NORTON  - Our line-up of international artists performing at the SPAR Solo Festival Pakare Paye on 3 December also features Kenya’s music diva Suzanna Owiyo.

^ Suzzana Owiyo

Suzanna’s music is a fusion of traditional western Kenyan music and contemporary rhythms that has taken her to international stages in places like the United Kingdom, France and Spain and several countries across Africa.

Notably, Suzanna was one of the international artists invited to perform at Hyde Park in London at the Nelson Mandela concert in honour of Mandela as he celebrated his 90th birthday. She also acted as a fundraiser for Mandela’s AIDS awareness campaign.

Her debut performance in Zimbabwe is, of course, at our SPAR Solo Festival Pakare Paye exactly two months from now.

Suzanna was introduced to music at a tender age by her grandfather, a prolific nyatiti player.

In 1998 she joined a Nairobi based singer Sally Oyugi as a backing singer and two years later a local band called Bora Bora Sound. She went on to sing in Kisuma where a businessman offered her her first guitar and she returned to Nairobi to study music.

She has worked on an album with Kenyan music producer Tedd Josiah which won her a nomination in the Kora Music Awards for 2002 in the Most Promising Female Artist category. She went on to win this category in the Kisima Awards of 2003.

Suzanna has played in Paris at the Kenyan Festival in 2003 and has represented East Africa at the Pan-African Music Festival in Brazzaville where she sang alongside Youssou N’dour, Koffie Olomide and Rebecca Malope.
suzannaowiyo.net / tukumusik.com