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Nyokabi Kariũki 🔊 (she/her) is a Kenyan composer, performer, and artistic researcher. Her sonic imagination is ever-evolving, spanning across genres from experimental electronic to contemporary-classical music, film scoring, sound art and field recording, (East) African musical traditions, songwriting, and more; often blurring the lines between all of them. She performs with the piano, voice, electronics, and on lamellophones from across the African continent. Nyokabi’s work has been described as “deft” (The Quietus) and “transcendent” (The Guardian), with Bandcamp highlighting her as “becoming a crucial voice in contemporary composition and experimental music.” She seeks to create meaningful and challenging art, illuminated by a commitment to the preservation of African thought, language and stories.
Nyokabi holds a B.M. in Music Theory & Composition with a minor in Creative Writing from New York University (2020), where she studied composition with Dr. Jerica Oblak, songwriting with David Wolfert, among others. She also studied composition & orchestration at École Normale de Musique de Paris under Prix de Rome winner Michel Merlet, and completed a course at IRCAM (FR). Her concert music continues to be performed by award-winning ensembles, including Third Coast Percussion, Cello Octet Amsterdam, and Chromic, and she has received commissions from Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Arcis Saxophon Quartett, Heartland Marimba, and more.
Nyokabi’s debut EP, ‘peace places: kenyan memories’ (Scrawl World), was marked as The Guardian’s 10 Best Contemporary Albums of 2022 and Bandcamp’s Best Albums of Winter 2022, with additional praise from Pitchfork, Resident Advisor, and more. Her debut album, ‘FEELING BODY’ (cmntx records) was released the following year and met with similar acclaim: “both challenging and groundbreaking…it will utterly enchant you” (Louder Than War). She is currently working on her next records, including Birdsongs from Kĩrĩnyaga, a project with Cello Octet Amsterdam (NL) that received its premiere at Rewire Festival 2025, so far described as “...enlightening and enchanting…punctuated by moments of otherworldly grace” (T-Mag).
Nyokabi has performed solo in diverse contexts, such as at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, AUS), Basilica di San Pancrazio (Rome, IT), Webster Hall (NY), Beneath the Baobab (KE), and at Le Guess Who? Festival (NL). She has also offered moving video performances on ADK Sessions (Italy) and on the Youtube platform, COLORSxSTUDIOS. Nyokabi has also arranged her music to perform alongside contemporary ensembles, including String Orchestra of Brooklyn (NY), and Defunensemble (FI); and she generally enjoys performing with other musicians across many kinds of improvisational and experimental contexts.
Nyokabi has also began building a robust catalogue as a composer for film, podcast, and radio. She has scored both short and feature-length films and documentaries seen at Sundance Sundance Film Festival, CPH:Dox, IDFA, Tribeca Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, among others. Her clients have included Nike, The Telegraph, Lupita Nyong’o, and Wangechi Mutu. Her sound art pieces have been heard at audio festivals and installations from The VoiceLine (at The Strand, London) to LUCIA Festival (Italy) to the Hearsay Audio Festival (Ireland), where she received the 2021 Hearsay ‘Art’ Award. Nyokabi has enjoyed and continues to embrace vibrant collaborations with performers, choreographers, filmmakers, visual artists, and creatives researchers across mediums and disciplines.
In addition to freelance composition, Nyokabi previously worked for Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation (New York), a creative agency that inquires how creative collaboration in music can address local and collective social issues. She has lent a hand in producing The OneBeat Podcast, as well as in many of their other initiatives. She is an alumni of the Helsinki International Artists Program, and recipient of grants from New Music USA and the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. She was also recently announced as a Civitella Ranieri Fellow for 2027.
Guided by a love for experimentation, improvisation, collaboration and inquiry, Nyokabi continues to shape-shift and explore sound and its impact in different ways. However, what remains constant is a yearning to explore sound as a tool to not only re-discover her culture, but to contribute to the highlighting of its significance.
Nyokabi is currently based in Nairobi.
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