Nneka for Kenya in February

Nigerian singer Nneka is set to perform in Nairobi courtesy of the Goethe Institute in February. Nneka who is performing at the Zanzibar festival Sauti Za Busara on February 8-12 will be in the Nairobi earlier before that for a perfoemance. No definite date has been set yet. The daughter of a Nigerian father and a German mother, Nneka Egbuna was born in Warri, Oil City in the Delta region of Nigeria at the height of its new found wealth in the mid 70s.

For nineteen years she soaked up the sounds and rhythms of one of the most musical nations on the planet, a country where expressing yourself through song is just a part of everyday life, a country that has music in its very DNA, where the influence of giants like Afro-beat revolutionary Fela Kuti is never far away.

But at the age of 19 this modest and hard-working young girl made the big decision to leave behind the African way of life. To further her education, she moved not just to Europe but to Northern Europe, to the industrial seaport of Hamburg in Germany. For the young Nneka, it was a dramatic change, and there remains an intangible quality in her voice that speaks of being a long, long way from home.

“The cultural differences between Germany and Nigeria were extreme,” she says. “The way they dress, the way they carry themselves, their religion. So many things that were important to me are not important to them. For two years I was overwhelmed.”

But dramatic changes can produce dramatic results. Where back home a gift for singing and melody were no big deal, in Germany Nneka’s striking looks and vocal talents began to get her noticed. The fact is, there ain’t many Nigerian soul singers in Hamburg. “They saw me as ‘somebody’ in Germany, and I found that very shocking. Back home in Nigeria it’s: ‘OK, you sing. Anybody can sing. So what?’ ”

For all its innate musicality, Nigerian culture perhaps prizes education higher than any other achievement, and while Nneka was
making her first demos and beginning to make waves as a performer, she was determined not to waste the stack of A-levels that she already had under her belt. Enrolled at Hamburg University, she continued to study for a degree in anthropology – no mean feat when you’re in demand at clubs and festivals from Paris to Lisbon, from Vienna to Madrid.

Nneka’s raw yet distinctive style of songwriting and harmonies soon brought her to the attention of top acts touring the continent across a wide range of styles. She opened massive shows for Jamaican dancehall bad-boy Sean Paul; then she did it again, this time for even bigger crowds with global hiphop crossover stars Gnarls Barkley. Add Lenny and Lauryn to that list and you get an idea of the sheer reach of the Nneka sound. It’s a sound that places her right at the centre of the new revolution in African contemporary music today.