Dawuna

Information

The moniker and middle name of Ugandan-American multi-disciplinary artist Ian Mugerwa, Dawuna appeared virtually out of nowhere with a fully formed vision on his debut album, 'Glass Lit Dreams'. Self-released digitally in the middle of the pandemic and later reissued on vinyl through O__o? Records, the critically acclaimed 'Glass Lit Dreams' reflected its title in an intriguing and vaporous but sensual sound. Narcotic and haunted R&B, coming across like D'Angelo's timeless 'Voodoo' or Prince's more ethereal ballads filtered by the numb paranoia of Tricky's 'Nearly God' or Dean Blunt's haze while gravitating in its own sphere, 'Glass Lit Dreams' revealed a gifted songwriter with an acute attention to detail and sound itself. Following that stellar album with the limited edition 'EP 1', 2024 saw the release of 'Southside Bottoms' on PTP, a mixtape reflecting on the characters and times that occupied his life years ago in Southside Richmond, Virginia. Taking cues from gospel, R&B, minimalism and field recordings to paint an impressionistic and vivid portrait of those youthful days, 'Southside Bottoms' served as a perfect interim for Dawuna’s second album - Naya. Further cementing Dawuna's vision as very much his own, ‘Naya’ presents a bare bones but fully formed concept album about black liberation that draws on a lo-fi but enveloping approach to Funk, Soul, R&B and Hip-Hop that marks Dawuna's indelible place among today's visionaries, such as Tirzah, Klein or Moor Mother and serves as a calling card to the live explorations of the sonic possibilities opened up on record.