Retconning Yourself is Important

a conversation with Nyokabi Kariũki

Hello do-ers! Today we have another wonderful conversation with an inspiring artist friend of mine, Nyokabi Kariũki.

Nyokabi is a Kenyan composer and sound artist that has released two personal, intimate musical projects (2022’s peace places: kenyan memories & 2023’s FEELING BODY) and toured all around the globe.

Usually categorized as “experimental music,” what has always made her work stand out to me is her innovative use of her own voice, integration of found sound, and how she takes thoughtful charge of positioning and contextualizing her work.

Nyokabi and I got to know each other in an informal, accountability writing group I started during the pandemic, because, GUESS WHAT: you don’t have to be ONE THING as an artist. You can very much be a musician and a writer. Or a sculptor and a vocalist, or whatever. It’s all art. I’d even argue dentistry is art!

Sorry… that’s for another post. Let’s get into the convo!

Topics discussed:

• how maybe regular jobs can be good, actually

• how environment informs the work we make

• what the ideal way is to talk about heritage

• how the experimental music industry isn’t always experimental

• why we should listen to the advice of Kenyan musician KMRU

• how the next Nyokabi Kariũki album may be more than just an album

Press photo of Nyokabi sitting in a lovely corner full of books and plants.

Nyokabi Kariũki: I didn't know that you'd quit your job.

Will DiNola: Yeah, I finally did.

NK: Wow. When did you quit?

WD: That was in November.

NK: How does it feel?

WD: It feels amazing.

NK: I'm happy for you, congratulations. Are you looking for other work like immediately or are you just going to take some time?

WD: One of the reasons I quit when I did was because there was a feature film opportunity that I had to score and it was ramping up.

NK: I'm in a weird position where I've kind of been fantasizing about getting a job again.

WD: I think for the rest of my life it may be a thing where, every few years, I'm freelance and I'm like, I need to get a regular job until I can't deal with it… And then I switch [back and forth] and maybe you're seeing the same thing.

NK: Yeah, it's a weird one and I think I didn't expect to feel this way. But I think it's also possible that it kind of coincides with me going through this extreme uncertainty and upheaval in so many different parts of my life that maybe I'm just kind of grasping for some sense of routine.

WD: Stability.

NK: Stability, yeah. I think that's the right word.

You know, I've not really been based anywhere. And where I grew up in Nairobi, we're moving out of the house that I grew up in, so there’s a lot of things happening that are leaking into my creation process.

I also used to have a manager and the management dropped me last year. So I think I've maybe felt it's been a bit difficult for me to get a sense of stability. And so, part of me kind of remembers the time when I did have part time work, but then was still doing commissions and stuff on the side.

I'm in a weird place where I feel like I don't like earn enough to be full-time full-time. I mean, that's what I'm doing, but I don't think I'm earning enough consistently.

But then I do kind of get scared that if I do get work, even though it's part time, it's still going to ask for a lot of my time and then I won't be able to do the other work.

WD: Again, it feels like a sort of lifelong challenge. How long can you deal with the certain circumstances before you have to switch it up?

It feels like it would be kind of hard if you're not based anywhere. Because I always felt like, even with [my previous] podcasting job, it's something you can take with you, technically, but I always would feel so much more at home in my studio space.

NK: That's also something I've been fantasizing about. After some time, you do crave just having one place that you can build on, even in terms of equipment and stuff.

When I look back on my first record, I made it on my bed. I was just on my bed with a mic in my room and recording stuff. My second record I made a large chunk of it in New York in two different sublets. I'm working on my third one now and, yeah, I do crave having a place.

But there's also something interesting about having different places carry into the work and the way that you make it.

I remember my first record, I was living in my aunt's house. It's a family of four. And so I'd be recording my vocals late at night, so they ended up being really quiet vocals. It wasn't the only reason that the songs turned out that way, but I think it was part of it, actually.

Whereas, I started the record that I'm working on right now, in Helsinki, that was the first time I was doing an artist residency, so they gave me a space. That was the first time I was making music with monitors, actually, in a really big room where there would be no noise complaints at all. So I realized, I'm singing very loudly for the first time in my record. There's even more bass.

WD: The different environments definitely inform, especially because a lot of your music includes found audio recordings. So space, the space in which you're recording it is pretty instrumental — kind of the wrong word... *laughs*

NK: Yeah. *laughs*

WD: In terms of a trajectory for your records, it makes sense to have the next one be more stable or something. Your first one, it's literally called “peace places.”

NK: Right.

WD: It's trying to find those places, in all these kind of disparate things. And then the other one's about the body, which could be anywhere. So it's interesting to think about that trajectory.

NK: Yeah. The next one, there's a whole plot to it that I cannot fully disclose right now, but it's about trees, I guess. So in that way, I'm thinking about grounding and the ground a lot. So yeah, I think you've got it spot on.

WD: I'm curious about when you are in an interview situation, what is the biggest question that you wish that they wouldn't ask, but you always have to answer.

And then what's the one that you're like, wait, why can't we talk about this?

