Kulowo Wawega has hidden experiments in sound across the internet since 2009. Tucked away across platforms and under a handful of aliases (the tares, no debts, esuna), Wawega’s music glimmers like an aluminum candy wrapper pressed into the pavement–worn in by passersby, but treasured by whoever finally stops to scratch at it, squinting as the sun glares off its edges. Yearn–the first EP under the name Kulowo Wawega–finds grace in the daily struggles, sacrifices and surrenders of the human experience.

Kulowo Wawega earned his name in prayer. In a morning sitting, the name entered his mind as an unassuming thought. “Kulowo Wawega.” After repeating it to himself a few times, he tried to learn how to spell it and realized it might be a name. A Google Search taught him its meaning: “to the one who refused” in Xhosa, and Zulu. Wawega accepted. Wawega took the name to signify the importance God placed on the process of renewal, the cultivating of one's innate gifts through culture and as a nod to Wawega’s African heritage.

yearn collects sounds from 2017 to 2023, spanning Wawega’s wide influences in worship music, minimal dubstep, drone, slow core, and RnB, and finds parallels in the revisited rhythms of the work and field songs of enslaved people. While yearn is particular to its maker in style–each delicate loop, spattered piano key, and granular shift in texture, is a marker of Wawega’s practiced ear–yearn longs for something unspecific and unresolved. The struggle towards desire becomes its resolution and the cycle repeats.

Wawega’s own path in life and music has been nomadic and cyclical. The Louisiana-native has spent time in Texas, California and New York, sharing new cultural practices and familiar means of communion with the people who come into his path. Now residing in the UK, Wawega finds unexpected resonance in yearn’s transience as he navigates financial insecurity, periods of being unhoused, and relies on the kindness of those who hear his call.

“I’m not in a rush. I’m not in a hurry. I’m there to be with whatever people are experiencing, and to watch the newness come forth after going through the mundane, the menial, and the suffering.

Words by Alphonse F.


✦ ♡ kulowo's thank yous ♡ ✦ mona, hiram, torch, embaci, mom, ian, anan, haddon, zach, noah, tobs+mary, nick, angel, treble, kenna, matthew p., abreonna, kyla+andy, lux+light, destiny, bob, vivienne, issa+lucy, minna, celes, josiah, david, monique, lynn, azita+demis, koko, alex, avi, colin, jesus, joel+meg, cynthia, lis, aunt pat, tymofii, jon, west, redeem, jason, sharla, julian, andrea, rachel, baba, holy spirit



Written and produced by Kulowo Wawega
Artwork by Kulowo Wawega
'poor in spirit' graphic fonting by Salome Kappelin
Tape bounce by Annalisa Vetrugno
Mastered by Rashad Becker