 I got a chance to interact with an amazing spoken word artist by the name Dofan. Now he has a new album out, so let's get a chance to hear more about the album and his journey in that industry. Check him out. My name is Dofan, well that's my artist name. My ID name is Dennis Mutuma, Mutua, Burgo, Tehrambu. Well, that's as far as I can go with the genealogy. So Dofan is an alta ego, I lost my parents when I was pretty young and you know for people when you're an orphan they sort of start pitting you, they expect you to sort of look at you in a small way, you know and so in a way you expect to feel small, act small and so for me it was like instead of being ashamed of this, you know I can embrace it and make it my own. Like Dofan is itself is a mindset, you know it's that mindset of self-worth and taking your own value and instead of letting people define you by your background or by your history, you know you can be your own person. I write hoaks for some of my pieces and then I will collaborate with other artists, you know so I have other artists sing and then we're performing together or even if it's recording, yeah so it's, I would say it's all complimentary but I want to do a lot more song writing for other people now like I know we don't have like a proper space for that in Kenya but I hope that we can establish that you know. This is a singer-songwriter producer that I work with, his name is Rasa Mwar, so there is a few songs that we are working on, also there's a lady that I worked with on the album that released an album a while back and so there's a lady called Le Boy so I'm also working on some songs for her, you know and you know see how it goes because I think we first start with the people around you, the people you've worked with, you know that way. It's less complicated and hopefully you know that will be great you know but I'm excited about it but the good thing is that we're creatives, we're always creating so and when you have people that you really have chemistry with then it's so much better. That's why I think 2020 was probably the hardest year for myself as an artist and I know for a lot of other artists because there was less interaction with people because the more interactive people you're interacting with life like that's life in motion right, so when you don't interact with people as much and then your inspiration comes from there and you're uninspired for the most part. It's a choice I made very consciously and I'm aware of the challenges that come with that you know I hope I didn't have to deal with a lot of the things I have to deal with but it's what it is, it's a kind of society we live in at the end of the day like if anything has to change around there has to be a few mad people you know a few mad people right who believe that you know they still a chance for us right. Instead of just playing along you know everything you know someone has to say no come on you know yeah like we can do away with this loop you know just because I feel like there's a lot of that people have almost gone to accent where people have forgotten how to live right because you're thinking shilling shilling shilling shilling shilling shilling you know it's just money is important but money is not everything right. Neli ulizea ni kambiwa mam malisha neli kwa sad siku imbewa chumam malisha, staki kujaji josi jwee rizun mam malisha ni batu de anguleo yet another reason ya kumismam desia na kupelaka na intitu. My new so I have a new album out and it's titled from the margins from the margins you know we talk of marginalized people we talk of people who are sideline you know people are living in the cracks and crevices of society basically so and that's what the album is about it. So I collaborated with a few other artists you know spoken of artist and singer you know like her name is Li Boy so I collaborated with another artist kikete, Lexas Mshairi, Murade Ngege and Kareembo. We went to the various communities that these artists come from and we talked to people, we talked to people to hear their experiences. We tried to use that, we wanted the album to be informed by their experiences. This is actually a piece there called Myakaya Mumbua and that is basically what the lives of young men have been reduced to in the ghetto. Dog grows up to 20 years, if a dog grows up to probably 25, that year old dog is like an extremely old dog, it's toothless and it's barely carrying itself. So that piece basically tries to share those experiences, it's what we've reduced young men in the ghettos to grow up in dog years. You can hit me up on social media, dofan underscore age on Twitter, Instagram, dofan politically speaking on Facebook but it's also available on streaming platforms like Spotify, Boom Play, Apple Music.