Rina Mushonga shares video for new single ‘4qrtrs’ (premiered on Gorilla vs Bear)
Rina Mushonga
Rina Mushonga shares video for new single ‘4qrtrs’
Watch here // Press assets here
Premiered on Gorilla vs Bear here
Details of upcoming album to follow
Rina Mushonga ~ ‘4qrtrs’ video
“infectiously bright and exhilarating Afro-electro-pop club jam” – Gorilla Vs Bear
“Catharsis is not an easy feeling to describe, but if there is a sound that came close to reproducing that feeling, it has to be the inspired merging of Afrobeats and Indie-electro by Dutch-Zimbabwean singer/songwriter Rina Mushonga” – Afropunk
“kicks off like a stroll through one of London’s many Sunday markets. Bursts of chitchat and laughter become instruments of their own, while brittle guitar plinks and deep plunges of bass evoke 1980s Afropop” – Pitchfork
Dutch-Zimbabwean, Peckham based Rina Mushonga shares the video for her new single ‘4qrtrs‘ today, taken from her upcoming album due early next year.
It is comprised mainly of ‘home-made’ self-shot footage in Zimbabwe (on Rina’s iPhone and cheap handheld camcorder) combined with vibrant graphic animation. Together with the help of Mabvazuva Youth Hub where Rina used to work on creative youth projects, they brought together four local dance crews who they shot around town and in their rehearsal studios. They choreographed their own routines and posed in sort of tableaus of interpretations of paintings by black African/British/American artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and a Zimbabwean artist called Charles Bhebe. “I wanted to present a narrative that celebrated my Zimbabwean home, as well as which touched on themes of identity and representation” Rina explains.
“Because of this long distance relationship I have had with Zimbabwe over the last few years it sometimes feels like another galaxy — I’m drawn to it and feel at home there but there’s also this skewed perspective because of the time and distance between us.”
The video is also a small commentary on representation, of people of colour and of ‘Africans’. “I wanted to celebrate my talented, beautiful homies in a positive, affirming way. We had so much fun making this together and reconnecting after years apart. It really brought home how much they’ve inspired me and how much I’ve learned from my friends there. We had this great graphic animator Teun Buursema who helped bring this vibrant, lush and vivid inner ‘world’ to life.””
Blending traditional African influences with modern club pop through her wildly uncompromising style, Rina takes her inspiration from Greek mythology and a love of literature, her childhood in Harare, a former life living in Amsterdam and the London locale which she now calls home.
Working with Frans Verburg who played keys in her old band and Grammy-winning producer Brett Shaw, Rina says her newest material is further refinement of a vision that’s been a long time forming; “‘4qrtrs’ has been prodded, poked and teased into existence. Parts of it belonged to old, discarded songs, other bits and pieces I wrote more recently. It’s become this weird collage or map of where I’ve been, emotionally and geographically. ”
In just 12 months, through her singles ‘Ata|antA’ and ‘Jungles’, Rina’s genre-hopping music has already captured the attention of Pitchfork, The Fader, Noisey, Afropunk, i-D, Wonderland and Beat Magazine, all enamoured by her powerful stance and sense of independence and emancipation.
‘4qrtrs’ is out now on [PIAS] Recordings with news on a new album to follow shortly.
Rina plays the Sebright Arms on the 21st October.
Play ‘4qrtrs’: http://smarturl.it/4qrtrs
Video credits
Directed x Gugi van der Velden
Concept x Rina Mushonga + Gugi van der Velden
Graphics x Teun Buursema
Editing x Gugi van der Velden
Filming x Rina Mushonga
Production x Rina Mushonga + Mabvazuva Hub Mutare, Archie Mugure + Henry Tsopotsa
Dancers: cyber crew, unity edge crew, faith frontiers crew, chenhaka crew, Chonglee Marange
Connect with Rina Online: Official | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
