Poet and Songwriter Kata on the Intersectionality of His Music
Joshua Nkhata (Kata) is a young poet who began sharing his poetry on Tiktok a few months ago. After some time, he began experimenting by putting his poetry to music. By doing this, he created a seemingly new genre that has captivated the attention of millions of people online. This poet-turned-songwriter, producer, and so much more has since been using his platform to share about everything from rather silly music about mac and cheese to empowering music about Afro-Textured hair. In an interview with Kata, we spoke about activism, social media, songwriting, and his career’s future.
Click here to listen to Kata’s latest release, Apologizing to Butterflies.
The Gaia Zine: Would you say that you grew up around music?
Kata: I would not say that I grew up in a super musical family. Music was always around but it was never ingrained in anything. I think I came into contact with music the way most kids do. I got really into movies and TV and I was listening to the scores which really inspired me. I’d go watch a play or a musical and see how music works there. Before middle school, I wasn’t really a big music listener. It was in middle school that I started listening to music intentionally. From there, I started listening to jazz and rap and Broadway musicals and hip-hop. I’ve always seen myself as someone who likes a bit of everything. The combinations of so many different types of music is how I learned to love and appreciate music.
TGZ: What kind of music do you listen to now?
Kata: I listen to a ton of music. I listen to a lot of old jazz classics, especially ballad jazz. I love Louie Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. My favorite jazz artist is probably Nat King Cole. I also listen to a lot of indie music. There are tons of great indie artists. I’m a big fan of Dodie. A lot of it is music that I found on TikTok. I dabble in rap. I am still a little bit into musicals. I had a phase, I say that I’m out of it, but once in a while I’ll listen to a musical theater soundtrack.
TGZ: How would you describe the music that you create?
Kata: The perception of my music can be different than how I see my music. The perception of my music I think is this sort of sudo-rap in the sense that it’s like rap but not all of the way. But I wouldn’t quite say that it’s sudo-rap. I think that it is closely related to rap but not the pre-step to rap. It’s like rap but converged onto a different track of poetry and poetic thought. The best thing I could liken it to is how in Ancient Greece they had people play instruments and recite poems. Or how during Shakesprease’s day they had bards who wouldn’t always sing, sometimes just tell a story and just be playing music behind that story. That was sort of the inspiration of it all. These old expressions of music that we sort of lost along the way partly because we tried to make poetry this hyper-professional thing of the elites in the Renisassee Era. I think we lost the idea that poetry was originally for the common people. So if I were to describe my music to people, I would probably be more into describing it as a poem set to music, rather than something that is within the confines of music itself. But, to some extent, I think it is somewhat rap-like and song-like. That’s how I’d answer it.
TGZ: How long have you been writing poetry?
Kata: I was pretty big into poetry. Before I started TikTok I did a lot of activist poetry. Just as I was getting into poetry, George Floyd was killed. So a lot of my getting into poetry was Black-related activist poetry. I found that there is a sort of power in that. As an individual, there is a power to express but I also found that there is also a power to change through poetry and poetic means. And then I sort of began to link that to things like rap. Once you get rid of that bridge that tells you that poetry and rap are so different you realize that they’re really not. Poetry and rap are very similar in their aspects. I had never been a rapper so I wanted to find a place that was what I knew, which was poetry, and what I was going towards, which was rap. My TikToks are sort of where that point lands.
TGZ: Since your work is this mix between poetry and musical aspects, do you always start the process with one or the other?
Kata: With topics that feel heavier for me, they almost always need to start with poetry. When I’m writing lighter stuff like a song about cream cheese, it starts as a song. A lot of my really dense songs did start as very traditional poetry. They start as the kind of poetry that you couldn’t sing to. That’s the case for my current events stuff. That’s the case for Black Boy Joy and the black hair one. Those for me just have to start as poems because a poem is more for myself. So when it’s something so heavy like that, it needs to start with an expression of self. I need to figure out how I feel about this, so I write a poem. Then when I decide that it would be beneficial to show others, I take the poem and make it into a song
TGZ: Once you start to go about making a poem into a song, what does your songwriting process look like?
Kata: It doesn’t even start with me sitting down with a guitar ready to write a song. It all starts with a moment. A moment where I am someplace and look around and think this is poetry, this is music, this is a song. For example, I was in a parking garage saying goodbye to friends that are leaving for college and I realized “this is a poem, I am living and breathing poetry right now.” Another time I was making mac and cheese and didn’t have milk. As I’m putting the cream cheese in the mac and cheese, I think: “Wait a minute. This is a poem.” So when I sit down to write, I take that moment and see if it’s possible to express it. And sometimes it’s not always possible to express it. Sometimes you’ll have a moment that you know is poetic and beautiful but can’t be expressed because it’s too personal or too niche. So when I find an idea that is expressible, I find that the process goes quite quickly for me. Once I track the idea, I mark it down then block out a set time. I almost always write the base lyrics with some lines that I want with general phrasing. So then I take a basic chord structure, decide on a tempo, and then fuse the lyrics into the music. The hardest part is recording for me, because I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I take at least fifteen drafts for every video.
