Enthralling colour coordination, ease-laden camera movements and storytelling that leave you wishing to be a part of her aloof, breezy world of Black joy, calm, and pleasure. These are the common signifiers that let you know you’ve been drawn into the orbit of director and photographer, Dalia Dias.

 Born in London to a Nigerian mother and an Egyptian father, Dias started her artistic journey when she first picked up her mother’s small Canon Power Shot camera at the age of 15. A year later, she eventually upgraded to a DSLR camera and started shooting videos as she moved back to London after secondary school in Nigeria. “I spent so much time learning all the functions and how to shoot manually,” she recalls. I really wanted to be an expert, not just a shooter.”

Little did she know at the time that a future of visually helming some of the most culturally relevant video moments in Afropop and hip-hop (both in the UK and US) awaited her. Today, her portfolio boasts of visually bringing to life the infamous 2019 video “Twerk” by City Girls and Cardi B as well as songs by Young Thug, Alpha P, Buju Banton, Reekado Banks, Quavo, Stormzy, Lil Uzi Vert, Wizkid and many more. 

More recently, Dalia added the video for Davido’s “La La” featuring Ckay off his 2020 A Better Time album to her director credits. In a fashion not unusual to her work, the star-studded video sent fingers agog with excitement on social media and was welcomed with rave reviews as it brilliantly tapped into one of Nigeria’s strongest unifiers— the love for football.

In conversation with AMAKA, we learn more about Dalia Dias’ beginnings, inspirations, what she believes to be a successful music video, and her contributions to the global pop-culture landscape.

In terms of your creativity, what was the transition from living between the UK and Nigeria like for you?

Going to school in Nigeria was such an interesting experience. If you asked me at the time, I would have said it was crazy. But asking me now, I am thankful and grateful. It definitely shaped me into who I am today and I wouldn’t change that experience for anything, even though that was not my feeling at the time! 

Going back to London made me realise that if it weren’t for all the immigrants that made up the city’s diverse and multi-ethnic landscape, there wouldn’t really be much of a ‘culture’— talk less of one worth diving into and exploring or to even draw inspiration from. That wasn’t something that I ever overlooked, because of my own background, being half Nigerian and half Egyptian. But I appreciated it even more when I got back from Nigeria because I realised that it was us, people like myself and my African family, that make London such a creative, bright, colourful and beautiful place to be in. 

At what point in your journey did you realize that a career in visual arts was the path you were going to take?

After getting my first camera, it didn’t take long for me to realize it would become my career path. I was also studying media and film production at the time, so I dived straight into it and have never looked back since. I’m grateful to have been so sharp at a young age to discover my passion and stick to it. It was challenging getting support from my parents at times, but ultimately they just wanted me to go to university and they didn’t want to see me struggle. I had to really prove to my mother that I wasn’t going to be a ‘starving artist’, as many would say is what people in the creative field can become. But I was determined that this would be my career and not just a hobby or something I do for free. 

What did your training comprise? Did you take courses? Or did you begin learning on YouTube?

I studied media in school, film production in college, and design and photography at university. I’ve always been educated and also taught myself on most things surrounding the visual arts. I read about it daily. I research super heavy and I never stop looking at images, even if it’s just scrolling through Instagram. I started my career 11 years ago, so learning on YouTube wasn’t really the route to take at the time— not for me anyway. Practice and real life experience have been the best teacher for me; better than any lecturer I’ve ever had.

What was it about the music industry that inspired you?

Music is a big passion of mine. I even tried to get into producing beats and DJing at one point. I also studied it in school. So with that level of love for music and the same for visuals, it made sense to combine the two and display my talent that way.

Do you recall the first music video you ever directed?

I honestly can’t even remember, I’d need to go through the archives to give an accurate answer. But one of my super early music videos was High Roller by Teezee & Boj of DRB Lasgidi, which we shot in London.  

My friend Toni Tone connected me with Daps. I actually reached out to assist him initially to just learn and shadow him on set. From there, we started collaborating and working on more projects, and after some time I started creative directing some of his videos. A few of the first shoots we did together were for Wizkid and Stormzy. Those videos changed a lot for me. We would come up with concepts and stories, attack ideas, challenge what makes sense, what doesn’t make sense, etc. All in all being able to work with such a visionary like Daps has definitely made me a stronger creative and director. He’s also been a great mentor to me and he’s put me on to some of my biggest projects to date. For that I’m eternally grateful.

From the days of DVDs and MTV, the culture around music videos is shifting continuously. Today we have YouTube numbers contributing significantly to charts like Billboard and the UK’s Official Charts. Do you think this has affected the quality of videos either positively or negatively?

I think nowadays people will do whatever it takes to create a video that is talked about and shared, and that’s both from the artist and directors’ perspective. Everyone wants to rack up numbers and there’s nothing wrong with that but to me personally, it doesn’t necessarily define success. There’s some incredible music videos out there that don’t have that many views, and that shouldn’t take away from the art, time and effort that was put into it.   

In light of that, what do you think counts as a successful music video these days?

For me, it’s usually the audience reactions. I love reading the comments on YouTube and seeing how happy, or emotional, or excited people are. The best comments are the ones where people are breaking down the concept and director's thought process and it’s almost like they’ve seen the treatment because they’ve nailed it to a T. That’s when I know I’ve done a good job at bringing an idea to life, from paper to screen, because the viewer is invested in the story and understands it.  

Your work has mostly centred hip-hop both in the UK and US. What caused you to try your hand with Afropop?

I am an African before anything else, so I guess it was just a matter of timing. Representation of who I am, and our identity are also very important to me. 

Through your work with music videos, you’ve contributed greatly to global pop culture from the UK, to the US, and back to Nigeria. How has that been like for you in terms of navigating those different cultural and creative landscapes?

It’s a dream to be able to work across various continents and take in different cultures. For me, I find it easy because of how diverse, well-travelled and open-minded I am as a person. That being said, it's been great for the most part and also interesting at times because people work differently in different territories, so it’s something that I’ve now gotten used to and embraced. 

Your video for “La La” by Davido and Clay was released earlier. The video concept is a breath of fresh air and the colours are quite striking. How did that collaboration develop? Did you come up with the ideas and pitch it to the team or did they come up with it? Did you develop it together?

They had an open brief so as usual, I came up with an idea and pitched it to the client/team. I actually presented two ideas for the “La La” video at first, one of them which would have probably been easier to achieve, and secondly the football concept which is out now. I was taken by surprise when Davido and his team said they wanted to go ahead with the football idea, simply because it’s such a grand scale idea and it was just different. But they liked the fact that it was unique, unexpected and completely out of the box. It was an intense shoot to plan but we pulled it off and we had so much fun working with everyone involved. The feedback has been super amazing and I’m happy and humbled by everyone’s positive reaction to it.  

There is a new Pan-Africanist movement of sorts springing up in global music currently where artists of African descent from different corners of the globe are collaborating. What would you say is the importance of visual storytelling in that light?

 Everyone has a story to tell and each story is different. There’s no one-size-fits all for Africa and Africans, so we all need to celebrate our differences by collaborating and creating media that can be shared and experienced by different groups of people. That’s what visual storytelling is all about.