For those who missed his three previous albums, Toronto also has its Michael Kiwanuka, a folk singer with an ashen, embodied voice, whose visceral message is rooted in his Afro-descendant traditions. AHI (pronounced eye) has just released The Light Behind the Sun, an Afro-folk-pop album with soul, Afro-Caribbean and even country-folk influences. It’s all about grainy vocals and acoustic guitar accompaniment, all wrapped up in subtle, relatively unobtrusive arrangements. It’s about autobiographical journeys, personal growth, solidifying community ties, dignity, authenticity, strangeness and origins. To sing her rhyming tales, AHI clearly knows what a melodic hook is, a surge of intensity, an incendiary declaration, a harmonic progression familiar to anyone living in a large Western city (necessarily multicultural), a voice that hits hard and vibrates strongly through its variations. AHI also knows how to invite himself into our intimacy and serve up succulent comfort food. A true hitmaker for mature, consenting adults, he has a huge market to conquer.
