JZyNO on taking Liberia’s sound global

0:00Hello and welcome to Focus on Africa of the Conversation and in K-Q U-1N. Today we are in conversation with Liberian Afro-Bit singer, Jonathan Lee Pratt, professionally known as Jay Zino. From selling Chakol, firewood and items like Gary, a West African staple made from cassava flakes, to making waves on the global music scene. His 2023 breakout single, a buttermilk, a massed over 218 million streams, and tried it across the US, UK and global platforms. So he's got and there was love in the project. For me, to the artist, a feature, last made, to the producer, beat one pilot, to the dance, co-graphore, dance guard. And that made the entire media team, my team, my country, like everybody put him be, and gun everybody put him be on the project to make the project a blow. So I think it was just the time for Liberia to have a own global hit song.

1:00He is one of the most successful musicians from Liberia, but currently lives in Ghana. We hear about his rise to fame, and how African artists can monetize their craft. You can have 1 million streams in the US, and have like 5 to 10 million streams right around Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia. The person in the US will make better money than that. That's having 1 million streams, then someone who's having like 5 to 10 million streams down. Back there in the Westing World, everything is money taxing away. Jake Zinnell spoke to me from our studios in Nairobi during his recent visits to Kenya. It's Friday, September 4th. Let's get into the conversation. Music It's a great experience every time I come here. I think there's my third time coming here. I came here to do a music video shoot.

2:00I was featured on a song by a social media artist. So I decided to come here to shoot a music video. That's fantastic. So there's a collaboration between Liberia and South Sudan. Oh wow. But now most people know you through your hit song, Butter My Bread. And this is the song that actually shot you onto the global stage. How has been the journey since then? It's been challenging but I've been doing my best. As a land god doesn't give you what you can't handle. So he knows that I'm capable so I'm doing my best. When you say challenging, what type of challenges have you come across? My people are looking up to me to bring more global his songs because I'm the first to ever go to global his song for my country. To have the only global his song. So hoping we get more from other Liberian artists but they all look up to me in a way like when the next Butter My Bread will be doing our best. We'll be having projects that have been making good numbers. To get to that Butter My Bread level is very crazy. First of all, how did that make you feel knowing that you're the first artist

3:03to hit the global stage from Liberia? I mean, I'm grateful I was very happy when they're happy. I always pray to God for that to have a global his song. I've been working hard so when you're happy I give all the praises and honor to God. And you say your people back home I expect you to be turning out heat after heat? Is that some kind of pressure that you feel? Well it's pressure but I just don't give too much attention to that because one thing I know is before the year ends we get even here 10 global his songs from the entire Africa. So why must I pressure myself? I get a sense that you're very spiritual because you make reference to God and your belief and your Christianity. Does that reflect in your music and in your journey? It does. Though I'm doing secular music but when you listen to my songs your kids can listen to it as well. And I'm saying I grew up in a Christian home and from a Christian nation. So yeah. Did that Christian background, did it form your belief system even as you have grown into adulthood?

4:03What impacts did that have on your musical journey? I don't know. I don't know about others but I mean not to even be judgmental. I grew up learning not to smoke, not to drink alcohol, not to get tattoos and other stuff. Do you have tattoos? I don't have yet. Yes. When you say yet means you've planted it. I don't have yet. Maybe I would have. It's an industry where people say certain vices follow artists. There are certain vices that come along with the industry. How are you able not to tell the path other artists may decide to? I think it's the upbringing. Like I said I grew up in a Christian home. Although when you reach to a certain level you have your own way to believe things. You have your own way to go about things. Do stuff but I still fear my grandma, I still fear my dad. Before I could even pierce my ear, I caught them and begged them. Really? Yes. Almost a week I begged them. I needed it. I just wanted to look like artists. That's the only thing. I promise you guys I won't smoke, I won't drink, I won't put tattoos but just give me the space to give my ear pierce.

5:04That's all. And what year was this? That was 2019. You were already an adult by then. Of course. But you were still seeking money. I had a child by then as well. Oh, you did. Yeah, but I still beg them. They told me a week. My grandma said when your dad comes you should call. He would call. Oh, he's not back yet. He stayed out of the city. He'd go back. He was like, my man, he sure you won't do that thing. It's not small. It's not small. It's not what you would put your nose, your eyes, your eyes, your eyes, your teeth. I said no, I won't. That's a typical African period. I know. But it's interesting to hear that you have to seek permission. That man needs to beat me bad. Oh, wow. He was a disciplinary. We are playing the moment. I know that it's like 6 o'clock. 6.30. My father is coming from work. I'm telling my friends. I'm going home. I'm running home because if he gets home, I'm not there. You know he will beat me. That is very typical like my home as well because ours was, people would come to our house

