The Mumble reviews a beautiful
Debut EP from Kenyan-born,
Manchester-residing Macharia
An EP landed in my inbox recently. The work of Manchester-based Kenyan artist Macharia, it arrives at the very beginning of her career — and I’m always intrigued by the possibility of divergent cultures converging in a single soul. Naturally, I thought I’d give it a listen. Born in Kenya and now based in Manchester, Macharia describes herself on Bandcamp as “an artist whose work bridges cultures, bringing Kenyan stories and musical traditions to a wider audience.” Singing in both Swahili and English, her music blends rich vocal textures with intimate, reflective storytelling, creating space for healing, connection and self-discovery.
Even better, I thought. The girl’s a poet. And that, as it turns out, is where things get interesting.
01. Tega Sikio — 02:10
A cry of the soul, a crash of recorded thunder, then we’re in. “I know of a girl…” Immediately I thought this was Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer,’ but we were soon floating elsewhere, nibbling on the soul of Africa. The song is Tega Sikio — which means “listen” in Swahili — a sonic enchantment which draws us in and out of consciousness for just over two minutes, a wee dreamy exercise in abstract beauty & a woman’s primal connection with the universe, listening to the wind’s rhythm without & the soul’s melodies within. The arrangement feels almost elemental, with the weather itself becoming part of the conversation. There’s no rush to get anywhere. Instead, we drift through the sound, the lyrics embedded in the very flesh of the song. As an EP opener, it’s a gentle invocation to pay attention, not just to the world around us, but to whatever is stirring inside. Two minutes and ten seconds. Gone before you’re ready. Just as it should be.
02. Stranger to Me — 02:40
The second track feels more traditional. Gentle strings are plucked into life by Macharia’s sweet vocals, giving the song a warmer, more familiar shape. Halfway through, a soft percussive shuffle appears, and suddenly we’re skipping towards an uplifting finale. It’s here that we really begin to hear the beauty of Macharia’s voice. There’s a lightness to the delivery that sits beautifully against the song’s heavier subject matter: the slow, unsettling experience of becoming a stranger to yourself.
Every day that I live
My reflection has slowly become
A stranger to me
The lyric lands because it doesn’t over-explain itself. We’ve all, at one point or another, looked in the mirror and wondered where a version of ourselves went. Macharia gives that feeling a melody, then lets it breathe. There’s a lovely tension here between the music’s gentle forward motion and the lyrics’ emotional weight. The song moves; the person singing it is still trying to work out how.
03. You’ll See — 03:30
By the third track, I’m properly in, completely engaged. Three and a half minutes of what I was beginning to realise I wanted more of: this is music for the bath, for the long journey home, for working with the world turned down low, for kissing your lover. It’s music that makes ordinary moments feel a little more considered. Lovely stuff. ‘You’ll See’ is tender without being saccharine. Its lyrics speak of the people who know us before we know ourselves, who hold us up until we can stand alone, who plant something in us and wait patiently for it to bloom.
You knew me even when I didn’t see
The beauty that is me
There’s a beautiful simplicity to that thought. To be seen before you can see yourself; to carry somebody’s faith in you long after they’ve stopped holding your hand. Macharia’s writing is at its strongest when it makes these enormous emotional ideas feel intimate, almost conversational. The Swahili passages add another layer to the song’s sense of inheritance and becoming. Dreams are nurtured, they take flight, and suddenly the journey belongs to more than one person. There’s gratitude here, but also ambition: a promise to carry someone’s love forward into the world. By the time Macharia sings of making someone proud, you believe her.
04. Moto — 03:39
Of the four tracks I’ve heard, ‘Moto’ feels like the most immediately accessible to the modern pop ear. I mean, its a bout her ex, so there’s passion & love in the songwriting. It’s a beautiful ballad with just enough movement to sway to — perhaps even dance to, depending on how generous you’re feeling with the definition of dancing. And then there’s the bridge.
Where does the time go
Why can’t I follow
Every page I need to read between the lines
The song has a real slow-burn quality, but this is the moment that catches me: a genuine spine-tingler, where the melody and the lyric seem to find each other at precisely the right time. Macharia sings of distance, sorrow and the complicated business of letting go, while the recurring ‘moto umewaka’ — the fire has been lit — gives the track its pulse. The imagery is striking, too. Two people become rain in the ocean, their tears turning to oil on the flame. There’s no shortage of feeling here, but the song never seems to strain for it. It lets the emotion gather, then gives it somewhere to go. The result is quietly affecting: a song that feels both deeply personal and entirely ready to be let loose into the world.
