Playlist Interview: Seeing Sounds [Winter '23] - Week 3 ft. Kafari

Seeing Sounds: a playlist of visualized audio

current season: Winter

curated by THEO w/ 6 additions from kafari

The featured Ohio artist for Week 3 of Winter’s ‘Seeing Sounds’ playlist update is Cincinnati’s own pianist, rhythm bones player, and teaching artist Kafari .  The newest additions feature a couple tracks off of his 2021 project “Blanket of Black”.

other featured Ohio artists:

Pinstrype Kouzin

+ about

'Kafari’ (he/him) is the alias of Cincinnati, OH born, Portland, ME based pianist, rhythm bones player, beatmaker, and teaching artist Ahmad Muhammad. Kafari’s music synthesizes his love of ambient piano music, spiritual jazz and experimental hip-hop, and is inspired by the musical legacies of William Menefield, blakhi, Dorothy Ashby, J Dilla, Chopin, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who in a 2014 performance sparked his interest in the rhythm bones - an Irish percussion instrument popularized in America through blackface minstrelsy which he often distributes and teaches to his audiences. Kafari appears weekly on Monday nights in Portland at The Jewel Box, where he hosts a residency performance featuring his piano/organ bass renditions of an expansive variety of contemporary and modern music. 

A self-proclaimed sound healer, Kafari writes in the liner notes to his most recent album Riffs and Lullabies vol. 2 "I think of being a musician as a private public journey. My intention is to care for myself and to cultivate a personal relationship with music that is expressive, healing, and that serves my needs at the time. And perhaps through that act of expression and of making a statement, I can make a connection with you." 

Listen to Kafari

+ track additions

& Kafari’s additions of recent listens include: Cleo Sol - promises, Khruangbin - the recital that never happened, Ongjoco - best friend, Sudan Archives - #513, Chakram - evo devo, Khudosoul, Try Type - floating bonsai

+ interview

COMING SOON