6:04at 6.30 in the evening. And you see me and my siblings already wearing our pajamas and our nights wear. And people would think maybe we're just waking up. My mom would be like, oh no, they've had a bath there. I'm supposed to have dinner and good to bed. So yes, it was very structured. So I can totally relate. When you say 6.30, you're ready. You have to. Before your dad is back in the office. It's great to hear that you're upbringing in front of your musical journey. But I want to talk about the fact that you have now moved to Ghana. You're a librarian artist. Why is the choice of Ghana? Life being crazy. You know, before now, Danny was so difficult. My dad was a single parent. You know, I lost my mom when I was 6. So we were like four boys. But then we were my father. Because my little brother and I had plus two little brothers. They were twins. I'm the first. So my twins, little brothers, they were like eight days over my mom's pass away. So my dad fought hard along with my grandma and with us as well. So it's been tough, right? And then there will be times when he will leave the city go out to hustle.

7:05Sometimes we want two months. So I will have to help my siblings. So I'll go out hustle. Like come to your house. Maybe clean your dishes and stuff. Maybe help you go to the market, buy your food stuff. And then when you cook, you give me food. I'll take you home. Sometimes you give me money for recess. You know, like lunch. I'll take you home, you know, and stuff. So I learn how to hustle for my kid days, like when I was 12, 13, 14. So when I enter my 16, 17, I started hustling in the street working with some cell phone boys, you know, charging phones and stuff. From there I started understanding how to do business. You know, then I started doing my own small, small business. What kind of business is what are you doing? I did scratch car business. I said, I mean, scratch car. That's a recharge car. We charge car. So the Gary, so Granite, so Charco. And then I was a waiter, you know, I became more host-help. I did a lot of different hostels. It was just for me to be able to get a deliberate, just for me to get a deliberate, for me to survive.

8:06Am I siblings? Back then. When I hear people's grass to gray stories, right? There's something that is always very common. And it's the fact that they stayed true to what they needed to do, you know, to succeed. But at what point did you say to yourself, I want to become a musician? That was 2016 in Ghana. Because I used to love music in Liberia. But there was no means, connections or whatever opportunity to become a musician for me. So when I went to Ghana, I still had interest in playing football because I was a very good footballer. And then the football team didn't work. And then I went to play professionally in the football. Yes. I wanted to be the next judge. You know my contribution to this. My contribution to where I used to be. The first ballroom door only ballroom door for America. Okay. Okay. Okay. Cluck it. So I actually wanted to be the next judge. That was my dream. I really wanted to be the next judge. But football didn't work. My friends in the community told me that man, you can rap.

9:06I used to rap. That time, just freestyle. So I took the music thing like, okay, since I said I can do it, let me give you a try. 2016 from one end to another. I got my first salary. I was working at a show by Achi Motamu as a waiter. So I went to the theater looking for means to learn about the music. Because I just never wanted to get into it like, there's no need to get there if I don't know what I'm doing. Right. I wanted to learn. And then someone advised me from there and said, yeah, we don't do what you want to do. Because you say you want to do. I feel bit, yeah, we play instruments. I'm like, oh, so the person told me to go on YouTube and start. Follow your artist and see how to do the things that I started. And then it started making sense. 2017, 2018. And then 2019, I dropped a song in Liberia, that blew. And then it took over the entire country. So 2020, I got my first award and I started taking music professionally now. Talk to me about butter my bread. How did you come about that song? And what do you think made the music blue as we say? The first of all, it's God.

10:06Because there are a lot of great songs. I remember dropped during that year and they didn't go to where butter my bread reached. So it's God. And there was love in the project. For me, to the artist's future last made, to the producer, beat one pie, to the dance, co-graphore, dance God. And I made the entire media team, my team, my country, like everybody pulled him, being gone, everybody pulled him, being on the project, to make the project a blow. So I think it was just the time for Liberia to have her own blue ball hit song. How did you think people back home celebrated or received the song when it began to hit international charts? So social media, right? People were saying, that's a guy, that's a major song. I think it's a guy name on it. They didn't think it was a guy name. Yeah, because new artists from New Way, you know what I'm saying? And it's Afro Beach. So Liberia's where there, it's a Liberia's where it's our boy. Yeah, that's how it was for. And how did that make you feel? I feel like, yeah, it's the time now. Thank you, Lord. I'll be a stereo remodeling. And you had spoken about, you know, you are currently in Kenya to do a music collaboration.

