There are those in life who stumble into a talent and then there are those who are just born with it. Nairobi’s very own Xenia Manasseh is in the latter category of individuals who were not just born with a talent but are gifted. Their talent is not just something you are amazed by, but it moves you into deep self-reflection that leads you to a place of healing and joy.
I was honored to speak with Xenia and throughout our conversation, I came to understand that music was an art form destined to be a part of her story.
When speaking with Xenia, I was in awe of her passion for the craft. She doesn’t merely sing, compose, and perform songs rather she deeply feels the emotions evoked within her music. As a daughter and granddaughter of musicians, she embraced her musical identity from a young age going as far as to feature her grandfather, Edgar Manasseh, on the first track of her debut album LOVE/HATE Pt.1. Her family is intrinsically woven into the music history books of the Swahili coast, with her grandfather’s cousin being the legendary Swahili singer Mzee Ngala popularly known as the Bango Maestro – he is credited with creating the Swahili coast music genre “Bango” that incorporates Portuguese, taarab, jazz and local bantu music sounds.
Xenia officially started her music career in 2018 and released her first single “Niambie” in 2019. Since then her discography has expanded to two EPs, Fallin’ Apart & Maybe, and two sequel albums, LOVE/HATE Pt.1 & LOVE/HATE Pt.2. She has collaborated with various artists from Sauti Sol, Tay Iwar, Hamza, Mr. Eazi and more.
Though she’s known for her RnB melodies, you can sense that Xenia does not want to be defined by one sound, melody, or rhythm. She’s embracing the full breath of musical experiences that this art has to offer. You can see this clearly in her most recent album, LOVE/HATE Pt.2, with songs such as “Asali” which is an Afrobeats track that was produced by Nigerian Producer Cracker Mallo, who has also worked with the likes of Tiwa Savage, FireboyDML, and Amaarae. “Dare You” is another track where you see Xenia really expand her musical palette, the song is characterized by an up-beat reggae rhythm that incorporates both RnB and Rap flows.
Beyond just her singing abilities, Xenia is a gifted writer who moved to Atlanta in 2018 after graduating from UC Berkeley to begin her professional career as a songwriter for UCMG. Clearly, her time there paid off as she later got to write for Teyana Taylor’s 2020 “The Album” project. During this time, she continued to craft her own songs, working with a range of producers that she met from Berkley and from her period as a songwriter.
The producers she has worked with range from Juls, MOMBRU, Yumbs, to Juma Tutu and more. These producers alone represent genres from Afrobeats, RnB, Amapiano, and Swahili Jazz – all speaking to Xenia’s current artistic direction that is rooted in experimentation as a foundation of her musical creations.
One of Xenia’s breakout moments was when she performed her single “Wild Ride” on COLORSxStudios. Her performance of a bouncy RnB flow with a soothing voice immediately caught my attention, sending me down a rabbit hole of trying to discover more of this incredible artist.
My words alone won’t do justice in describing Xenia's story and musical ingenuity. So, sit back and indulge in a conversation that will connect you to the gift that is Xenia Manasseh.
What song of yours, recorded or in development, perfectly describes you at this current stage of your life?
The song doesn't even have a name. It's just called April 1st right now, and I wrote it last year on the 1st of April. It was basically a song that I wrote about the growth that I recognize in myself. Some of the lyrics are, ‘nowadays I speak my own language. Everything I do in my time, and I say a prayer for all the moments, won't let anything just pass me by. I stay dreaming while I'm awake these days. It's not just a phase, just like realizing that I've finally moved past a lot of pain and a lot of self-doubt and a lot of, I guess I would call them human stages of being human.’
If you're looking for the answers and if you're asking questions, growth is inevitable. And Music has always been, at least from when I started writing songs, the way I've confronted how I feel deep within. And so that song coming out of me was like, okay, so I do genuinely recognize these things in myself, and I do genuinely see growth. And I do feel like I'm moving towards the kind of life that I knew I could have. And of course there's like an image that I have of it, but who knows what else comes with making this progress, you know?
Growing up, who or what influenced your musical journey?
There's a lot. I've always done music since I was a kid. I have a memory of me playing the piano in kindergarten. There's a lot of memories from when I was younger that I don't remember. But I know that I always sang, like my mom was always singing with me. My mom was my duet partner for the longest until my brother was born. Our whole family's musical. All my siblings sing and can sing really well. My brother is an artist.