05. Days Go By (04:08)
The final track, Days Go By, brings us back to the conspicuous guitar picking of Stranger to Me, those gentle strings setting the scene once more. But there’s something sharper in Macharia’s delivery here. She doubles herself up with backing vocals, layering her voice until it takes on an almost laser-like intensity, cutting cleanly through the arrangement.
This song feels like a letter to estranged friends. And yet, as little ripples of laughter are stitched into the fabric of the song, we sense that these estrangements are not necessarily born of malice. Perhaps they’re simply the casualties of distance — the epic stretch between Manchester and Kenya, the miles that accumulate while life carries on, and the strange business of becoming somebody different in the eyes of those who knew you before. The sentiment is best encapsulated in a wonderful passage:
Driving around with the sun shining down
And the whole world is flashing by
In the rear mirror view is a version
of me that only lives inside your mind
There’s a whole relationship in those three lines: the freedom of moving forward, the ache of looking back, and the uncomfortable realisation that somebody else might still be holding on to an older version of you. We all exist in other people’s memories, but those memories don’t necessarily keep pace with who we’re becoming.
It’s a quietly devastating thought, delivered with enough warmth to avoid wallowing in it. The laughter flickering through the song makes all the difference. These are not necessarily bridges burned, but connections stretched thin by time, geography and the inevitable changes that come with living.
As closers go, Days Go By feels like a fitting place to leave us. There’s no grand resolution, no tidy tying up of loose ends. Just a voice reaching across the distance, a few remembered moments, and the hope that somewhere, on the other side of the miles, somebody is still listening.
On her Bandcamp page, Macharia writes that each of these songs is a letter: “that either I needed to hear, or someone in my life needed to hear.” It’s a lovely way of thinking about songwriting. A song as a letter, sent out into the world without necessarily knowing who needs to receive it. Sometimes the person who needs it is the writer. Sometimes it’s a stranger who happens to press play. And because the EP is available on Bandcamp, we get to sit with the lyrics themselves. As a poet, I’m always interested in what happens when words are allowed to live inside music — when they have rhythm and melody to carry them, but still retain something of their own shape.
For an artist at the beginning of her journey, that feels like a rather good place to be: rooted in the stories and sounds that shaped her, open to the world she now inhabits, and finding her own way of making the two speak to each other. I came to this EP out of curiosity. I’m leaving it with lines in my head, melodies lingering in the background, and the feeling that I’ve encountered a voice worth listening to. Which, given that ‘Tega Sikio’ opens by asking us to do exactly that, feels rather fitting.
Damo
THE SONGS
With introductions from Macharia herself
- Tega Sikio (02:10)
A Letter From My Ancestors
This is a song I wrote imagining what my ancestors would be saying to me. They worked so incredibly hard so thag I could live a soft life. They would want me to be present, to take each day as it comes, to listen to the wind, pay attention to the rain and continue living their wildest dreams
I know of a girl
Kidosho tena sana (Her beauty is divine)
She carries the weight of a thousand midnight songs
Sikio, tega sikio
.
She is jaded, by the hours of the night
Eyes are weighted, she can hear a voice
Inside and it is calling her to listen.
.
Sikio, tega sikio, tega sikio
Listen to the melody within
Sikio, tega sikio, Tega sikio
Listen to the rhythm of the wind, the rain, the sea
Hear the humming in the breeze
Feel the power in the trees
My darling I’m begging you please!
Wont you listen, tega sikio, listen, sikio
Sikiliza
Sikia kwa makini(listen very carefully)
Dalili ya mvua mawingu(Clouds are a sign of rain)
mawingu
- Stranger to Me (02:40)
A Letter to Myself
This is a song about change, and not being able to recognise the person that you see in the mirror. Sometimes pain can change us in a way that is irreversible. The conversation at the end happens between 2 versions of myself. One of them is sorry for the things she failed to do, the person she failed to become, and the other is so proud of the woman I have become, thanking me for putting in the work and showing up even when its hard.
.
Caught in these sheets
I feel you breathe
But your hearts a million miles away
All that I know is the mask that you show
A porcelain shadow of yourself
I’m lost in the dark trying to weave through the doubt
I cannot recognize who you’ve become
I’m losing my patience you’re draining my strength
I’m falling apart
.
Changed by the pain
And it’s hard to explain
That I can’t relate anymore
To the girl I should be
Every day that I live
My reflection has slowly become
A stranger to me
.
