Joshua Baraka's "This Time": Soulful, multilingual, and delightfully off the beaten track
The production on this is typically intricate. Joshua Baraka understood from the get go that if he wanted to be inimitable, his music needed intricate, top-end production talent.
Joshua Baraka
This soulful little ditty sounds somewhat off the beaten track for Baraka. It is not typically what he comes up with. But he performs it so comfortably that it feels like familiar territory.
The production on this is typically intricate. Joshua Baraka understood from the get go that if he wanted to be inimitable, his music needed intricate, top-end production talent.
Jae5 does vocals on this particular collaboration and as a longtime collaborator from a production perspective, slots in on the production boards. The instrumentation on this particular track caught my attention. Joshua covers the keyboard and the guitar on This Time. I had no idea he played. No idea. Yeesh!
I feel like This Time is possibly the first we are hearing from Baraka where he taps into the full musical arsenal that he has at his disposal. His been feted for a lot of his music, and how comfortably relevant it is, how strategic his moves have been in the market place (he is frightfully young, 25 years old, for heaven’s sakes!) and how intelligent his collaborations and partnerships have been.
With This Time, we get a hint of what he is capable of, musically speaking. And it would seem like he is capable of quite a lot. He writes and composes his own music, he is a producer as well, and is a multi - instrumentalist.
This Time is an R & B track and has some delightfully retro traits to it. This might be the first time I am hearing a song released in Uganda with a bridge in it. If I sound delighted, it is because I am. The lyricism to This Time is gorgeously introspective, the product of a mind that seems to belong to an older, more thoughtful soul.
This Time is also multilingual, without sounding contrived. One of the artistes I have heard pull this off comfortably is Maurice Kirya. No surprises there, because Maurice Kirya is an artiste.
These attributes ensure that This Time is possibly the most soulful, the most complete offering we have listened to from Baraka, ever. It bodes well for his future, and for us too. It is something we can look forward to.