuits having chosen TRAKTOR as his preferred tool – while the Nyege Nyege affiliated Hibotep even featured as the face of the TRAKTOR KONTROL S3 on its launch in 2019.Īs a part of celebrations around TRAKTOR’s 20th anniversary, we thought it would be timely to catch up with some of the artists changing the narrative in Kenya and Uganda, and look ahead to what might follow for the region. When this blog reported on the new sounds of East Africa in 2018, we highlighted some of the movers and shakers active in the scene – DJ Rachael, EA Wave, Nyege Nyege, and Santuri East Africa, to name but a few.įour years later, there are even more reasons to be excited about the future sound of EA, and there is a new crop of artists making waves globally, many of them die-hard TRAKTOR users. Once known for its wide-ranging live music circuit of benga and rhumba bands, the region now vibrates to a myriad of electronic music styles – from imported afrobeats and amapiano, to homegrown gengetone, drill, singeli, afro-house, and a slew of experimental styles that have created a global buzz. East Africa has undergone a seismic cultural shift in the last 15 years.
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