Being a pan-continent duo is hard enough, but add in a global pandemic and making music together might seem impossible, right? Well, Labdi Ommes and Bernt Isak Wærstad are consistently confounding that idea as the Kenyan-Norwegian collaboration Unganisha.
The duo have released their debut EP ‘Kucheza’ alongside the music video to “Chunya”, which follows up "Leko" and "Lwang'ni Hotel" – their successful singles from last year.
The EP title, Kucheza!, plays into this idea of experimentation, collaboration and the fusing of different cultures.
Translating to "play" in English, Unganisha explains, "We called the EP Kucheza! because that's our approach to making music with Unganisha, we play a lot and experiment freely with few limitations."
Adding "It's never that serious... that's our working philosophy and we have carried that spirit into the EP."
Chunya on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jX3YVha2H-we
Lwang’ni Hotel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Leko on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Meaning "to join or fuse together" in Kiswahili, Unganisha came together when traditional singer and orutu player Labdi was introduced to electronic producer Wærstad through a mutual friend, and they started to exchange ideas via Whatsapp.
This eventually led to songs, and the pair met when Music Norway funded Labdi's trip to Oslo Afro Arts in 2017. With only two days to put a show together, intense collaboration was necessary and Unganisha was born that day.
Labdi, a leading Kenyan female Orutu (a kind of one-string fiddle) player is formally trained as a visual artist and this means that Unganisha works hard on creating exciting and bright visuals to accompany the music.
Bernt is endlessly experimenting as a producer, and together they try to make the duo as unpretentious as possible.
They attest, “Unganisha is definitively more than just the music. We also get inspired by learning about each other's cultures and spending time together in both Kenya and Norway.”
From the opening track "Chunya", Unganisha's spirit and ethos is clear - an unrelenting love of rhythm and dance music (both in the western club sense and in the East African tradition), applied to Labdi's absorbing singing voice - part angelic, part chant.
The singles "Leko" and "Lwang'ni Hotel" [featuring drummer and singer Kasiva Mutua] are joined by the soulful "Duoguru" and the riotous, colourful closer "Koro", once again featuring the rhythms of Kasiva. The whole five tracks together is heady, irresistible and impossible to stay still to - dancing is mandatory.
Unganisha makes music that refuses to be boxed in. "We’re not trying to make a specific genre or style of music, we always feel very free to explore any direction which feels interesting to us," the duo explains. "Our music is sort of outside of our individual egos and our working philosophy is 'anything goes'".
