Esinam & Sibusile Xaba
ESINAM & SIBUSILE XABA
ESINAM and Sibusile Xaba is a meeting of nomadic, wandering and kindred spirits in music. Both artists draw upon their ancestry: Belgian-Ghanaian (Esinam) and Kwazulu Natal-South Africa (Sibusile Xaba) through a unique connection, a deep artistic and spiritual levels they use rhythms and grooves to translate stories to the audience. Their vocal chanting enhances trance to rhythmic patterns that grace us by melodies of the future and past.
Their debut single ‘Africa Wola’ was released in March 2024. Africa Wola is a sweet melody that is sang for Africa and Africans, both in the continent and of diaspora. It aims to acknowledge and also rejoice the majestic mystery that is Africa. It encourages all Africans to take pride in their decadence and origins, to be proud of their home, to never forget about it, to take care of it and to come together & bring a healing voice to the continent.
The duo has already graced stages such as WOMAD South Africa, Babel Music XP, The Music In African 10th year celebration in Germany and are set to release their debut album in early 2024.
“Announcing the auspicious creative alliance between Belgian-Ghanaian multi-instrumentalist ESINAM and Sibusile Xaba, the charismatic guitar ace from Kwazulu Natal-South Africa, comes ‘Africa Wola’, an upbeat regional anthem flush with pride and paradisiacal aspirations.” - Songlines
ESINAM
Esinam Dogbatse is a Belgian-Ghanaian multi-instrumentalist based in Brussels. With her artist moniker ESINAM, she creates a musical world of her own, filled with rhythms, grooves, melodies and loops.
Solely carried away by sound, ESINAM succeeds in blending her soulful voice with traditional African percussion, adding here and there some electronic influences combined with sensible melodies and flute improvisations. Her compositions carry traces from numerous geographical, cultural and musical influences, which she collected from her personal history and through various travels, encounters, tours and collaborations.
“The Brussels-based Ghanaian flautist-percussionist-vocalist Esinam Dogbatse's music on her debut longplayer is a infectiously upbeat blend of electronica, spoken word, the ‘spiritual’ side of 1960s jazz, blues and her native folk and afro-beat influences.” - Jazzwise
“ESINAM balances the flute's spiritual peals with staggered percussion and a pounding bassline to create a compelling broken beat rhythm." - Resident Advisor
SIBUSILE XABA
Charismatic guitar savant Sibusile Xaba reframes maskandi and the avant garde into his own humanist manifesto.With a vocal style that is part dreamscaping and part ancestral invocation, Xaba divines as opposed to plainly singing. Combined with a guitar style that shatters the confines of genre.
Maskandi, malombo, the desert blues and jazz all figure in Sibusile Xaba's expansive vocabulary, albeit through a magnetic individual filter.
"This music is extraordinary" – Gilles Peterson (BBC Radio)
"Xaba's intricately fingerpicked patterns produce emotional warmth and rich texture, and he brings an abundance of heart and complete spirit commitment as he sings, laughs, declaims and weeps over the tracks" – The Wire
“This blew me away, punched me in the gut the minute I heard this cut”. – Anthony Valadez, KCRW Radio
CONTACT
Fundraising & Strategic Management
Maaike Wuyts
Aubergine Artist Management
P: +32 47 337 1970
E: maaike@aubergineartistmanagement.com
Bookings & Strategic Management
Jess White
Akum Agency
P: +27 64 128 2045
