20 artists who will make your year in 2017
Here's who will guide you through the next 12 months
15 Bonaventure
Soraya Lutangu began making music in late 2015 after the death of her nephew Bonaventure. Feeling intense grieving emotions, she began pouring herself into creating sounds that are personal with an outward-looking focus, adopting her nephew’s name as an artist moniker and exploring politically-charged themes of identity and race. She’s now beginning to emerge as one of the most vital new artists in underground electronic music.
The output of NON Worldwide and its radical intent in redressing imbalances afflicting the world is a driving influence behind her work. Earlier this year the imprint added Bonaventure to its esteemed roster of boundary-pushing artists, putting out her debut release ‘Complexion’ of emotionally resonant deconstructed club music. Last week an agitated new cut titled ‘Riposte’ appeared on the discrimination challenging ‘Co-Op’ compilation, marking one way in which Bonaventure is enacting positive change through her music.
After Berlin Community Radio selected Bonaventure as a winner of its Incubator project, aimed at promoting “underrepresented and marginalised creative voices”, the station commissioned a collaboration between her and artist and writer Hannah Black called ANXIETINA, conceptually rooted around a character whose anxiety powers her into actions such as fighting fascism and battling demons of capitalism, which was performed live at multiple venues in London and Berlin.
In 2017 the pair will perform together at the mumok museum in Vienna and MoMA PS1 in New York, and Bonaventure has plenty more projects in the works. Six tracks are ready, one for each of her siblings, for a new EP, high-profile gigs are lined up across Europe alongside the likes of embaci, JG Biberkopf and Gaika, and she will be hosting a show on Berlin Community Radio on the first Wednesday of every month where she’ll spin wide-ranging sets blending everything from dancehall to spoken word polemics. As the world attempts to move on from the concerning trends that have dominated this past year, Bonaventure will be an artist at the heart of progressive movements in 2017. P Hinton
