Music Review: Mukomboti – Ava Peace

Mukomboti is the latest offering from Ava Peace.

My thoughts on Ava are built around a couple of things. She refers to herself as an artist. I feel like she fits the definition of 'entertainer, more accurately.

She has a fan base of sorts, but in today’s world, anyone can have that.

She gives the people what they want; you will often find her skimpily dressed on stage, twerking what bits and pieces she has. She is probably recognised more for her light skin than her vocals (being light-skinned is big over here), but heck – music is a career choice she has made, and we have to go with it.

Mukomboti is Ava actually trying to be musical, when I think about it. She has a formidable management team behind her that takes her seriously and has lined up collaborations with artistes like Elijah Kitaka, Spice Diana, Daddy Andre, Recho Rey, and Dax Vybz, so dismissing her is something you do at your own peril.

I was intrigued when I listened to Who Was Here, which I first thought was a ridiculous bit of music until I realised it’s actually a song about hit songs, which is a pretty nifty way of crafting a track.

Her fans are remarkably loyal to her, and she seems to be easy to work with, according to the industry grapevine. It helps that she is in great shape and somewhat easy on the eye, I suppose. That bland voice doesn’t help, but Spice Diana made these attributes work, so maybe she is on to something.

On Mukomboti, she goes with a Zouk approach that gives the track a strangely authentic feel. It’s a curious choice, especially because of the mashup with the song’s Afrobeat production style. It suggests someone at the back of the house is getting their technical input into the production process right.

Ava Peace might have decided to start her music career as a twerking Barbie doll, but some decent song writing and technical input may change the narrative around her. And tracks like Who Was Here and Mukomboti show that maybe there is more to the singer than we thought, and perhaps I have judged her as an artiste a little hastily.