Haunted by dreams of a version of me
That took the leap and broke away
From the pressure to give
The burden to take
The need to be more that she can fake
no words left to say so
She cruised through the day
Fading away
.
I’ve been changed by the pain
And it’s hard to explain
That I just can’t walk out the door
From the girl I should be
Everyday that I live
My reflection has slowly become
A stranger to me
3.You’ll See (03:30)
A Letter to my Parents
This is a song I wrote as a letter to my parents. They have sacrificed so much to see my dreams come true and I am eternally grateful. The song is a promise that I will make them proud, that all the hard work and effort they have invested into my dreams will pay off, and that they will see me thanking them on tv screens.
Who am I without you first
without your steps to follow.
I’ve never known a day on earth
without your hands to hold me
Pouring into me until I bloom
.
You knew me even when I didn’t see;
the beauty that is me
I found myself by following the rain
along the road you paved
You walked alongside me until
I found my way
.
I hope I make you proud
When you hear the stories told of me
They say your name out loud
for I am made for you and you off
forever we’ll be bound
In the stars we found our destiny
I’ll make you proud
You’ll see
.
Tangu Zamani, ndoto za mbali eh
Ulizitunza, zikawa ka ndege
Zina paa ninapaa tuna paa
Tangu Zamani(I have watched you grow),
ndoto za mbali eh
Ulizitunza, zikawa ka ndege
Zina paa ninapaa tuna paa(The sky is the limit)
.
I’m gonna make you proud
I’m gonna carry you inside of me
They’ll say my name out loud
You’ll see me thanking you on TV screens
I’ll listen for the sound of you calling out in victory
Ill make you proud youll see
(the future has a lot in store for you)
4: Moto (03:39)
A Letter to my Ex
Moto means fire, and it is a song about heading straight into a fire. Written as an ode to a former lover, it is a song about how we both knew the situation was wrong for us but we stayed hoping it would get better. But just like rain in the ocean, we weren’t helping the situation in any tangible way.
Where does the time go
What does my heart know
Came so far but pride won’t let me turn away
Why can’t i let go
Just let the wind blow
Feel the warm but don’t become like Icarus
.
You and I we’re like rain in the ocean
Salt water a taste not for me
Catalysed by the distance between us
My tears were like oil to the flame
.
Moto umewaka
moto umewaka
moto umewaka
Moto
Moto umewaka
moto umewaka
moto umewaka
Moto
.
Where does the time go
Why cant i follow
Everypage I need to read between the lines
Just like the tide flows
Rip out my sorrows
Maybe I just need to hurt like that sometimes
.
You and I we’re like rain in the ocean
Salt water a taste not for me
Catalysed by the distance between us
My tears were like oil to the flame
.
Moto umewaka
moto umewaka
moto umewaka
Moto
Moto umewaka
moto umewaka
moto umewaka
Moto
.
Nawaza nawazua yapitayo na yajayo
Tunainama tunainuka tunakaribia
Tunainama tunainuka tunakaribia
Tunainama tunainuka tunakaribia
Days Go By (04:08)
A Letter to my Friends
This is a song I wrote to estranged people in my life. Birthday’s are such a big deal to me, and I really go above and beyond. Because of this, I tend to remember people’s birthdays, even though we don’t talk anymore. This song is a reminder that even though the seasons change, I will always send out a silent happy birthday, a whisper of well wishes and good will.
Its hard to watch the days go by
But its good to know that you’re alright
Its hard see the winds have changed
But I came all this way
Just to say hey
.
You watched me as I listen
Listen closely as I sing
Sing away the lonely seasons
Sing away sing away
.
And even as the days go by
And we haven’t spoken for a while
When that time of the year rolls by
I will think of you and smile
.
Through good times and the sad eyes
Building wrinkles and the laugh lines
Feel the innocence of spring time
Fade away
.
And even as the days go by
And we haven’t spoken for a while
When that time of the year rolls by
I will think of you and smile
.
Driving around with the sun shining down
And the whole world is flashing by
In the rear mirror view is a version of me that only lives inside your mind
.
Even as the days go by
And we haven’t spoken for a while
When that time of the year rolls by
I will think of you and smile
Even as the days go by
And we haven’t spoken for a while
When that time of the year rolls by
I will save you that first slice
And I’ll sing to you and smile
.
Happy birthday to you
Happy lifetime to you
Happy birthday dear stranger
May all your dreams come true
LISTEN TO THE E.P.
