• MDQ has achieved acclaim not only for her own music but also for her wider work in the Kenyan music industry.
• Muthoni is not new to the festival world as she has organised the Blankets and Wine music festival, which has provided a platform for alternative musicians in the region since 2008.
It's quite clear Muthoni Drummer Queen's Christmas has just come early as she is has joined Spotify's EQUAL Music Programme.
She will be December’s Artist of the Month.
Spotify EQUAL aims to foster gender equality in music and provide a platform to highlight influential female creators, and is a deserved platform for the innovative Kenyan artist.
Having developed her love for music in choirs at school, MDQ has achieved acclaim not only for her own music but also for her wider work in the Kenyan music industry.
Muthoni is not new to the festival world as she has organised the Blankets and Wine music festival, which has provided a platform for alternative musicians in the region since 2008.
Since then, the festival has come to incorporate elements of fashion, art, and literature in addition to music.
Having started out as a way to promote independent acts, the festival has also played host to a number of internationally-acclaimed acts from across Africa.
MDQ also founded perFORM which is a music business and artistic development incubator.
Started in 2019, perFORM aims to enable practitioners in the music industry to filter, order, refine, and master the business and artistic skills required to build a sustainable music career.
On November 19, she released a new album called River and the track, 'African Fever', will be featured on the EQUAL Africa and EQUAL Global playlists.
River is her fourth studio album and the third made in collaboration with Swiss production duo GR and Hook.
It features a number of global Afro-diasporic sounds, blended with hip-hop, reggae dancehall, R&B, and traditional drumbeats from various ethnic communities around Kenya.
The album’s genesis came during a Nairobi creative residency in 2019 and was further developed during a 50-plus date touring season that same year.
Muthoni welcomed the acknowledgement and encouraged other female artistes to be loud and make space for themselves in the music industry.
“When they don’t give you a seat at the table, make your own with and for the people that love and celebrate you as you are,” she says.
Other African artistes to have been featured on EQUAL include Kenya’s SSARU, Nigeria’s Ayra Starr and South Africa’s DBN Gogo.