anaïs
London-based Franco-Senegalese singer/songwriter anaïs has unveiled the beautiful video for her debut track Nina. It was shot on the island of Gorée in Senegal (where her family are from) by acclaimed photographer / director Campbell Addy. Watch it below!


Speaking about the single anaïs said,
I wrote Nina at a time when I felt that a lot of the music I was hearing wasn’t reflecting what was happening in the world around me, I felt that fear had become a silencing agent and that something needed to be said. Nina Simone, who to me represents true freedom and fearlessness in art, inspired me to “say what you won’t” and to overcome the fears that inhibit me so that I can be a voice for freedom through my music.  We shot the film in Senegal, which is where part of my heritage is from and we wanted to highlight real life characters who reflect in their own way what freedom means to me.
The track Nina is taken from her debut EP Before Zero (inspired by the abstract minimalism of the Zero art movement of the late 1950s).  Her music – all written and produced by anais herself - balances a fine line between art and commerce. It’s the stories of a being young black woman in 2018 who has travelled extensively in her relatively short life and has often not had a place to call home. But while its socially and politically astute and intended to open a conversation, it’s also beautifully, compellingly accessible.

Anaïs was born in in Toulouse, France but of Senegalese and Italian origin. When her parents split and her father returned to Dakar, anaïs and her mother moved to Dublin. Not speaking any English she remained silent at school for 7 months until she had perfected the language without any French accent. Only two years later she was sent to spend time in Dakar with her father where again she couldn’t speak the language. Her mother moved again to Oakland, California where her encounter with African-American culture finally led Anais to feel she belonged.

She attended NYU where she studied at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, where her contemporaries and friends were Arca, Kehlani and Gallant - before moving to London in Spring 2015 and to start making both connections and music.