By Neo Kolane
Local Afro-soul musician and songwriter Victor launched his four track EP titled Freedom in Maseru on Thursday last week under the BlueBox Records label.
The four tracks are Broken Pieces, Freedom, Hae and Right Here.
The vision of BlueBox Records is to establish Basotho musicians in the forefront of Africa as a region, and this first milestone bears testimony to that.
The public relations officer of BlueBox, Thabiso Ralefu, says the record label wish to contribute immensely in growing Lesotho’s tourism and culture industry by producing musicians that can have a solid footprint in Africa.
“We work as BlueBox only, no funding from elsewhere,” Ralefu said.
Born Tṧepiso Rapitsi, the muso said it took about four to five months to work on the project, from production to recording.
Victor affirmed the four-track EP is a fusion of Afro-soul and pop that can be entertaining and empowering people from different walks of life.
The artist, who has been performing professionally for about six years now, revealed that most of the songs were written when he was still at a student at the National University of Lesotho.
He mentioned one of the songs on the EP titled ‘Broken Pieces’ as describing how broken and void of love the world is.
He likened the song to a child asking ‘where is the love, what about the love’, and thinking they are coming into the world with love, but what about love.
Known to have written depressing songs, Victor explained that he wanted to add a groovy element, so that people can jam to the song even though they are sad, which is what in the song titled ‘Freedom’.
He said Freedom is song that is personal to him because it was drawn from personal experience.
“Freedom is about celebrating becoming what one is meant to be, what God created a person to be. “Freedom is about breaking from negativity that the world has brought into our lives, breaking out of that shell and declaring freedom upon your life.
“We face a lot of anxiety, self-esteem issues,” he said.
Over the years Victor has worked and shared stage with some of the names in Southern Africa such as the late Tshepo Tshola and Juvenile.
He also performed at some of the biggest festivals in Lesotho including Lesotho Tourism Festival.
Victor has the graced stages of many corporate functions, been part of numerous concerts with organisations such as Alliance Francaise.
The songs are available on the local digital platform at YMEtunes.
