Emerging from the confluence of three special talents – Nairobi-based Nyege Nyege collaborator and experimental drummer Sven Kacirek, esteemed 83-year-old folk artist OGOYA NENGO and dodo singer/songwriter and luthier Olith Ratego – PALAGOMA is a feverish amalgam of traditional Kenyan currents and moody, minimalist electronics.
The artists have collaborated in various guises before; German-born Kacirek co-produced and recorded NENGO’s 2014 captivating debut LP for Honest Jon’s, Rang’ala, while Ratego and Kacirek formed the duo ODD OKODDO in 2018, performing at Uganda’s influential Nyege Nyege Festival in 2023 and at events all over the world. However, PALAGOMA combines their abilities for the first time. Within the album’s bedrock of hard-edged folktronica, the trio carve out messages of love, pain, and courage that draw on their multiple trajectories.
BARA, the album’s first single, highlights the call-and-response patterns of dodo, a singing and dance tradition of the Luo community in western Kenya. The groove soon turns mechanical, tying itself to the present with an industrial techno pulse. A showcase of what we can expect to witness live at ZDB.

Borne of Tesla Manaf’s restless defection from jazz orthodoxy and a meeting with the like-minded Rio Abror, Kuntari dissect tradition with surgical instinct, rebuilding it in the form of primal-core: the guttural echoes of mating calls and tribal Indonesian rhythms resurrected from the 16th century blended into a feral rite, roto toms snarling with clipped resonance as Tesla’s percussive guitar transforms into an instrument of raw, thrumming power.

Inspired by Hadrah Kuntulan rhythms and the clamor of field-recorded Indonesian soundscapes, a brutal aesthetic devoid of distortion yet drenched in weight and resonance emerges. Instruments gasp, groan, and shriek under their touch, manipulated into sounds that scrape against the marrow, tearing them open with unflinching teeth.