KUKII, the Egyptian singer redefining eternal genres: “Ten centuries of music collide”
It’s an audacious act of creative fortitude in the arts to abandon an acclaimed project and seek renewal at the peak of success, but a headstrong honouring of restless, artistic intuition has always guided KUKII.
Since 2015, Yasmine Dubois has been cutting acclaimed experimental electronica for the likes of Warp Records and playing shows as prestigious as the Barbican Centre under the Lafawndah moniker. Yet, a calling to pursue a deeper plumbing of heritage came calling personally as well as creatively.
Born to an Egyptian-Iranian family and growing up between Tehran and Paris, a career crossing locales as disparate as London, Los Angeles, and Mexico City has now found a home in Cairo, a city that first seriously beckoned off the back of a Boiler Room live show during the Masāfāt event.
But Egypt’s pull ran deeper. A fascination with a slice of her identity compelled Dubois to keep returning to the country’s capital, unlocking a helping of being and lineage that had remained remote and mysterious for much of her life. Armed with memories of meeting her aunt Kukii as a two-year-old, the faint recollections of her childhood experiences began to colour the sketches and demos crafted in the string of rented studios during her frequent stays in Cairo. Having labelled her folder of new music with her aunt’s name, Dubois had found her reinvention.
Dropped in March this year, the Rare Baby EP mines a captivating sonic course that soaks up Egyptian street music while also imbued with the spiky angst of KUKII’s rock-obsessed teen years—a beguiling clash of contemporary dynamism and nostalgia-tinged plunder. Spiritually haphazard, Rest Baby darts between percussive heavy bounce informed by the city’s mahraganat styles and the grunge attacks from her adolescent love of Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins. Shaped by producer Cecile Believe, KUKII conjures an ethereal electronica charged with punk edge and Cairo’s bustling urban soundscape.
While anchored with a laser focus and taut energy, the record captures a hectic fizz across its six cuts, with KUKII capturing Egypt’s social bustle while also illustrating her own alchemic shifts away from Lafawndah towards a new creative vista she has unveiled, with all its human messiness and uncertainty intact.
The city’s sedimented cultural history also guides the volatile character of the EP, the residue of political turmoil and social upheaval hanging in the air that KUKII has so deftly excavated. “…a day spent walking the streets of the city, from sunrise to sunset, is a musical exploration of ten centuries of music that clash and intermingle,” she told PAM in April, remarking, “The rhythmic richness, the wealth of genres, the temporalities of Cairo are infinite, no need for Spotify here.”
Dubois has stated that Lafawndah is finished for good. Having found a creative and personal home in Cairo, KUKII seems to have found a geographical muse that will inspire her personalised electronic music for some time yet. However, always one for “staying wary of creative comfort”, the KUKII rebirth forged by Egypt’s cutting-edge musical underground may just serve as the beginning to a new journey in her storied path as an artist.
