KANGA (Performer)

Kanga Duchamp is a musician and a producer from Los Angeles, CA. The official brand name of the artist is the capitalized name "KANGA". One may also find the artist on several social media instances under the site identifier KANGAKult, but this does not appear - for now - to be intended as a brand name, it is more probably a way to solve the problem that the name "Kanga" was already occupied for other purposes. Meanwhile, the addition of the "Kult" word does aptly express the artist's oriëntation towards Underground music (see next).
==Genre==
The musical genre can be adequately described as Underground-Pop.., a subcategory of Underground music. Others however call it "Dark Electronic Music", and in the interviews and reviews listed below one will find quite a variety of alternative indications, such as Industrial Rock, ElectroPop, Dream Pop, Post-Punk, Electro-Industrial, Dark Wave, FuturePop, SynthPop - which is a good indication how KANGA manages to escape classification. Duchamp works as an independent, but she has also been working with others on film soundtracks, even performed together with the famous artist Gary Numan, who operated much in the same Underground / Dark Wave genres and does not eschew pop influences either. Gary Numan and Nine Inch Nails are among the explicitly named influences
In an interview with Cold Waves (see also the resources list) she said: "For me, pop music means that it's accessible... and it doesn't really matter what it's about... [But] where is the anger of pop music? ... Why can't we have accessible forms of [pop music] art? [For me] its real subject matter is: there's real darkness behind it. [For many,] it's almost like alienating, and I don't feel like darkness should be alienating, because it's probably the biggest thing that we all have in common. [So] making pop music that is 'fucked up' is like a good way [to bring that message]."
The industrial undertones in the music were toned down somewhat in the Eternal Daughter release (2019), and also in the more recent, surprisingly catchy song Magnolia which appeared in 2022, which probably means a more danceable new CD may be following. But no doubt the strong underground touch won't disappear any time soon.
==Lyrics, philosophy==
Lyric-wise there is a very distinctive and for some probably disturbing approach. Isaac L. Wheeler, after a concert in 2018, described it as follows: "The lyrics themselves are concerned with sexual objectification, disenfranchisement, exploitation, and the angst born from these deep-seated themes. Everything about her approach to music and performance has a welcome subversive quality to it." The songs are always somewhat dark or mysterious, which offers a challenging contrast with the pop-qualities in all Kanga's music.
Lyrics such as "Pull it apart, wish it away / Let me put my body to it" or "I like your viciousness / it gets under my skin" give a strong impression of dealing with "the Real" (to use Jacques Lacan phraseology) rather than ample drama. Such lyrics are destined to those who can bear the weight of the real, or who at least try it. There is always a sense of digging into the deeper layers of human existence and the human psyche, which can be an obscure place to be but nevertheless a place on earth - even if 'underground'. Doubt, pain, confusion and intrigue are part of life, and life must be embraced. It is, as philosophers said about melancholy, essentially a positive state of mind, because it is a mode of keeping in touch with those parts of our inner life to which we would otherwise be less attentive.
Reading Kanga's lyrics, one - and certainly a French citizen - would almost inevitably be reminded of the French artist Mylène Farmer, who has also been making "melancholic pop" but, likewise, has never been passively drowning in a dark place, as she demonstrated famously when she countered her accusers by releasing the joyful pop song Je t'aime mélancolie ("I love you, melancholy"). Also phrases like "I wanna believe so bad / It's gonna put me in a body bag" in Kanga's song Godless offer a sense of loss which reminds again of Mylène Farmer, who expressed her sense of tragic realism perhaps most famously in her album and song Désenchantée, about the disenchanted generation - yet unmistakably a pop song.
==Personal life==
The artists real name is Lillian Kanga Duchamp, but maybe not much more need to be said about an artist who clearly - for now at least - prefers a certain obscurity or cultism. Maybe we can add that one can find religious references in several songs, in a smart and interesting way - which the artist explained when asked about the Godless song: "I felt like I got my Masochistic Catholicism to dance, which made me feel accomplished"
==Discography==
* 2016: Kanga, Negative Gain Productions. (Song list + lyrics)
* 2019: Eternal Daughter, Self-Released album in 2019; ArtOfFact release in 2020. (Song list + lyrics)
==Social & music media==
Social media: Official Site, Facebook, Twitter,Instagram, TikTok
Music media: Apple music, YouTube, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, Discogs, Spotify
PS. For music media, no links to Amazon and Deezer (and others) are offered here, because it is not really possible on those sites to properly filter out music from a very different 'kanga' that has nothing to do with Kanga Duchamp.
Some artistic video songs (see also the Kanga website) :
* 2020 song: Moscow. Quote: "a gorgeously filmed romantic daydream". Directed by MJ Bernier.
* 2020 song: Godless. Quote:Venturing out to the unforgiving desert to film this continuous shot in the heart of darkness was an adventure greater than anything I could have dreamed of.
==Resources==
Album reviews and interviews:
* 2016-?? Interview for Cold Waves (audio podcast). The podcast also includes 3 songs: Vital Signs, Tension, Metal (Gary Numan Cover).
* 2016-09 Kanga InterView: Unapologetically Pop
* 2018-08 (video interview) Kanga interview by Michael Nagy
* 2019-09 KANGA, "ETERNAL DAUGHTER"
* 2020-10 Watch KANGA's gloomy, romantic video for "Godless"
* 2021-03 Gary Numan-approved Kanga reissues Eternal Daughter with new bonus tracks via Artoffact Records
* 2021-02 Dark Electronic Music Artist KANGA...
* 2021-03 An Interview with Kanga
* 2021-03 Gary Numan-approved, NIN-inspired dark pop chanteuse aims for dance floor catharsis
* 2021-04 KANGA: You & I Will Never Die
* 2022-?? Fifteen Questions Interview with Kanga: Manageable Violence
* 2022-04 KANGA brings her dark pop to Roadburn 2022
* 2023-01 Darkwave Artist Kanga Embraces the Feminine and Romantic in Her Video for “Magnolia”
Concert reviews:
* 2017-05 Cubanate "Brutalism 2017" (multiple artists, including Kanga)
* 2018-09 Beneath Red Light – Glitch Mode Decode Tour (multiple artists, including Kanga
Mentions on Wikipedia:
Kanga is mentioned on the 3Teeth page as a contributor on their remix album in 2014. See also the Shutdown.exe (album) page.
Category:Musicians
Category:Producers