Rina Mushonga

hear Rina Mushonga's new boundary-pushing pop single "Hey Coach"

Rina Mushonga is a boundary-pushing, genre-defying experimental pop musician who was born in India, raised in Zimbabwe, and is now living in London. She’s been releasing a string of promising singles in the lead-up to her still-TBA debut album, which combine African rhythms with Western pop in a way that’s sort of like the inverse of Graceland-era Paul Simon, who she actually compares herself to. “I guess it’s sort of… Paul Simon, but in a sweaty, African dancehall club,” Rina told Noisey. She also mentioned that at first she hesitated to include African influences in her music:

I shied away from putting, for lack of a better word, African influences in my music for the longest time. Because people, without having heard my music, would be like, ‘Oh you should play at world music festivals. Because you’re a Zimbabwean, that’s where you belong.’ So it took me a long time to get to a point where I felt comfortable enough in my own identity to really start embracing that part of my musical heritage, and to try to explore that and experiment with it more. It’s important that you’ve got women of colour who are breaking the stereotypes about the kind of music that we’re supposed to make.

Following recent singles “AtlantA,” “JUNGLES,” and “4qrtrs,” we’re now premiering the new “Hey Coach,” which sounds like a modern, more sincere version of tropical ’80s pop. For modern indie reference points, it’s also the kind of song that fans of stuff like M83, Tune-Yards, and Yeasayer will probably dig. As for its message, Rina tells us” “It’s about motivation, career-wise, no-one’s gonna fight for your ‘art’ as hard as you are, nobody has invested what you have in the same way and it’s about self-reliance and getting on with it…even when the odds appear to be stacked against you.” Listen, alongside those three aforementioned previous singles, below.

UPDATE (11/14): Rina announced her debut album, In A Galaxy, which features all four of those songs and comes out February 15 via PIAS.

Rina also has two upcoming London dates this month, which are listed below. No word on U.S. dates just yet.

Rina Mushonga — 2018 Tour Dates
20th November – Paper Dress Vintage, Hackney
28th November – Notting Hill Arts Centre

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