Confronting Self with Nyokabi Kariũki’s Debut Album, FEELING BODY
I want you to become aware of your body. Feel your fingers glide along your arm, watch your chest rise and fall with your breath, wiggle your toes and stretch your legs, I want you to be conscious of your heart beating keeping you alive. In this moment of stillness, what else do you notice? Do you feel your shoulders drop? Do you feel your jaw unlock? In what ways does your body react to you noticing it? Does it find relief, or is on alert that you are now taking time to really feel it?
In late 2021, dealing with the effects of having contracted long covid, Kenyan born composer and sound artist Nyokabi Kariũki (she/her) was forced to feel her body. She was quickly confronted with the realisation that her body could betray her, that her body could break her and simply give up. That confrontation led to the creation of this powerful piece of music. Hold onto your heart and ready your mind for a musical moment that will push you mentally and emotionally to bounds you did not know you had.
“FEELING BODY” is a frequency shifting occasion. Made in a pressure cooker of an environment, Nyokabi created this debut album in 6 months. 6 months where she reflected on her perception of self, and her place in the world, 6 months that pulled on her emotional capacity to carry these deeply distressing feelings of worry surrounding her health and whether these feelings would ever dissipate. But Nyokabi recognised the importance of processing this time and allowing her body to release those frequencies attached to a pain that altered her frame of mind so profoundly. “FEELING BODY”, was conceived with the desire to tell the story of an artist working through chronic illness. She wrote the music and partnered with musicians who were also ailing and thus saw the importance in representing those voices that aren’t often allowed to speak for themselves.
When building the music of these pieces with the artists who would provide musical input, namely Yaz Lancaster on the violin and Michael Denis Ó Callaghan on the trumpet, Nyokabi’s creation process involved giving written prompts and allowing each player to infer based on their own creativity. She wanted to hear their interpretation of what the music would sound like, when they were allowed to create freely.
This sense of free creation is felt throughout this piece and much of Nyokabi’s blooming discography. Her penchant towards the experimental embodies the idea that music is meant to be what you feel. Nyokabi’s sound can be characterised as ever-moving and deeply resonant, a time to truly reflect and ingest the music. She compels you to confront yourself in her composition, whether in the silences she employs or her creative use of her own vocal chops, her expert use of field recordings or grounding application of bass. Nyokabi has always set out to create music that reflects her feelings in a way that is authentic to her. And this freedom is felt throughout this hauntingly beautiful body of work.
“FEELING BODY”, enchantingly opens with "Subira" a song that speaks to the patience needed to continue on in a time when you can’t in one way quantify your pain and frustration with your current moment. This song can be described as a rushing swell of sound. The "strings" swirl round and round giving the listener a sense of waiting. “Uwe na subira” or "You, have patience", is its refrain and true to word, the music holds you, keeping you locked into its universe. Your body is invited to feel the patience she calls forward, while a choir of airy vocals sits just behind you and pushes itself through you, the bass comes in midway through the song and grounds you in that patience.
When speaking of this piece Nyokabi recalls the patience that was required of her in dealing with the effects of long covid. She describes the impatience of not knowing when or whether change would come for her at all and used this song to sonically represent the ways in which
change comes incrementally. It also functions as the set up for the album’s final track “Nazama”, which closes in on that feeling of helplessness that “Subira” presents and offers the listener the hope that was promised. “Nazama” was released as the first single introducing the album and carries with it a new sound from Nyokabi. This song leads with the hum of a choir of reverberating Nyokabi voices establishing the melody and delicately holding the listener in place as they grow in intensity. Nyokabi slides in with her airy vocals taking us higher and higher in feeling and spirit as a rumbling bass fills the periphery. This contrast of low and high, light and dark marks the beauty of Nyokabi’s creativity, where her music takes time to explore all aspects of an idea. She creates a moment of fluidity not just in sound but in feeling.
That fluidity is best felt in her song “folds” , the 5th track in the album. Its refrain “My skin folds in the night”, acts as powerful imagery for the feeling and sensitivity of being uncomfortable in your skin. It calls forth a picture of a tired Nyokabi, peeling off her skin before bed and finding this moment to relax in the quiet. Nyokabi describes this song as a representation of the reprieve of dealing with her illness. “I never liked orchids now, I do.”, she muses over a playful, whimsical clarinet, recalling the season when she found she could breathe the easiest. Nyokabi was inspired by her own special orchid, wonderfully named Moses, which bloomed during the winter months she was based in the U.S. These cooler temperatures allowed for real moments of rest, when she could exist without that crawling feeling of discomfort pulsating across her skin.
“FEELING BODY”, the album is decidedly carried by its namesake track, “feeling body”. This 12 minute track employs many of Nyokabi’s signature elements, a heavy use of field recordings, sounds that she collected that represent or symbolise her illness in sonically tangible ways. Nyokabi uses the turning on of a tap, and the drip of water that filled her bathtub to situate us in the bathroom, a place of solace for her in the heights of covid. The theme of water and the it’s importance recurs throughout the album as sound bites that paint this auditory universe. Throughout dealing with sickness, she was inspired by the Kikuyu tradition of women being taken to the river to dip their feet in to find healing. Nyokabi began to confront the healing power of water and its role in her own journey of finding peace within her body. The song begins with her repetition of the phrase, “Come home to the body. But the home is not okay.” a message that speaks to the reality of existing in a body that is actively fighting you. This refrain is followed by a cracking, a recording that grates against the ears and fills space with its discomfort. The song begins to build into a growing unsettling whir of sounds, and we are placed into Nyokabi’s mind where she ponders whether she would ever find healing. "You don't know how long it will last, and having to learn how to accept this is how your life might be for a while... it could be forever.".
“feeling body”, has beautiful musical moments that do so well to sonically represent the sentiments expressed in its speeches. Horns blare and give a sense of calling, the hope for a better future, for healing is heard in small elements like those that grab the attention and work to pull you briefly out of the pain. As the song develops and we’ve been taken through various emotional moments, towards the 9 minute mark, a big bass hums along with her voice and strings play notes that fall apart, we’re left with an awareness of the pain that still exists but that she can work forward. Nyokabi’s breathy yet weighty tone holds us down, that duality and fluidity is present once again in the contradiction of sound and perception. We are grounded in her pain, while her vocals carry higher and higher at the same time showcasing the rising pressure of her pain.
“FEELING BODY” is a musical journal, documenting the grief and gratitude of a woman grappling with her body in a time of deep turmoil. “FEELING BODY”, is a grounding movement of music that eats at your soul, it calls your own relationship to self into question tugging at what you knew to be true about your own body. Am I okay? Have I ever been okay? Is my body my own, and in what ways am I honouring it? Nyokabi Kariũki expertly represents a feeling many of us have never had to face. She creates a sonic space for us to confront our health, whether physical, mental or emotional and does it while still holding capacity for empathy. I was astounded and deeply moved by this debut album and look forward to seeing more from the enchanting Nyokabi Kariuki.
“FEELING BODY” is available on all platforms.
All photo’s by Thomas Seward.
