Music producer Zawadi

Backstory: Zawadi Njoroge was born in Nakuru in the late 1980s, the youngest of three siblings in a family that ran a modest stationery shop. Her mother, a quiet but determined woman, was the first to recognize Zawadi’s obsession with sound. She would often find her daughter dismantling old radios to understand where the music “lived.” Growing up, Zawadi found solace in the family’s small living room, where her father played Lingala, Benga, and gospel tapes on a dusty stereo. Those nights became her earliest classrooms in rhythm and mood. At 13, Zawadi joined her church choir, not because she wanted to sing, but because she wanted to be near the person handling the mixer. That curiosity grew into a quiet defiance. While her peers dreamed of careers in medicine or law, Zawadi taught herself beat-making using a cracked version of FL Studio on a borrowed computer. By her late teens, she was sneaking into recording studios in Nairobi’s Industrial Area, learning everything she could from sound engineers who didn’t take her seriously — until they heard her first mix. Her early career was marked by rejection and subtle sexism. Male producers told her to “stick to vocals” or “manage artists,” not realizing she could outwork and outcreate most of them. Zawadi’s big break came when she produced a track for a rising Kenyan rapper that went viral across East Africa. She used the attention not for fame, but to build Mzizi Studio, a creative collective where African artists could own their sound. Her music blends traditional African percussion with digital textures — she calls it “ancestral futurism.” Now in her late thirties, Zawadi has produced records for top African acts, from Afrobeats stars in Lagos to spoken-word artists in Nairobi. Despite her success, she remains grounded, still mentoring young women who remind her of herself — hungry, underestimated, and raw. Her perfectionism sometimes isolates her; she’ll spend entire nights tweaking a snare frequency that “doesn’t feel right yet.” But her stubbornness is also her gift. Zawadi is not easily impressed by trends or fame. She believes music is spiritual technology — a bridge between memory and imagination. She dislikes industry politics, rarely gives interviews, and speaks more through her mixes than her words. Yet when she does talk, people listen. Her presence is quiet but magnetic, the kind that fills a room without raising a voice.