Kwaku Darko-Mensah Jnr., aka Kae Sun, has been especially nomadic the past couple of years. After spending time between Toronto and Montreal with stints in New York and Germany, the Ghanaian-born artist grounds himself with the release of his third studio album, Whoever Comes Knocking. The album is his most ambitious and open work yet.
Kae Sun’s nomadic journey is grounded in the chase for opportunities to be more creative. Born in Accra, Ghana, Kae Sun moved to Canada for school when he was a teenager. Aside from the telling influence his African upbringing has had on forming his sound, his roots have shaped him the most in the way he embeds creativity into his lifestyle. In his current city of Montreal, Kae Sun has been adopted by a new family – the Moonshine collective. Cemented at the forefront of celebrating diversity in dance culture, Moonshine is both a label and a platform, known most notably for their sweat-inducing lunar-based parties.
In Ghana, creativity is something that you live and experience. In North America, you have to figure out how to live first before the creativity comes. There’s a clear separation.
Bambii at the Moonshine x RBMA Montreal Weekender event
© Karel Chladek
Whoever Comes Knocking spans 10 tracks that guide us through a diverse landscape of influences, from afrobeat to folk, and features a collaboration from Quebec singer-songwriter Ariane Moffat. Kae Sun boasts co-production credits (alongside longtime collaborator Joshua Sadlier-Brown) and wrote the album while in New York, Montreal, Ghana and Germany – a true testament to his ingenious nomadic nature. After three years in the making, Whoever Comes Knocking finds Kae Sun grounded and self-assured, having found a sense of place anchored in the creativity he's cultivated.
In this project, there’s a lot of searching in the music and trying to find home. I'm trying to be more vulnerable and to put myself in a position where my spiritual foundations can be challenged.
2018 has already started with momentum for the singer-songwriter, with a feature in the ongoing Future Africa Vision in Time (FAVT) exhibition held at the Goethe-Institut in Namibia – a video installation that offers a glimpse into the undetermined life of an asylum seeker in Germany. As he pushes forward, Kae Sun strives to challenge how African influence is often excluded from conversations surrounding contemporary art, citing Kendrick Lamar as a prime example of someone who's afrofuturist influence doesn't receive enough shine.
Catch Kae Sun on tour this spring and expect a new visual project to surface later this year.