TGZ: What was the production process for your song Apologizing to Dragonflies?
Kata: That was a really hard process. The song came out like eight months after the TikTok because I was working through that process. I did everything for it. It was made with a USB microphone in my basement with a comforter over my head to try to dampen the sound. So I’d under this comforter with my USB microphone, and whenever a plane flew overhead, the microphone picked it up so loudly. You don’t understand how many airplanes fly by until you have to record a song. I think in total it was about 70 takes of vocals and 20 takes of guitar to get it right. I got a take that I liked and then made an electronic track which was also a bit of a struggle. I wanted it to have the feel of the TikTok, a very genuine feel of a person and their guitar talking about this story from their youth. I wanted to keep that general feel, but I knew that I didn’t want the song to just be guitar and vocals. Expanding on that was tricky. In the end, I made a product that I was content with. People seem to like it, so as long as it helps a couple of people, then it was worth it. I’m proud of the process but it was a lengthy one.
TGZ: The music industry has drastically transformed in the past few years because of platforms like TikTok and Instagram, what is your take on the transformation?
Kata: It’s a very different world. As a creator, it’s a little bit strange. In the “olden days” you had to do record deals and shows to get your name out that way, there’s very much an intention of “I’m making music to perform.” Now that’s not necessarily true with social media. When I started making TikToks I never really had the intention to put a song on Spotify or anything like that. It was more of a “let’s share these 60 second videos.” TikTok allows you to explode in a microcosm sense. Like you can explode just in the TikTok sense and not in other senses. I have over 100K followers on Tiktok but I don’t have any other social media with that type of following. TikTok can act as a sort of sheltered environment but I think that holistically, it is very good for the industry because it allows for “consumers-choice.” I think the reason that the late 90s to early 2000s music all sounds the same is because music executives were looking for the same music. Now we’re in a world where you can film 60-second videos in your bedroom and get people to watch them. Music can change. Music can adapt. Music can evolve. So I think that it’s a very good thing for the industry going forward.
TGZ: What has your personal TikTok journey been like?
Kata: I’m very lucky. I did not have to post very many videos before they caught on. I know that for many people that is not the case. I was also able to get steam without a lot of consistency which is strange for the TikTok algorithm. The way the algorithm seems to work is if you are posting enough times, usually your videos will start to grow. I never posted that much. I still don’t post that much. I tried out the app a few times. At first, I tried and thought, “you can’t put poetry into 60 seconds”. The second time I tried was last January, so I put out a slam poem which did okay. I put out a few poetry-related things. A couple of months later I thought, “okay, a lot of TikTok is about music. If I can figure out how to fuse music with the slam poetry I’ve been doing, I might find success.” The first video I remember doing well was a rap to an acoustic guitar about rapping to an acoustic guitar. That’s where I found it. That’s where I found how Tiktok works. So then it became a question of how I can bring in ideas that are really important to me. As I progressed, my videos became less about breaking musical “rules” and more about somehow making a 60-second video deep and connecting with people.
TGZ: What’s next for you?
Kata: I’m studying Creative Writing and Multimedia Design. Essentially the two degrees together are about writing for different mediums. That’s what I’ve been doing with TikTok. I used to be a slam poet and now I’m writing for a different medium. As far as the future goes, writing and sharing stories that I think will help people is something that I’ll always be doing. How I’ll do that is something I don’t think that I’m ever sure of for a moment of the day. Right now, I like the TikTok format for that. I think that I might try doing some more stuff with Spotify. If new things come up, I’m willing to change the way that I write. I’m willing to break all these rules about writing, poetry, and music that people consider unbreakable. I’m willing to break those if it means that I can help people with stories and words. Wherever helping people with words takes me, that’s where the plan is to go.
TGZ: Any final words?
Kata: Words are powerful. They help people connect. That’s the goal of every medium that I’ve talked about: film, music, poetry, TikTok videos. It’s proving the fact that, as harsh as it sounds, we aren’t that unique. And that’s such a beautiful thing. That we can understand each other’s pain and each other’s woe because we have this beautiful sameness. And in that beautiful sameness, we find hope. That’s what art, music, poetry, and TikTok videos are about.
