ep premiere + video: experimental artist jojo abot drops epic message of resistance

Uncompromisingly original, per usual, experimental singer/songwriter and performance artist Jojo Abot has just released an eclectic two-for-one visual from her newest EP, ‘NGIWUNKULUNKUL’—a collection of songs about black empowerment in spite of and in resistance to white supremacy and racial oppression.

Inspired by the frustrations and anger she felt while visiting South Africa for the first time as a proud Ghanaian woman who has spent many years in NYC, Abot was exposed to the complex and intense socioeconomic inequality of apartheid that continues to affect so much of the black South African population.

“As an African coming to South Africa from the first African nation to gain independence from British colonial rule, Ghana, I realize now I had naive ideas about what freedom, liberty, and equality truly mean globally,” Abot told AFROPUNK. “Having lived in places like NYC most of my life, I was aware of the provocations of my racial identity and the way it triggered those who found discomfort in my happiness and glow up. I learned that Melanin can often be seen as threatening but coming here really placed my body and identity into a whole new yet very familiar conversation on racially influenced bias and segregation which created an expected undertone for interaction with those different from me. I was suddenly on edge in a whole new way. It was all so blatant”

The rawness this experience created was cultivated and repurposed into “Gods Among Men” and “Marching”, taken from her ‘NGIWUNKULUNKUL’ EP, they are two anthemic, masterful tracks of resistance that re-affirms the spiritual power of blackness “It’s difficult to even begin to reconcile all this and so I put my frustration and unresolved conflicts into song” […] “NGIWUNKULUNKULU, which means I AM GOD, serves as a reminder of our identity as Godly beings with supernatural potential. It is also  for  me, a release of anger and frustration towards myself and the “white man”. A journey to clarity and purpose. An honest expression of my desires for my people, and a reminder of the divine nature of the feminine.”

NGIWUNKULUNKULU by Jojo Abot

See Jojo Abot and her striking visuals live this summer at AFROPUNK Brooklyn, Aug. 26-27.

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