Nwando Ebizie knows what she stands for and bravely tells the stories of her community on her debut album The Swan. The Quietus sat down with her and zoomed in on her complex storytelling that celebrates the matriarchy.
In the middle of the summer of 2022, the British Nigerian multidisciplinary artist Nwando Ebizie released her debut album The Swan. The project brings together Nwando’s left-field electronic experiments, cross-border musical influences, radical live art practices, and interests in Black Atlantic ritual cultures and speculative fiction. Carving out a bold new Afrofuturist imaginary, The Swan opens the gates to ritual cultures of the Black Atlantic. This genre-crossing album is a work of sonic fiction into the imagined world of a matriarchal community, unfolding like a time-bending ethnographic account of found sound and footage that is at once both ancient and futuristic.
In conversation with The Quietus Nwando Ebizie talks about mythmaking, the importance of rituals, and album, The Swan. During Rewire 2023, Nwando Ebizie will perform a live rendition of her long awaited debut album together with her band.