Started in February 2022 OK Naledi is the newest project for Ottawa Musician Naledi Sunstrum. Teaching themselves how to play guitar, Sunstrum originally produced acoustic folk music, under their English name, Kimberly Sunstrum.
Sunstrum moved to Canada in 2004 after a childhood of moving around and living in various countries. Their father is from Canada and their mother is from Botswana, so they grew up influenced by both cultures, as well as others they had experienced during their travelling.
When Sunstrum moved to Ottawa, their self-taught, soul-styled guitar playing landed them in the acoustic folk scene.
“Prior to the [COVID-19] pandemic, the folk genre seemed to have an endless amount of local opportunities catered to it,” Sunstrum said.
However, during the pandemic, Sunstrum began reflecting on their music and its meaning. They realized it lacked a crucial part of their identity, their Botswana heritage. A few racially hateful experiences throughout the pandemic sent Sunstrum into contemplation: Give up music, or pursue it with complete transparency.
They ultimately decided they wanted to “take the power out of [those] awful words”, and building up a platform based on their unfiltered, whole self was both an act of resilience and reclamation.
Sunstrum discussed the experience of being an immigrant child in the West.
“Your parents want you to assimilate, in a protective sense, but there are some adverse affects [of this],” said Suntrum.
Among them, they said there was a lot of misinformation about where they’re from, and a bit of a disconnect from their heritage since they were moving around so much.
Sunstrum said that their experience of Canada now is different from the early 2000s when information about racial microaggression was very limited, and conversations about race were less constructive.
In the early 2000s, many people were not informed of these common and cultural subtle acts of exclusion. Sunstrum explained that when they moved to Canada in the early 2000s, they experienced multiple indignities on account of their race.
They recounted remembering being followed in a store by an employee, assuming they would attempt to shoplift. They were made to feel othered within Canada because of different racial characteristics, something many marginalized people experience in predominantly white, heteronormative cultures.
“Canada gave me a new factor to overcome,” Sunstrum said about their experience of racialization after moving here. “But Canada was also the first country where I could be queer.”
Sunstrum said that with its challenges, moving to Canada opened a door for them to express a new part of their identity which they had to keep hidden in Botswana: queerness. When Sunstorm lived in Botswana, it was illegal to be gay. Identifying as LGBTQIA+ has since been decriminalized in 2019, however, “It’s still a process, I still don’t feel comfortable with PDA in Botswana.”
“It’s a weird juxtaposition. In Botswana, my race didn’t differentiate me, but I had to hide my sexuality. In Canada, I can be queer, but I cannot hide the colour of my skin,” they continued.
OK Naledi is a project born of this incongruence, in response to the fact that there is seemingly no place where every facet of identity is accepted. In February of 2022, Sunstrum dropped their English name and began going by OK Naledi, taking what they learned from their years working with indie folk, but returning to their roots of afro-house and Kwaito music.
“There was a point I realized I wasn’t sitting at the tables I thought I was… And I was doing myself a disservice by hiding my authentic self,” said Sunstrum.
Afro-house is a subgenre of house music with roots predominantly in South Africa. Faster than traditional house music, afro-house also features polyrhythms programmed to sound like traditional African instruments: Bongoes, congas, claves and others.
Sunstrum defines their sound as “traditional sub-saharan clean guitar lines, classic deep bass, and that iconic, movement-inspiring afro beat.”
BONES is an amalgamation of Sunstrum’s life experiences, intertwined with key aspects of their identity and occasionally combined with their indie folk influences.
The album follows Sunstrum growing up in the desert of Botswana, and centres on their Black, Queer experiences.
Set to release March 3rd, Ok Naledi is hosting an album release show at the NAC on March 4th.
OK Naledi released INtrLD leading up to the release of BONES on March 3rd; this is a song centred on Sunstrum’s experience of falling in love with a woman when homosexuality was illegal in Botswana.
The Train, which will be featured on BONES, is about the necessity of uprising over Black police brutality in the wake of the George Floyd riots in the United States.
BONES also includes a song entitled Confessions, which details the story of their parents falling in love in Botswana during the apartheid. Confessions was a reworking of a folk song Sunstrum had written under their English name, Kimberly. They wanted to include it in this upcoming album since its content was personal to them. An extra verse was added to the end of the song to commemorate their mom’s passing in 2019, and to honour their Motswana heritage.
BONES thus reflects the deepest parts of OK Naledi, highlighting themes of authenticity, relating to identity, and growing and changing with them. BONES tells a story that relates to the personal stories of marginalized individuals, speaking to them through shared experience and uniting those who have faced hardship because of their identity.
Moving forward, OK Naledi has plans to appear in a summer festival and might go on an end-summer Ontario tour. Their main goal is to push BONES in the Ottawa scene, seeing as this is their first album as OK Naledi.
“I did not see a lot of people like me in the music industry, and ultimately I realized being my authentic self would provide that [for others],” they said.