FARAI – Lion Warrior

“Expect an emotional journey. We’ve spent the last two years steadily working on music together and I would say we’ve come a long way in terms of both personal progression and our ability to craft music that we like together.”

 

This is taken from our correspondence with Farai and her producer Tøne, speaking about the EP they are readying for NON Worldwide. NON is a collective of artists and creatives hailing from Africa and the African diaspora, in this visual clip for Lion Warrior produced by NTS Radio, they teamed up with director Akinola Davies Jr to create a portrait of black fearlessness.

 

“We sent him [Davies Jr] the EP to listen to and didn’t originally have a particular song we said we wanted a video for. He felt Lion Warrior stood out to him and he sent us a brief which touched on a lot of the themes we wanted to challenge within the music too. As black artists we really felt self representation is important and to quote Akin, ‘To identify the black community as both the subjects and creators of art. The overlying theme is industriousness of black market in whichever form it exists and to critique who controls that narrative’.”

 

Of the song’s lyrical content, Farai told us, “You are the lion. Men are lions and women are lioness warriors. It’s about resilience and being bold. Greatness.” Fittingly lionhearted words for a song exploding with ferocity and unflinching focus. The London-based artists create a sound here that feels epic and heroic without losing any sense of direction. Speaking about the community in front of and behind the camera, Farai and Tøne told us, “These people are out here making important work, finding channels to do that independently and they need to be supported. We all need to be supported by one another. So that our youngers are encouraged to create too.”