ESAU MWAMWAYA
Interview by Marisa Brickman
Images by Steve Bliss and Dan Wilton

As DJs and producers, London-based Radioclit have been pushing boundaries and opening minds to new music for the past three years. Their latest project is producing and working with Malawi-born Esau Mwamwaya. They met each other in a furniture shop in Dalston where Esau was working and a friendship was born. Quickly after the boys realized their new friend could write and sing and they got him in the studio to start working on some tracks. The result is funk-infused, roots-based beat music.
With a claim as big as the African Phil Collins (on his myspace), Esau has a lot to live up to in the new year, but if things keep moving as quickly as they’ve started for Esau, by the time you’re reading this article in ’Sup you’ll have seen him before.
Look out for a full-length album in early ’08 and if you want to check him live, Esau will be a regular fixture at Radioclit’s “Secousse” night in London at Notting Hill Arts Club – a new world / bongo dance residency where they’ll be pushing a new world sound on us all.
When did you move to London and why?
I moved to London in 1999, because I wanted to have a different kind of life experience from Malawi. I could have gone anywhere, but London was just an easier place to come to. Malawi is an old British colony as well. I already knew English.
Have you always been a singer? What motivated you to start singing?
I’ve been singing and playing drums in band sinceI was young, and it was all cover songs and old traditional Malawi songs back then. Only since I met Radioclit do I sing my own songs. When I met Radioclit I felt I had the potential to compose and do my own songs. I had been writing songs for a long time but there just wasn’t the right time to do it until recently.
How do you go about writing your songs?
I write my songs from my own life experience. Some-times I write something and bring it to the studio.
Sometimes Radioclit gives me something and I write to it. Nature gives me a lot of ideas. I’ll hear a thing and I’ll come up with a topic and a melody and then we go from there. They bring something very different to what I’m used to, though. I’ve always loved a lot of different music. We just have a very good energy when we work and we bring out something really good and fresh in each other. There’s no pressure, just fun you know. I guess Radioclit didn’t realize they could do this kind of thing, and I’m not sure I knew that either. We just click in a very positive way and that comes through in the music. Mixing my traditional Malawi singing style with everything from crunk, house, ‘80s music. Whatever we feel like, we do it.
What do you love most about London?
It’s such a big metropolis – there’s so many people to meet. There’s so many ideas going around – different people with different backgrounds and so much stuff you can learn from.