Music review: Shifa Musisi's "Africa" is a beautifully layered celebration

MUSIC REVIEW

Shifa Musisi is one of those musicians for whom the word ‘artiste’, which is often bandied about rather carelessly by the media, fits rather completely. She is a singer, song writer, guitarist, fashion designer and dabbles in art and craft. I also suspect that list isn’t even complete.

Africa is her latest single. She has been off the scene somewhat.

Categorizing Shifa’s music is hard. She is the sort of musician who doesn’t want to be put into a box with a neat label. The closest you will come to with regards to genre labels is World Music, or perhaps Afro beat.

Her music is defined by rich imagery and poignant emotion, and which makes the music videos that are released with her music powerful tools. The video for Africa is lush, extravagant almost, and looks like a documentary about what is comfortably the most naturally gifted continent on the globe.

The music video, and indeed the song, is a reminder of this, and is a stark celebration of something we probably take for granted.

I traveled to Dar Salaam about five years ago. The journey from the airport to the capital is breathtaking, mostly because to one side of the road, for over two hours, is the gorgeous stretch of the Indian Ocean. The sheer enormity of the view can be overwhelming. The person who had picked me up, a busy mother of five, including the baby sitting in the baby seat at the back was amused at the fact that I asked her to stop the car by the side of the road so that I could just stare. She had grown accustomed to the view of course. The same way we have grown accustomed to the voluptuous continent we occupy. 

Africa is the reminder we needed, a beautifully layered song with unobtrusive organic percussion, which is about as African as it can get, lovely guitar and synth sounds and a choral arrangement you will struggle to find anywhere else. On top of all this, there’s Shifa’s vocals. She sings beautifully, but most importantly, she does it with deliberate ease.

I loved Africa. This song will remind you to look around and love it too.