DOUBLE FOCUS- New CD of Music and Poetry

HARD WORKING ARTIST OF THE SEASON
RAS NAS


Ras Nas aka Nasibu Mwanukuzi performing in Sri Lanka with band recently...
Pic by Solveig Korum Manga


Ras Nas is my choice of hardest working musician on the African scene in Europe. In a year the Oslo based singer song writer has released two CD's. Double Focus, a collection of poems and music features materials written in three decades.
Personally, I am celebrating this rare ocean of good music and well written poetry combined by a man who knows the craft. I should know. For four years (1980-84) I worked with Nasibu in the Sayari collective, in Dar es Salaam.
He is a committed innovator.
Mwanukuzi has injected the African penicillin to an artform that is very demanding and held high by the likes of Bob Dylan, Gil Scott Heron, Tom Waits, and Gabon's melodic master Pierre Akendengue...

Amongst the highlights of the collection is a Kiswahili poem by the great East African maestro Shaaban Robert, whose poem "Titi La Mama" praises the love for one's mother tongue; and a homage to Nelson Mandela. Ras Nas performed for Mandela upon Madibo's visit to Oslo in 1992.
Last year he released Dar es Salaam a CD of African music and reggae.