My grandfather and his brothers were a band when they were younger and were also first cousins with someone that I think is considered an icon in Swahili coastal music, Mzee Ngala. And my grandpa still has a lot of music that we grew up listening to. I remember Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Eddie Grant, Earl Clue, Richard Clayderman, Nora Jones, and your local Kenyan music. And then my mom balanced it out with the R&B, the Angie Stone, Erykah Badu, India Arie, Lauryn Hill. And then when I was old enough, I just started collecting my own influences as well.
R&B is clearly a huge influence in your music, what made you gravitate towards R&B more than any other genres?
The only answer to the question is that I answered what was calling to me. I think it's impossible to be passionate about something and then not want to explore it in its depth. Like I feel like for any writing even with reading. You might have a favorite genre, but you won't just stick to that because you're more curious about the actual writing itself and learning, how different people approach things or how different things are said. How different people construct sentences. And that's the way that I started to view music once the songwriting came in. I always enjoyed many different genres of music, but the songwriting made me enjoy experimenting with creating different things. So now when people ask me what kind of music I make, I never just say R&B. A lot of what you'll find is R&B, but at this point I've experimented with so many things, it just isn't out.
In 2023, you had an incredible performance of your record “Wild Ride” on COLORS studio. I went and looked at the comment section of this performance, and there were so many Kenyans talking about how much pride they felt watching you up on that stage. Do you feel that sense of love from your fellow Kenyans?
I always have. I think it was coming home that made me realize that I wanted to be a full-time artist. I had put out a couple songs, but then I went back home late December 2018, and then early 2019 I released my song “Niambie” which now ended up on my first album, Love Hate Part One, four years later. The reception that I got from people here and my friends also in the US and just around the world, like it was so trippy to see people I know that don't speak Swahili at all, like my friends that are musicians, just like send me videos of them singing along to it.
And I was like what is this. Also, I was scared of coming back home because I had gotten so used to the hustle and bustle of ATL and had spent so much time doing music on that side. And the music scene in 2019 was not what it is right now. There's so much acceptance for all these genres and I did always feel like one of my favorite things about the Kenyan music industry was how diverse the music is. You can find anything you are looking for. There's a crowd for everything. You can find trap in English, you can find trap in Swahili, and you can find trap in Shang. You can find RnB in English, you can find RnB in Swahili, and you can find RnB in Shang.
What have been some of the difficulties and high moments of being a part of the live music scene in Kenya?
I think initially it was just having spaces for the different kinds of music that exist. You have people like Fay(Xenia’s manager), who has her platform, Nairobi R&B, which was already established by the time that I had come back home. So there was at least one space for me.
And that's not to say that other people didn't book me for gigs or anything like that, but the space was dedicated to the kind of music that I create, or at least solely creating at the time. And for a lot of the people that I've seen who branched out and created their own genres, you kind of had to be the one making the music and the person that's creating these opportunities for yourself. During Covid, someone started a hashtag that was like PlayKeMusic. And for the last few years, that’s exactly what has happened. It's crazy to think about how much it's changed.
My highlight about the scene is that Nairobi is such a community-driven space. We’re squad deep and we're also interconnected. And Nairobi's a party city. And because it is such a party scene and nightlife scene, and so event-based, a lot of us are always at each other's events. So, our bond is naturally stronger because we end up spending time together, even though we're at the club or whatever, we are spending genuine time with each other and like exchanging energy. I don't think I feel that sense of community anywhere else. So that is my highlight and one of my favorite things.
Artists tend to talk about how they have a muse - a person, or maybe even a thing - that serves as the real-life creative inspiration for their music, specifically the topics, the stories and the themes that they choose to highlight within their work of art. I'm curious who or what has been your muse that served as a creative inspiration for your music?
I've had many muses - partners, myself, life. Because I think it's all about presence and I think that's one thing songwriting has really helped me solidify within myself is the desire to be as present as possible so that I can find inspiration in as many things as possible. Today, it can be a person, tomorrow it can be a tree, the day after that it can be the way that the sun sets and the colors in the sky. So, I think I would say that the best answer is that life and the universe are my muse.
What was the inspiration behind your Love/Hate Pt. 1 & P.2 albums? And why did you decide to make it a sequel instead of having two standalone albums with no relation to each other?
