For Immediate Release
February 7, 2025
“I want to go back to my home where I rightfully own, land of gold to soothe my soul, where kings and queens sit on their thrones/for so long I’ve been suppressed and consumed by the jaws of sorrows, been baked and burnt in the furnace of nightmares and horrors.”
Kingston, Jamaica—To coincide with February’s designation as Reggae Month and Black History month in Jamaica and the USA, respectively, renowned Jamaican singer/songwriter/musician Hezron Clarke will release his latest single/video “Kuja Nyumbani,” a powerful assertion of African identity, via Hardshield Records/Tad’s Record, on February 7. Hezron, who wrote, produced and performs “Kuja Nyumbani” (Swahili for ‘I want to go home’) calls the song “a complaint to mama Africa, letting her know what happened when her children were taken from her bosom.”
Set to a gentle rhythm featuring traditional African instrumentation including the kalimba (thumb piano), “Kuja Nyumbani’s” lyrics present a harrowing, heartbreaking account of the sub-human conditions Africans endured throughout the transatlantic slave trade: ‘I have a very long tale to tell of 400 years, to you this letter I send, mama Africa, I have much complaints/Hope you can understand the handwriting, we are not allowed the use of a pen/ I know that you are wondering why the ink smells and looks so red, I collected this red ink from the place of where they tortured slaves, for blood is easier to gain than a drop of water for our thirst to quench…Mama Africa the black nation is dying, our children are crying.”
“Kuja Nyumbani” is the sixth single from Hezron’s critically lauded album, Man on a Mission (M.O.A.M). Remarkably, Hezron wrote the song at just 19, decades prior to his arrival in the Motherland. “At 19, I had an Afro-centric, revolutionary mentality, so I wrote a song called “Mama Africa”. Then I migrated to the US from Jamaica and I was around African people who told me to write some lyrics in Swahili so that’s when “Mama Africa” became “Kuja Nyumbani”,” Hezron explained. “Years later I started playing guitar and began working out what I wanted to hear to better construct the song.”
In 2023 Hezron was invited to Africa for the first time by Ghanian promoter Cynthia Raymond who extended the invitation after hearing several songs from Hezron’s Man On A Mission album, especially “Kuja Nyumbani”. “That song was a key factor in my initial trip to Africa, Cynthia cried when she heard it, she was really moved by it; many Africans in the UK and Canada have told me the song deeply touched them, too; they want to go back home but because of their circumstances, they can’t.”
Hezron is a descendant of the Maroons, (who successfully defeated 18th century British colonizers and established a self-governed territory in Jamaica) and Ghana’s Ashanti people. During his 2023 visit to Ghana, Hezron performed five shows as part of his Homecoming tour and connected with his familial roots. “When I’m in Ghana I’m looking at my people, I’m happy to know that I am an African, from the motherland,” Hezron offers. “For years, I was crying out to visit Africa, so I see my time spent there as a manifestation of my desires.” While in Ghana, Hezron met Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene (or king) of Ghana’s Ashanti Empire who gave Hezron the name Kwame Bonsu. “For the king to put his hand on your head and give you an African name is the highest honor a person from the west can receive,” Hezron noted. “Actor Idris Elba and I are the only people from the west who have received that distinction.”
Hezron also visited the Cape Coast Castle one of several slave castles built on Africa’s gold coast (now Ghana). The castle’s horrific underground dungeon was considered the “gate of no return” because it was the final stop for enslaved Africans prior to their being forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean. “I saw the dungeon, there were rooms without light or air, just one opening where a single hose would wash 200 slaves who were held there for three months, they ate, urinated and defecated in the same place, food was thrown through that same opening. Female slaves were raped, some starved to death,” Hezron disclosed. “It was a very intense visit and everything the host told me about what our ancestors went through was in “Kuja Nyumbani”, which I wrote almost 30 years earlier.”
The “Kuja Nyumbani” video, directed by Devon Morris, also drops on February 7. The evocative black and white clip features Hezron and his band performing the song, interspersed with images of slave rebellion leaders Nat Turner and Harriet Tubman, African freedom fighters Steve Biko, Winnie and Nelson Mandela and Julius Malema, American civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, Jamaica’s national heroes Marcus Garvey, Sam Sharpe and Nanny (leader of the Maroons), Rastafarian Deity Halie Selassie I and reggae icons Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, whose music often highlighted African struggles throughout the Diaspora. In the song’s final verse, which Hezron wrote three years ago, he acknowledges the aforementioned various contributions “in fighting oppression and making changes for African people.”
Meanwhile, Hezron continues to promote Man On A Mission (his second album released with Tad’s Record), in Jamaica and internationally. He returned to the motherland in December 2024/January 2025 for the first leg of the Man On A Mission Africa tour, performing seven shows in four nations: Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo. The tour reaches the UK in April, then Hezron will journey to Canada for several dates including the Victoria Ska and Reggae Festival in Edmonton. He’ll return to Africa where he’s slated for the Abissa Festival in Cote D’Ivoire, which attracts an audience upwards of 60,000, and Felabration in Nigeria (at the invitation of Femi Kuti), which celebrates Femi’s father, African music icon, Fela Anikulakpo Kuti. In Ghana, Hezron will establish the Save The Children foundation, named after another track from Man on A Mission, which has reached anthemic status in Jamaica. Before all of that, on February 1, and 6, respectively, Hezron will headline birthday concerts in Kingston commemorating reggae pioneers Dennis Brown and Bob Marley. On February 8, he’ll perform at WAVS Beach Negril (Jamaica) with celebrated singer/bassist Leroy “Heptones” Sibbles.
Whether he’s performing in Africa, Jamaica or anywhere else, each show, like each song Hezron releases, brings him closer to fulfilling his Mission: restoring reggae to the prominent international stature the music so richly merits. “In Africa they highlight Afrobeats and amapiano, they love hip-hop and dancehall but when reggae is played, it governs each and every African in an unbelievable way,” Hezron shares. “Reggae is like the bible there, spiritual, almost like God’s language. They say, ‘reggae is my heart, I can’t live without it’. That’s why Cynthia brought me there; she said, this is the guy with the fire to bring the music back.”