11:09Talk to me about, you know, some of the artists that you have worked with on the continent and what this experience with Kenya is doing for your music. I've worked with artists from Serillion. I've worked with artists from Nigeria, Kate, you know, Mastercraft, CDQ. I've worked with artists from Ghana, a lot of dope artists from Ghana. From Malawi, by my homeboy, Chili One, from Zambia, if you trust me. Well, what do you make of the music scene back home in Liberia? And what do you think needs to happen for artists like yourself to make it to the global stage? The industry, I mean, we always say it's growing and growing, but I believe it's going slowly because we have been left behind after the Civil War, a lot of things left the country. And it's always like people use their old mods to plot the new one. So if you really look at the scenes in Nigeria, Ghana, they were all artists that created the scenes and you know, pushed for new artists to come over. So we didn't know what we were really doing. We understand there are strategies, you know, promotional strategies,

12:11how to get your project to a setting level, connections, international ones, DJs, blizzards and other things who don't have. Right. You've mentioned the infrastructure challenges, you know, and then of course the impact of the Civil War in Liberia on industries like the Entertainment One. But do you think that young artists like yourself, back home in Liberia, still have a dream to pursue music? Do you think they still believe that the entertainment industry, although it's at an infancy level, could still cut up all of them to the global stage? Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of young artists now that are trying, they are bringing up numbers. And we have a few people from outside that are trying to invest, because the investment too is part. It's just that like we don't have a market outside yet, our language, we speak English and we have this colloquia. So that's like a pigeon, yeah. Yeah, we have colloquia. And it's not like how you guys Nigerians sold their colloquia or their pigeon to the world.

13:11We haven't really sold ours, maybe first of all due to infrastructures, then due to maybe population as well. Yeah, because you can sell to people that don't know what you say. Instead, we have people there to help interpret. Next on the conversation, we talk about Liberia's sound, how it's perceived on the global stage and how African artists can earn more from online streaming platforms. This is Focus on Africa from the BBC World Service. I continue the conversation with Afrobeatstar Jay Zino. We look at global music revenues and what to expect from him in the future. A report here says Africa receives about 0.4% of global music revenue, even though it's one of the highest growing regions when it comes to money made from music and global listenership. What has it been your experience and what do you think needs to change for this figure?

14:14This figure's to go up. We had a conversation the last time we were Audium Mac. Most artists? And Audium Mac is a streaming platform? Yes. Right. And I'm well connected with them because I'm one of those artists that have done where we're Audium Mac. I'm a Audium Mac number one in my country today. And I've been connected with a lot of artists from Ghana as well. So most top artists want to fight other artists with numbers. So they have to go and do farming. And now you can have 1 million streams in the US like 5 to 10 million streams right around Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia. The person in the US will make better money than that. That's having 1 million streams and someone who's having like 5 to 10 million streams down. Back there in the Westing world, everything is money passing away. Every little thing is money passing. The moment they open stuff, they lock in, they already have accounts already set up that they're going to be paying automatically. But down here, it's not like that. We may have the population, we come to the industry and all the numbers when it comes to pushing towards the global market.

15:15But money was, we are not really giving in. Okay, let's talk a bit about the current craze about Afrobeats. Now some critics argue that the wave of Afrobeats is going down. The world has moved on because it was for a very short period of time. Do you agree? I don't agree. I think that that's did make him out lately because the air sound has been accepted anyway. Which was bringing me to my next role of AI making news. I think because people are just used to using sound on TikTok nowadays. So before you open your eyes in the fastest months, you have already gotten like 5 to 10 Hicksons from AI. Just AI. So it drops the quest for new songs from artists. But yet it's still a creative process. I think there are few artists that are giving shout out to when it comes to that. They don't always come out the same. They can't keep coming out the same. They have to switch from one end to another. Because it's like we are always experimenting. The ears want to hear something new.

16:15They so want to feel something new. When it comes to music. They want to feel something new or something fresh. So what's next, Vajay? What should we look forward to in the coming months or years? I'm about to take some steps to the US. I have some movement to make their... Are you making international collaborations? I've worked with that game already. That's something being out. The play now is to work on a production deal in the US, California. Then we produced by a top producer there. It was like 4 times Grammy award when we produced it. It's also a 4 times Grammy award when we produce a company. There's a 1500 or nothing. I'm going to switch something a bit. Are you switching your genres? 50% of the alphabet towards whatever they have there. Then push for the market there as well. Are you saying that you need to do that? You know that's a breaking to the Western market? Is that the reason behind it? These are strategies.