NK: Well, it's multiple things. Something I did like, reading your interview with People in Dreams is that it felt like a conversation with a friend and I just realized now talking to you that I don't think I've had an interview like that, where the interviewer can just meet me where I’m at. Like how I’ve just been lamenting to you about not having a routine, and struggling to create, and all that. 

But, something in interviews that I don't like… I want to be the person to dictate when the conversation is about my heritage.

I have sort of gotten to a point where I made a little note: one day I'm going to have the courage to stop doing interviews and just publish my thoughts on a blog and people will just be able to refer to things on there.

I think I just do interviews on autopilot now, you know. I know the quotes they're going to like, I know what they want. And it's not that I'm being disingenuous, but it's more just I'm getting kind of similar questions. This is definitely that kind of aspect that I'm just kind of done with.

But it's a weird one. I don't feel totally able to say no to interviews. I actually tried end of last year, I was like: I'm not doing interviews. But I get one and then I'd feel like, oh, my God, maybe this is something that I need to do to remain visible or to “keep presence” in the scene.

That has been on my mind for some time just because my next record is probably going to come out next year. I think there was pressure I felt to release it this year because my first two came out like 2022, 2023, and stuff. But I just can't.

WD: Maybe the goal would be to try to find venues, if you can, that are more conversational or just less concerned with getting these soundbite kind of ideas of what they think you as an artist is supposed to represent. But I mean, it's easier said than done for sure.

NK: Sometimes it also depends on the writer. Sometimes they're able to make it feel really conversational and it's actually a really interesting discussion but most of the time I've done them for specific publications or folks trying to feature a certain type of quota.

I guess I'm always trying to figure out whether it's part of it and you just kind of suck it up or if it's something that I can like start to push away from.

WD: And I guess you only really know that by attempting it and seeing what happens. But that's scary as well, because you don't know…

NK: Yeah, exactly. I think the industry is a weird one. Especially in this experimental space, which is niche, but has a lot of activity and there's a lot of money in it. There's like superstars, you know, like the folks who get all the shows and all this kind of stuff. It's an interesting niche.

There's so many unwritten things that I've been discovering because I didn't actually define myself as an experimental artist. I just made a record and it was released and I started to see myself being put together with these artists. And I started to now understand myself like within this space.

For example, I've been looking for an agent for about a year now. Even before that, I wanted one, but that's something that has been quite pressing. They're ones I've spoken to that are interested, but they're very busy and they're like, hit us up when you have a new record coming up. But then you have some experimental artists who released just one record and they're able to get booked for years playing the same music.

WD: It's interesting, because, it's like these similar things about the outside industry, of like, okay, why does this record make it and not need any press? Why does Frank Ocean not have to do interviews, but he stays popular?

I could see it being even more frustrating because experimental music encompasses so much and it's even more arbitrary than regular music, in terms of the categories like pop music [where] you understand a little bit more why something hits with more people than experimental.

I think it's frustrating too, because you're saying there's still rules, even though [experimental] music itself is not bound. But yet there are rules.

NK: Actually, that's spot on. I'm really grateful to have been able to have some career and visibility making music with my own rules.

Both of the labels that I released with gave me full creative control and trusted my vision and that's really important to me. It's been really special being able to do that.

It's only after I spoke to some friends who were in a similar field where I started to realize that I was maybe lucky or the fact that I got like really good people backing my work, because I had some friends who were told like, change your title, change this, do all of the mixes again.

WD: Do all the mixes again is insane. [That’s] an insane thing to say for experimental music.

NK: I'm sure in some of these instances the artist ended up being happy with the result. Some of them were not happy with the requests, but just kind of had to comply.

Like you said, there are somehow rules, yet we're trying to run away from them, or not run away, but just define our own and create our own. It’s a dissonance there for sure.

WD: I guess maybe it has to just do with infrastructure and logistics, money. There needs to be systems in place, but then you get stuck with the system and you have to undo it.

NK: It's the same conundrum that pop artists are also going through, like, I just want to make the music, but then there's also all these things that come into play.

Even kind of the weirdness of having to release on streaming sites that kind of emphasize the “singles,” it's a very pop industry structure, but [you] have to play along in order to get any seat at the table.

Shout out COLORS, but there was a weird thing about doing that, too, that I knew when I agreed to do it, I was performing  a song from a larger body of work. And I see the work as a full body of work because that's the point, right? It's a concept album. All my records are this way.

Back in the day, people had to buy physical records. That's how music was made to be listened as a full body of work. But even from the Western-Classical part of my brain, that's also how works were shared. [A] symphony or song cycle has various movements and they're all connected in some way.

But now you have these formats, whether it's [a] streaming service [where] playlisting is how you get listens or whether it's a platform like COLORS that just kind of divorces something from the larger part. And you just have to work within these existing structures, for better or worse.

WD: Yeah, then they cut a TikTok of it and then it's an even shorter version of the song.

NK: I had artist friends who experimented with making only 15 seconds of a song, and then they waited to see how it does on TikTok and then would only finish the song depending on whether it gets that buzz or not.

