Name: Genesis Owusu
Nationality: Ghanaian-Australian
Occupation: Vocalist, songwriter
Current release: Genesis Owusu's new album STRUGGLER is out via Ourness.
Recommendations: Perfect Blue by Satashi Kon and Berserk by Kentaro Muira

If you enjoyed this Genesis Owusu interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, tiktok, and twitter.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I see movies a lot of the time. Or words.

When my eyes are closed. I direct a music video to the song, whether it has a music video or not, or the scene in the film that the song is soundtracking. If I listen with my eyes open, then life becomes the movie. Only if the song is impactful enough.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

First steps were wobbly. Trash, more accurately. As was everyone else’s probably, but like everything else, you learn through experience, doing and observing.

I think you can technically learn everything you need to be an artist, but it is harder to learn something more intrinsic, like taste, or how to create original ideas.

But there’s also a niche for everyone, so one person’s terrible taste is another person’s Mona Lisa.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

I feel like I started making music that genuinely meant something to me around age 16. It’s when I figured out music as a real language and tool for self-expression. It was very pure. An “only speak when I had something to say” type of thing, so I would maybe make two or so songs a year.

What’s changed nowadays is that it’s become a career, so I have to find balance to keep that purity and also make enough money from it to live.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

Just to do something I haven’t done before. Create a new feeling and experience for myself, and by extension, for others. Whether it’s fun or extremely uncomfortable. And to say something.

I’m motivated by the fear that if I don’t get these things out of my body, I will eventually explode.

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

Definitely discovered, or re-discovered. Everything’s been done, but that’s ok. You can make it your own. What I really like to do is reinterpret ideas, or rather, translate them.

I like to look at an idea that I saw in a TV show or a painting that moved me, and figure out how to translate those feelings into music. Musical Duolingo.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

My first impression is feeling. I was feeling this emotion or idea at the time of creation, how accurately did I get that across in the music? That’s generally how I critique my own work.

I hate defining my work. I feel like sometimes the fastest way to lay an idea to rest is to define it. “It means this, end of story.”

When it’s free and ambiguous then my definition means as much or as little as your definition, and everyone’s perspective can add to the value of the work without it being right or wrong. Then the story never ends.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

In the space between making my first album and making my second album, I probably listened to the least amount of music that I’d ever listened to in my life. It got to a point where it felt like a distraction.

The silence, or rather the noise of the world, became a lot more grounding, and a lot more inspiring in that time.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

I like them all. Smashed together. Everything, everywhere, all at once.

I like when it feels jarring and smooth and sexy and monstrous. That’s when I feel like the music is being honest to the experience of the world around us.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

My new album, STRUGGLER, is my second album. There’s the old phrase that you get your whole life to write your first album, and only a year or two to write your second, which I relate to a lot.

I felt like I poured my whole life into that first album, then experienced COVID and some touring, and it was time to write album #2. So I had to draw from somewhere other than what I was used to for inspiration. I wasn’t feeling inspired by music so I searched elsewhere, in books and plays and other things.

This ended up taking me back to my storytelling roots. I used to write short stories as a kid. I wrote this story about a roach, who runs, and runs, and runs, and runs, trying not to get stepped on by God. As it runs for its survival, it begins to wonder what the point is. How do I find the point? Is there a point? Oh God, what if there’s not? What do I do then? Maybe I can make my own point. Or maybe I don’t need a point at all.

STRUGGLER became the soundtrack for this story.

Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

Scientific insights, no. I like everything I make to be an experiment otherwise I get a little sad about it.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

The way I make music and the way I live life are similar in that they are both chaotic and rarely thought about more than a week in advance.

You could probably learn about life by understanding music, but I generally tend to learn about music the more I figure out life.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

You can put a lot of yourself in every act. There’s probably a barrier of entry for everything though, where you need to master the rules and basics of that act before you can really individualise it, and the difficulty of that process would vary from task to task.

I could probably get to the point where I could make a great cup of coffee before I could make a great song, and I could probably make a great song before I could make a great marble statue.

In that same thought though, I feel like if someone was masterful enough, maybe they could express their deep sadness or joy through a cup of coffee. I could probably express that in a song a bit easier though.

Every time I listen to 'Albedo' by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

I remember being in a squashed taxi with my family, driving up a long and barren Ghanaian road. “A Bad Note” by Outkast came up on my iPod Classic. The song is essentially their take on Maggot Brain by Funkadelic.



I was forcibly yanked through the cracks of the carseat ass-first, into a void. It’s almost 9-minute runtime felt like hours. I was directing a movie again, but I was in the movie this time. I was in a new world. Scary and jagged and very uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember the movie anymore, but I remembered it for a long time. I have it written down somewhere. It’s been my favourite song ever since.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

When I think about the future I don’t think of music. But I hope to see the power from art in the hands of the artists that create it, instead of everyone else.