17:15You can't just say you go there into 100% you. Because you sound too strange. You can gravitate to a song that is like pleasant to your ears. That's like, oh, I know this song. Oh my god, you're my friend. But you see someone you're working with, you don't know. You just pass wherever. You stop. That's how the music thing is. I can go and give all of me. I have to give maybe half and they bring half. So that the listeners there can grab something and say, oh, who's he? He doesn't sound like us. But I just probably think it's something that we know. I'm saying like terms. Look at terms. She's doing African music in the Western form. And she's having crazy numbers. Look at Tyler. You see, I mean, these are our strategies that some people me, so see by using it or not. But I'm just saying. I want to talk about something very personal just before I let you go. You spoke about having a baby quite young. How did fatherhood shape your music journey? First of all, was it something you planned for and then how did that in Matthew?

18:16No, for the chart thing, sad to say, man, it was a peer pressure period. But I'm a profiter. I've been doing my best for my babies. No, but I have three kids. Three kids. So that's fantastic. Three boys. I have 18, I have four, I have one plus. Nice. So how is fatherhood compared to when you started music and then now that you're this global art trying to... I'm just, I'm just multi-taxing, man. I myself, the music, I'm a very homemade man. I love to cook. I love to buy my kids. I love to make them laugh. Is that something you tell your younger self if you look back? Just fear God love yourself, love people. And then learn how to hustle too. Don't wait for it to come. Don't feel entitled. Okay. I've never felt entitled to anything in this life. I always feel like God even told me because He made me. I don't even feel like my father always made me. I feel like God is the one that is all in me. So I'm going to take you through a quick fire round now. I have. Your quick fire round. You're going to give me only one word, responses to my questions.

19:18So very short. Favorite librarian dish? Bamboota. What's it made of? It's palm. Bamboota. Bamboota is superior. Oh, it's a soup. Okay. Which country has the best gelof? Liberia. Liberia. Liberia. Okay. What is currently on your playlist? I. By Kenjulama. Last movie you saw. Womong King. Last person you messaged. Mama Ninja. Emma Jain. African artist you would like to collaborate with. Jislaught. From Liberia. Whiskeyed Burner Boy or DVD? Oh, three. One. Okay. You know, to be honest, I look up to Whiskeyed. Even I met Whiskeyed. I met Jedda. I got a lot of great advice from her that helped shift my career to me. And Jedda is Whiskeyed's manager. Yes. In Ghana, she told me a lot of things. Help me. We ideas that I used today that are helping me. All right. African country you haven't visited yet, but you would want to. Bokinafas. One misconception about Liberia that you would want to change. The property.

20:18We are not poor. I think it's just corrosion that is playing on us. Renapult. Because that little country you always hear about is very rich when it comes to natural resources. Okay. Yes. And one thing people don't know about Liberia. Liberia has some of the best footballers in the world. But due to endoscoping for sculptures, that's the reason we don't even get to see them. But Liberia has some of the best footballers. Like when it comes to talent, let me just say in general talent. Football music, whatever you can think. Things that we expect people to go to school to learn. Liberia got these things naturally. All right, Jason. Before I let you go, you have to do a freestyle for me. Something you have never performed anywhere. You have not even recorded it. It has just come to your mind. No. Yes. You can use anything. You can use my name. You can use the BBC. You can use Kenya, Nigeria. Whatever you want to use, you're fine. But you've never recorded it. You've never. It has just come to you now. So I can give you the beats. I can try and be your producer for now. Hey.

21:18Duh ka dum. Duh ka dum. Duh ka dum. Duh ka dum. Duh ka dum. Duh ka dum. Duh ka dum. Duh ka dum. Duh ka dum. Duh ka dum. Yeah. I'm from L.I.B.E. Ira at a. Duh ka dum. Jason and I'm on BPC. What a beautiful lady. Yeah. She gave me a mean Duh ka. As some rap. Duh ka dum. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Is okay. Many thanks to Liberian musician Jay Zino. And if you'd like to watch this conversation, it will be available on the BBC News Africa YouTube page from Saturday, September 5th in the evening. Remember to subscribe while you're there. And that's it on Focus on Africa the Conversation today. If you'd like to share your feedback about the program or suggest stories we should cover, our email address is focus on Africa at bbc.co.uk. If you prefer sending a message, the WhatsApp number is plus 254-791-269-243.

22:21You can get in touch with me on social media at I Am on Kitchie Inna and that's with Dublin. This episode was produced by Godwin Assetiba, Ki Gansi Shumbha, Caroline Jo Thym and Bella Twini in Nairobi. Maxwell Uniangou was the technical producer. And the senior journalists in charge were Charles Kittonga and Priya Sippi. Our editors are Daniel Dazie and Mariam Abdullah. I am in Kitchie Inna. And I'll speak to you again soon.