Brooklyn

Check Milli Jam – presenter of our weekly Sunday night radio show – getting up close and personal with our Guest on the most recent edition of the programme, Makazo Mwangala, better known as ‘Brooklyn’ – half of a rapping duo BK – Brooklyn and Kimorah – out of Windhoek, Namibia. The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild Kaufela, airs on Zambezi 107.7 fm Livingstone’s leading local radio station every Sunday from 20.30 – 21.30. Streaming live on the internet too, it’s a great mixture of international and African music. Between tracks we chat to our Guest and later in the show give away a dinner for two at the lodge to the first person to text us telling us who’s the artist on our ‘oldie of the week’. On Brooklyn’s show the track was by the late great Zambian artist Smokey Haangala and we were inundated with text messages all giving us the right answer. Great stuff!

Brooklyn told listeners that she’s a third year journalism student at the Polytechnic of Namibia in Windhoek. She and her fellow student Kimorah came together in 2010 and have so far released seven singles and several videos. The girls play live at events like fashion shows, pageants and CD launches. Brooklyn is a Zambian but has been mostly brought up in Namibia where her dad is a meteorologist with Meteorological Services in Namibia. “Does he present the weather on TV?” I wondered. “No” replied Brooklyn “he writes what the presenters read on TV”. Did she miss Zambia? We wondered. She did, especially her family here. “Married?” Wondered George (predictably). “Very taken!” Was the reply. “Pass George the tissues!” I told Milli Jam.

We featured two of BK’s tracks – ‘Get Ready’ and ‘I Can’. Brooklyn explained that the single is called ‘Get Ready’ because the girls are telling everybody to be ready for them because they want to show their versatility and want to do something in a different style. ‘I Can’ is about “showing all the haters and people who want to bring us down that we can accomplish things.” She said. Brooklyn has a great voice, her inspiration is Nicki Minaj she told us, while Kimorah is inspired by Brandy. The girls wrote both songs themselves and the production on the recording is excellent.  Other tracks we featured on the show were from Petersen and Manas locally, and internationally from Justice Collective, Dido featuring Kendrick Lamar, Tom Odell and The One Pound Fish Man (!)

Brooklyn told us that both she and Kimorah have jobs to help pay for their college education. Brooklyn is in charge of social media for a marketing company while her friend works for the ‘Namibian’ newspaper in that country. They had first met at the Polytechnic of Namibia where they were in the same class. “We just clicked. She liked what I liked. She listened to the same music as me and that’s where Kimorah told me about her interests in music,” said Brooklyn, adding that from there they got along like a house on fire. Asked when the girls were coming to perform in Zambia, Brooklyn said “keep your eyes wide open, there’s something in the works!”

Milli Jam closed with the usual question to our Guest – where would she like to be and what would she like to be doing ten years from now? Brooklyn replied that she would like to be “sitting on a large stack of money” and to have trillions of fans in an international market. “Get in!” We said.

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