It s as if Friday evening was set aside as time when Dali would be robustly hospitable.
If not by design, at least by chance— for this is how events unfolded at Issabella’s Restaurant and Bar in Blantyre Central Business District Friday evening, when musician Dali invited music lovers to the listening session of his latest EP [Extended Play], Genèse.
By design, the evening was set aside as time for the soft-spoken Dali to play six tracks— namely, ‘Intro’, ‘Akundifr’ [the title is ‘Akundifr’ by the artist’s design; it is not a mistake], ‘Ndabwera’, ‘Birthday Skit’, ‘Close Enough’ and ‘Dziko Lako’. He ended up playing two more songs, his own composition and the cover song ‘Isabella’.
On a night like this, he had to be robustly hospitable.
Dali came into the limelight in 2014, after releasing a number of songs, including ‘Angelina’ and ‘Tsemwe’.
As Director of Ceremony and renowned radio personality Sam Kabambe observed, “Dali is a name to reckon with”.
Dali said he chose the term Genèse, a French word, because it means the beginning. What beginning?
A beginning that has no room for dancing. While his 2014 songs were danceable, this time around, the heart does the dancing as the songs revolve around the theme of love.
Dali sheds light: “The tracks in the EP are not for energetic dancers because it is R&B” and something close to Afro Pop.
This is evident in, for instance, ‘Ndabwera’, part of which goes:
Ndinali mu m’dima/
Ku dziko langa dzuwa linazima/
C h o z e m b a chinakumana ndi chokwawa/
Ndabwera ndipo sindichokanso….
Dali sends the message home by investing in emotions in his stage play, so that one may mistake the persona for Dali himself. Wrong!
Then, there is ‘Close Enough’, in which a persona urges a member of the opposite sex to come “close enough/ [but] baby don’t fall in love”.
For taking his time to compose the songs— two of which were written by Yesaya— Dali sold the first CD at K10, 000, thanks to American auction style which gives bagging rights to the highest bidder.
What is next?
“I have set my eyes on touring colleges across the country. I want to share my message with the youth in colleges,” Dali said.
He can do it; so long as he has the force of belief.
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