The Story.
Before diving deeper into this video, it would be greatly appreciated if you could:
- Like this Video: It would be awesome if I knew how many people actually like the stuff I am doing. I will also be motivated to create and post more music on this platform and who knows, maybe on other music platforms. I am not sure if the youtube algorithm recommends videos with a lot of likes, but it would be a great experiment.
- Share this Video: Do you have a Facebook, twitter, or any other social media from which you can share this video? I wish more people were aware of African Lofi. When I search for african (instrumental) music on Youtube, it seems like not many people are really interested in the African sounds. Rarely do I ever see an african instrumental music video with more than 500k views. With your help, we could help make this a big thing.
- Leave a Comment: I’d like to know your thoughts about African Lofi. Do you like it? love it? enjoy it? What do you expect from Mr Yohan’s channel? What are your favorites on my channel? It would be great to discover a new world of ideas and topic through a discussion thread in the comment section below. Just tell me something, anything.
- Subscribe to my Channel: Last but not least. If you like my content and would like to keep up with it, the best way would certainly be to subscribe. For some reason, getting a bigger fan-base encourages me to create better and better content. The more subscribers I get, the more opportunities I could get too.
My passion for music began in my early days. My older sister was meant to be the family’s musician (pianist). My dad had bought her a piano and hired a private music teacher to teach her the basics of piano. Sometimes the lessons were held at home and some other times at the teacher’s house. Unfortunately, the lessons suddenly stopped and the piano experience was long forgotten. Couple years later, probably in my early teenage years (10 or 11), I had a strong passion for art. I loved drawing and writing. At the time, I was a huge fan of anime (I still am), so I would draw Goku and many other anime characters in my note books and text books. Any clean or used sheet of paper in my way would either suffer or enjoy the scribbles of my imagination.
Artistic creativity had taken over my life in my early years. However, there was a problem. My grades at school weren’t the best and my parents couldn’t afford to waste money on my education. By the way, we were in Africa and education wasn’t free at all. My parents had invested a lot in my education by sending me to the most expensive schools in the country. So my mom wasn't so happy when she saw me drawing instead of studying. She made clear that I couldn’t draw anymore (that’s a long story for another time maybe).
One day, I was very bored. I was so bored I started looking for my old joystick game I hadn’t played in years. While looking for the console, far far away in the back of my sister’s closet, I could see a very dusty black object. I took it out, blew the dust off, and there it was; a piano. I wasn’t too attracted to it, but I felt like it would be way better to learn how to use it rather than playing the old video games. At the time, I didn’t even know what the internet was, so all I could rely on was my little brain. I took out the piano, set it up on the table, and turned it on. I started playing, but nothing was making sense. I got frustrated; I couldn’t create any enjoyable melody. At the time, I didn’t have the skills, so I decided to take it slow and learn how to use it. The next day, after hours of searching, I finally found a piano book with music notes. However, I didn’t know how to read music notes, so it was useless. So I decided to learn on my own.
As the days went on, I discovered a new world in which I experienced a great relationship with my friend; the piano. I pressed and learnt how to recognize each key by memory. By day 3, I had learnt how to play “brother John/Jack”, a short nursery rhyme, on the piano. Couple days later, I could play the “happy birthday” song and many other short songs. I was so proud of myself and wanted to achieve even bigger accomplishments, so I dedicated about 6–7 hours of my days to self-teach myself how to play the piano. It was summer by the way, so my mom didn’t see a big deal with me making music.
One day my dad heard me playing outside, so he came out and listened. He noticed how well I played and congratulated me. Fast forward, at the end of the year, during Christmas (I think), my dad offered me a new piano. I was very grateful and very pleased as he encouraged me to work even harder on my “talent”.
Many years later, I am in my twenties taking engineering courses at the University. I had come across a great composition by Emancipator called “Time for Space”. It was and still is one of the best musical compositions I had ever listened to. So I decided to create something similar. I called it “Space for Time”.
Go listen to it if you want. This is when I realized that instrumental compositions would be a very interesting journey. Around this time, I also discovered Khruangbin’s “August 10”, a great musical composition.
However, “Kokoroko” by Abusey Junction is the piece that made me dive into the African Space.
I had realized that there was an insignificant amount of African Instrumental compositions on Youtube, so I decided to raise the bar by creating as many beautiful sounds as I could.
As you can notice, I am also a great fan of Lofi. My journey with Lofi begins the same year with my African music project in 2019. One day, I was wondering whether to make African music or Lofi music. Why not both at the same time, in the same composition, I thought. So I searched on Youtube if anyone else had posted an “Afro Lofi” as I called it. No results showed up.
The very first African Lofi I made was “Furaha” however it was known as Afro Lofi. “Milky Coco” was the first track named African Lofi.
People seem to like it a lot more than I’ve expected, and it grows exponentially everyday. So here you go with how African Lofi came to be.
I believe there are very talented artists out there who can contribute to this idea with their creativity. Lofi is a not really well defined genre of music, if it feels like lofi, it is Lofi. So I do the same with African Lofi. If it feels like African Lofi, it is African Lofi. I am not very sure how to define African Lofi.
Thanks for taking your time to read this while listening to my music.
Mr Yohan.
