Cape Town Artist Not Afraid to Step On Toes


Céline Tshika asserts her power in her latest song "Don't Belong to You"

Céline Tshika has released her 4th track “Don’t Belong to You”, a fierce, courageous song asserting the power of being a woman in 2016. The singer-songwriter-producer puts thought and emotion into every song she creates, and now proves that nothing close to her heart can escape her art.

The Congolese-born, South-African-raised artist began writing poetry at the age of 14. Soon, her passion for songwriting was born, and she wrote and recorded her first song using her home computer at age 17. After trying and failing to find producers who “got her,” she decided to teach herself to produce music, and now has two of her songs playing on radio stations around South Africa. This track was her first to include other voices; two National Choir singers (Brian Joubert and Mohau Thamahane-Rothemburg) join her in the last two choruses, adding power to the overall song, and local rapper Avu replaces the bridge in a remix version.

 

“My strength and independence is important to me,” explains Céline, “and I have a strong passion for equality.” She explores the journey to completing ‘Don’t Belong to You’:

 

I first thought of the song after I realised that cat-calling had become a daily experience. This is something girls are taught to ‘expect’ from puberty. But, I don’t believe it’s something we have to endure, and I believe it’s merely a symptom of a much bigger problem of entitlement. The line “I don’t belong to you” just came to me when I was exasperated after being followed into a mall, and the rest of the song pretty much wrote itself. I knew I wanted it to be catchy, I wanted it to be something people could jam to, because it is, in essence, a celebration of our emancipation from established norms. I made the song from scratch, put all of my sass into it and I hope it can empower women and open everyone’s eyes to what is considered ‘normal.’

 

“Feminism has become somewhat of a swearword lately,” she expresses, “and I’ll never bow down to that. We’re so worried about scaring people off because we dare to believe in equality, and it needs to stop.”

 

Céline is inspired by local rapper Dope Saint Jude and gained even more confidence as a female producer from listening to her tracks. She believes that injecting Feminism into a male-dominant industry will surely clear the way for young women to know that they, too, can be women who ‘have it all’; women who are not dictated by society’s rules.

 

And, more importantly, women who know that their bodies belong to no one else but themselves.

 

The song can be streamed at:

www.soundcloud.com/celine-tshika/don’t-belong-to-you

 

October 25, 2016 5:31am ET by Céline Tshika   Comments (0)

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