Premiere: Nandele – Viola

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Music

Twisting Mozambique’s underground into unknown corners, the Maputo producer’s EP on his own label moves between memory and futurism while connecting ancestral landscapes.

Nandele Maguni set sail in a drum,
With a synth full of ghosts and a memory-hum,
To a post known as Chai where the old story grew;
Past silent Macomia, through Cabo Delgado,
He danced with his ancestors, wild and staccato,
On Awesomakossamusic – off they flew!

Then out popped VIOLA, all analogue and bright,
Half colonial midnight, half futurist light,
She rattled the tape-heads till liberation rang;
With a hey and a ho and an Empty House drone,
She turned nineteen-sixty-four into a xylophone –
“Runcible!” cried Nandele, “that’s how cHai began!”

The most excellent Nandele Maguni steps up with the cHai EP on his own label. the ace-ly name Awesomakossamusic – four tracks, written, recorded, produced and mixed solo at Empty House Studios. We’re premiering VIOLA today, a track inspired by his girlfriend of the same name.

Not a new name round these parts, Nandele opened Rosie Ama’s Human Endeavour with Incomati on the label’s Trains of Thought comp back in 2022, then returned with an extended solo EP of his own, Maputo, in 2024.

Maguni has been dragging Mozambique’s underground into rooms that didn’t know they even needed it till they found it ever since: Cotch International, a spot on Tresor’s roster, records built from psychedelia, hip-hop and rhythm that defies any real categorisation or genre box. cHai goes further back. Chai’s an administrative post in Cabo Delgado’s Macomia District – the place where the armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule began on 25 September 1964. No history lesson though: Maguni runs it through analogue machines and raw, unpolished textures until it sounds like it’s arriving from the future, not the past.

VIOLA is rhythm first, textures close behind – the same push-pull between ancestral and synthetic that runs through the record.

Get it on, let’s go: