ODD OKODDO & Ogoya Nengo

Reihe: Reconstructing Song

This music does not begin in the studio but in relationships - across journeys, neighbourhoods, and years of exchange and collaboration. Moving between Nairobi and Siaya, ODD OKODDO - the duo of Sven Kacirek and Olith Ratego - joins forces with the formidable 83-years-old dodo singer Ogoya Nengo in a practice that feels less like fusion than an ongoing conversation. Dodo—song as news, commentary, memory—meets modular electronics, percussive precision, and Ratego’s self-built okodo lute, subtly shifting the ground beneath it.
On Palagoma (2026), this constellation becomes an actual trio: nine pieces moving between village storytelling and electroacoustic atmosphere and stimulation. The voices remain stark and close, almost unguarded, while dry bass pulses, wooden resonances, and sharply etched synth lines rearrange the space beneath. Call-and-response slips into mechanical motion; intimate storytelling meets circling grooves.
What emerges is neither preservation nor update, but a stubborn present: music that circulates, insists, and carries forward, that holds, unfolds and refuses to settle.