ANOKI
Anoki grows up in the nineties between Dutch red facades and a small Bavarian town, the son of an Indonesian-born father with American citizenship and a German mother. In the nowhere between a place where you are nobody and a place where you have nothing. No perspective, but love all the way to the sun.
Music becomes huge and important at an early age. While the father is always somewhere, the single mother shows her son how to transfer the music on the radio to cassette. From then on, between their two jobs, this is the time they spend together that no one can take away from them. For Anoki, a gateway to a new world opens. He starts playing guitar, experiencing punk and politics in alternative youth centres of a conservative small-town community of values.
From there, he moves on to hip-hop and its pioneers. The older brother's record collection is the biggest thing in the world. Contrary to the widespread belief in his hometown of Schweinfurt that music is not a profession and should not be one, Anoki decides to find his own way. He leaves the city as quickly as possible and arrives in Berlin via detours. His intense and special way of telling stories and finding the right words for them stands out.
Anoki does spoken word, not rap. Somewhere between indie, soul and pop, the songwriter positions himself with a softly crackling and pleasantly scratchy version of modern German-language poetry that tells of resignation and departure. All is not well, but perhaps it will soon be better.
