Spirits @ work: Nkisi is an ambassador of new world music and a co-founder of NON, the politically charged collective championing cutting-edge sounds from Africa and the African diaspora. Raised in Belgium and currently based in London, Melika Ngombe Kolongo has been dubbed "a synthesist of new hardcore sounds."
“Nkisi” is the Congolese word for a sculpture created for the investigation and healing of chronic problems and believed to contain spiritual powers. As courageous meditations on visible and invisible power structures, both Kolongo’s DJ project and NON collective metaphorically carry out equivalent reflective, restorative forces. A regular at South London's roaming Endless party, she spins everything from African club tracks to gabber and doomcore, reshaping standard-issue club narratives in the image of their new, stateless tastemakers. Her own productions—electrified, irreverent—deliver hit after body hit, exploding with boots-on-the-ground ballistic percussion and teeming with global influences. As the driving force behind NON Worldwide along with Angel-Ho and Chino Amobi, Nkisi aims to disrupt the postcolonial axis of power in South Africa, the UK and the US—a lofty mission carried out at the breakneck speed of her best mixes—and to trigger and question collective memories.