WD: Which is wild. It's a wild way of working.

But I guess to go back to things, we're always working based on our environment. I think you can do both. You can be down on [TikTok] a little bit, but also realize that, we are doing that anyway. We are still artists. We're still working in the circumstances in which we're given. It doesn't make us any less of artists. Maybe it might dilute the art that we want to be doing, but it doesn't make us any less of artists.

NK: Shout out capitalism, I guess.

There's so many things that you have to think about that you want to think doesn't affect the music making, but I don't think it will ever be as “pure” as we want it to be.

But I think that's also what is really cool about artists, that we do reflect the situations that we're in.

WD: We mostly got to know each other on a writing group that I [founded during the pandemic] but I'm curious, what's your ideal vision of that blog or that idea of like, I'm going to contextualize my music and who I am as an artist here and not through these other means.

And what's your relationship to writing in general?

NK: Yeah, this is actually really nice to talk about. So for my next album, I'm writing a book alongside it.

WD: Oh! That’s awesome! I wanted to [then] ask, also, because I struggle with this as well, but with different mediums. How do you market yourself as one thing when we're artists at the end of the day? We just happen to be working in music.

I'd love to hear about that navigation and I'm very happy to hear that you're integrating both things despite [it being] a little daunting.

NK: Something that I very much named in an essay I wrote about Halim El-Dabh was the fact that I kind of want to rewrite my influences as being from the African continent because I didn't get the language to say, oh, this in my music comes from this.

Because my training was through a very Western lens, I can play some music and I'm like, oh, that sounds like that Scriabin piece. I had the language to pinpoint [influences].

But now, is the word “retcon?” Is that a term like in film?

WD: I forget what that means.

NK: Same. But it's what's coming to mind right now.

WD: *reading* Retroactive continuity: A piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events, typically used to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or an inconsistency.

NK: Yeah, I think that might be the right word.

I think it's important for me to now start naming and looking into some of these things, while now being able to intentionally do that in my work, but I found writing [to be] the way to provide this context. There's so much shit in my head, there's so much shit that I research, or just like read and I'm like, I need to get this out. And I've not been very consistent with it.

But I think for this album, it feels really daunting. I think the album itself is quite ambitious. There's so much that I'm exploring and I feel that I need to write it somehow.

I think this is another kind of gift of the experimental space, which is that it's not uncommon that people are releasing physical releases as a part of it, like cassette tape. Very like niche things are how I've seen other artists, I mean, myself included, share their work. It's not uncommon to also see books and stuff.

I was talking to the label that I'm hoping to release it with. They were like, I've seen pottery be released alongside a record. I think that a lot of artists are feeling this similar feeling of challenging ways to present a work, because for a lot of us, it's not just the music, it's like a whole entire world that we build in our minds.

I don't fully know what the book is going to look like yet. There's a whole story, but there's also a lot of research that I'm doing into it. So it's probably going to interweave my personal ideas or viewpoints as well as the story itself which is fictional, photos. It's going to be cool, 

Writing takes me a long time, so I avoid it a lot of the time, but I really do like doing it.

WD: In terms of your music practice, is it fitting into it at all? Is it something you go to when you're stuck? I find I like having multiple projects just because it helps me stay in the experimental feeling and the playfulness. Instead of that grinding feeling. It's like, if you pass between them, then you always kind of stay in that.

NK: I think that was really nice for me, around the time that I had a part time job. I loved pinballing between different projects. I think most of the time the writing was not a part of that.

I think writing was more a hobby. I don't like to use that word. I wrote a list of my hobbies today and I feel like writing feels a bit more “serious” to me than the things on that list. So I don't think I would call writing a hobby, but I guess that I wasn't doing it in like an official sense compared to music, like I wasn't making money from it. I was just writing on my own volition.

For a while, my writing has never related to my music. They've never been in conversation. In university my major was music composition and my minor was creative writing and I loved going into my creative writing classes and not being a musician. I think I really enjoyed writing about other parts of my life.

There was also a way that I've always looked back on my writing as being a bit more switched on when it comes to making sense of cultural erasure, colonialism, all that fun stuff. I think my writing was always a bit ahead of my music when it came to like exploring those topics.

And then at some point in uni, I think, I started having more curiosity about it in context of my music. I think now, a couple years after graduating, that they're starting to converge where I'm starting to write about my musical practice.

A lot of this has looked like, as annoying as they are, writing grant residency applications. I was talking to a friend recently and he was saying that they do kind of force you to reflect on your practice. In a way it starts to become an engagement with how you understand yourself as an artist, via the act of writing.

One day I'm going to have the courage to stop doing interviews and just publish my thoughts on a blog and people will just be able to refer to things on there. - Nyokabi Kariũki

*Hi again! If you’ve been enjoying the conversation and want to hear about influences for Nyokabi’s new album/book and what ambient artist KMRU finally convinced her to do, the remainder of the interview is for paid subscribers and just a few clicks away.

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