Pain. I'm a Libra and my sign is all about balance and I see the way that it plays out in my life. I see it not just in my life, but in everything. I truly believe that for every depth of pain that I've felt, there was a depth of love. You know, I truly see how things are equal, and I think songwriting helps me to, if not express what it is that I already know that I feel, to discover what I haven't wanted to deal with and to confront how I really feel. And that's just sort of how the music came out. I just started recording and I would freestyle. I had gotten used to freestyling as my way of writing songs. Like you trust that you know exactly what you're supposed to say. You trust that this is the moment when whatever song you're about to write is supposed to be written and you give yourself and your body the permission to just release whatever's trying to come out. And sometimes I'd say a whole sentence, sometimes I'd mumble melodies, but they sounded like words, and it was pretty much a whole song that I ended up piecing together in 20 or 30 minutes.
So, when I was recording Love/Hate, there were so many feelings that I had buried that just were ready to come out. And I just allowed it and, and I let my body, and my intuition guide me and was okay with admitting to myself that I was not okay in order to be able to be okay.
I feel like Love Hate was the best title because it was one thing before it became the other, and vice versa. Though, as the years have gone by, I try not to associate with the term hate. I feel like it's so extreme and it's something I don’t want to carry with me. I don't want to harbor any feelings like that towards anybody. I believe in forgiving and doing your best to move on. But I do think it was the title that best explained how I felt in those moments.
What role has loss played in both your personal as well as your creative life?
I think the timing is interesting because I just lost one of my best friends. And I wasn't able to be there for the memorial and I have been trying to process it, since it happened. I have to say shout outs to my boy MVROE. One of the things that I've thought about is how I've been fortunate enough not to have experienced a lot of loss that has felt very personal to me. It actually feels like this is the first time I'm experiencing it for real even though a couple years ago I lost someone else that I considered a close friend. But this one feels like because of the age that we're at, you know, somebody that's actually grown with you through some very crucial moments in your life. Like is somebody that's seen me from when I started trying to figure out who I was to where I am now and has been there the whole time.
I haven’t created anything since then. Not because I've been afraid to. I feel like that'll be the most helpful to me, because music has shown me that I have the gift to transform pain into something amazing and beautiful. But I don't think that it would affect me creatively because the way that I write and knowing what writing does for me, I know that it's one way that'll help me heal.
The personal bit is the one that's like one day at a time. But I know I could go to the studio. I would cry in the studio, and it would be great. I would leave having released something.
One of the songs that I was hooked on at the end of last year was “Beba” by Watendawili featuring you on their En Route album. And one of the main reasons I kept listening to that song was because of your beautiful verse that constantly pulled me back into replaying that track. Can you talk about your experience of working with this group and how you all came up with the concept for this song?
I love these guys. We have known each other for a while. Watendawili were a trio before, and then they became a duo. So, I've known them for as long as Soul Generation (Sauti Sol’s Record Label) has been in existence and I've constantly worked with them.
I was always a fan of them when they were a trio and even when they became a duo, always loved listening to whatever it was they were doing. I just feel like they're so unique and they work so well together. And so, they had posted on Instagram “album coming soon” and I was in LA and I saw that post and I commented, “can I be on your album?” And they were like, “sure.” Then I ended up coming home and they messaged me like, “Hey, we left a song on our album for you if you still wanna do it.” And I was like “stop it. I feel special.” The song is called Beba because the album is called En Route. So, they were trying to have a lot of titles that had to do with traveling or destination. And in Nairobi they [the matatus] are always like “beba beba,” which means ‘carry’ in Swahili. So, I just went in there. They had their verses done and they had just left the middle bit for me. And it took us 45 minutes, an hour tops [to finish the song].
What are your hopes and dreams for Xenia in the years to come?
I think I've always had the same dream since I was a kid. It took me a while to realize, but it was always to do what I love and to see the world. And music has helped me do just that. I think right now I’m in a period where I'm trying to figure out how to show myself to the world again and not just only show my music.
It's something that I've been battling with for quite some time. I stopped social media-ing and I kind of forgot how to do social media in a way that's authentic to me. And so, I'm just trying to figure out how to talk about my music again in a way that feels authentic to me. Be excited about posting it. Because I love my music, and I think the music is great. But with the way that the industry is now, you do actually have to be [that way]. I don't think that I am gonna be like that, but I think that I can find a way to do it [for me].
So that's what I'm navigating, and I know that it will do those things for me. And it's just that simple. Just be happy. Do what I love. Doing what I love gives love back to other people.
Xenia Manasseh is a gift that we are lucky enough to experience in our lifetime. Her lyrics embrace both the unpleasant and beautiful elements of being a human, from loss, pain, to healing and joy. Her voice evokes understanding, tranquility and euphoria. Her talent illuminates the musical revolution taking place in the RnB capital of Africa, Nairobi Kenya.
