When I meet Charisse C (Charisse Chikwiri) and Koek Sista (Ulungile Magubane), they're about to go on stage as part of AZEEMA magazine's takeover of the Tate Modern to celebrate Lubaiana Himid's solo exhibition. Both donning Daily Paper blazer dresses, with Charisse C adjoined by a Vivian Lake headpiece and Koek Sista wearing pink gele, I can immediately tell that the music is only one part of their performance. Following in the lineage of cyphers but more in line with the experimentation house as the genre makes room for, Koek Sista (Singer-songwriter/Composer) and Charisse C (DJ/Journalist) are about to perform as The Ascension for the first time of the night. This is the first of three performances of the evening, the next being a branded event with Red Bull Music and then a sold-out party at Fabric.
I begin sitting on the floor by the stage, legs crossed and ready to receive Koek's harmonies and Charisse's DJ picks like I'm listening to a lecture. About 20 minutes into their set, I'm pulled into a group of Black femmes moving in sync in the front and dance along with them like we're long-time friends. Moments like this are at the heart of The Ascension: a form of sonic care work where two Black women honour the sounds of their home and use music to uplift collective energy. Following this busy weekend for the duo, I represented AMAKA in a conversation with Charisse C and Koek Sista about the origins of their collaboration, music as a vehicle of freedom, and their plans for their upcoming homegoing and research trip to South Africa.
Going Underground in Cairo’s Night Club Scene
So how did the two of you meet?
Koek Sista: We met through the internet. Charisse has a radio show called Abantu No Signal, and she had started tagging me because she was playing one of my songs. Then she interviewed one of my best friends who was like, 'This girl named Charisse, she has a radio show. She interviewed me. She seems sweet.'
So yeah, I sent her a message. Basically, just like, 'Hey, I'm moving to England, it would be nice to connect.' I was really quite impressed with what she was doing with her show and trying to bring people into the music and creative culture of southern Africa, which tends to be quite underrepresented in the diasporic conversations and in Europe and in America. Then she interviewed me for a show, and that was cool, and then I did a talk on one of her teaching courses at Central Saint Martin's. Then we decided to meet up, and yeah, I mean, we got along like a house on fire. We had similar ideas of how music feels, what we think it can do, the capacity it has to change people's lives and obviously a very, very deep love for South African electronic music.
Charisse C: The first time we ever performed together was in my boiler room that I did in August. It was an idea that we had both spoken about, and then we were just like, 'Let's try this thing and see how it goes.' At that time, there wasn't a name for it - It was just Charisse and Koek Sista. It went really, really well - all that we had imagined and more. Our first headline show was during a takeover at The Southbank Centre, and 'The Ascension' name was born during that performance. At some point, Koek was like 'Welcome to the ascension', and it just kind of clicked and felt right because it's exactly everything that we do.
The Ascension is about us ascending towards our dreams, towards the way that we envision ourselves in the world that we live in. So that's when The Ascension was born, and then we were like, 'Okay, this is actually a thing.' This Friday, with our three performances, was our first time performing together as The Ascension, and now people are aware that there's this thing that we do together, and it's called The Ascension. So Friday was kind of like putting the nail in.
Koek Sista: I don't actually know how that came to me when I was performing. I was just like, 'Welcome to the ascension.' The way that we tend to build the sets is very much like you bring everyone in, establish the space, [I] bring in whatever is important to me, my ancestors. The message that we're trying to get through and take people up on a trajectory in the same way that Amapiano songs tend to be structured. So, we've been trying to structure our sets in that way where there's a clear journey, and we're going higher, to whatever your apex is, whatever it feels like when you feel free, right? It's trying to embody the freedom of the dance floor in a way that maybe people aren't expecting to do because I think electronic music tends to be quite masculine. So The Ascension is also about Black and Brown women getting into spaces and transforming them in ways that maybe they think we can't.
How would you describe your artistic practices individually?
Koek Sista: I describe it as interdisciplinary, and the focus has always been performance-based. Whether that's within the confines of installation art or music, I like to treat my performances as installations. I think, ironically actually, The Ascension is kind of the coming together of both. So, I'm doing a bit of sound art, but it's me as a musician, as well. I'm also an academic as well, and some of the themes that I research are along capitalism, the Black body and its marginalisation within that system, as well as the place of Black women in society. I like to think about things that are ordinary or seem ordinary but can be purported as epistemologies like hair braiding, and I sort of sublimate whatever I'm researching into some sort of form of music.
Charisse C: So I studied journalism, and I was working as a journalist for a while. My first ever kind of job was writing as a music journalist when I was 16. I struggled a lot with the industry, and I was always being told, essentially, that I was too elaborate and illustrative in the way that I would write. I always describe myself as a storyteller. At the core of everything that I do is always wanting to tell stories, to translate stories. For me, it's always wanting to be the vessel, or the bridge, whenever I can see that there is a need for that.
For a while, I was working for the council in my area as well when they were being regenerated, and then I ended up working as a consultant. I realised that the area was changing and regeneration had been an issue and something I'd been writing about when I was a music journalist too, in terms of how culture is watered as these areas change and venues struggle, and how the life of an area can change. That led up to three years of me launching this platform called the Catford Chronicle, and it was basically a vessel for people in the area to communicate their needs for the area, but through storytelling, which is the way that I know best and for a lot of Black people, African people, Caribbean people, the way that we communicate is through stories.
Eventually, everything that I did, I ended up stopping because it always came back to me wanting to be an artist. So I stopped music journalism because I realised I hated the industry. I hated the way that a lot of things worked, and it always took away from the very thing that I wanted to do, which was to share music with people. So then I kind of fell into DJing by accident, and that's where I found I can share music. I can tell these stories in a way that isn't so rigid and in a way that I can continuously kind of reimagine and evolve. So now I express artistry in terms of DJing as storytelling.
How would you describe your collaborative artistic relationship?
Koek Sista: If we're talking about The Ascension, specifically, I think the main thing we wanted to do there was show that the capacity for our music is much greater than just what you hear. The Tik Tok dances, the same 100 male faces and the visibility - there's this way that sometimes new genres specifically coming out of South Africa have very short life spans because they come out, they're rinsed clean, and then thrown to the wayside. I like the idea that The Ascension is working with the music, not just because it's popular, but because it's as close to this idea of freedom that I can get. South African people are extraordinarily good at coming up with genres, and I don't think that's just something that comes from the sky. I think it's really because we're looking for ways to find a sense of freedom. This kind of live experiment is my kind of way of doing exactly what producers and DJs do, but live and having people be a part of that. Saying that like okay, I'm sure you've heard this song, but what if we did this to it? Or what if you're hearing it with this kind of melody? Or, you know, songs that were made to be instrumental, I'm saying 'Okay, I'm going to add this other element'. I'm just giving new life to things each time.
Charisse is a DJ. She's a storyteller. I'm an interdisciplinary artist, trying to figure out, you know, where I stand as a performer, and that's why The Ascension can go into all kinds of spaces. Like on Friday, we performed at the Tate, which is this large art institution that's solidified in British history. It can sit there. It can [also] sit in the dance community with the Red Bull Music performance that followed. That had more fast-paced kind of people who are into the music specifically. It also fits in a club like Fabric in the wee hours of the morning, in kind of sweaty, hedonistic spaces, because it is what you make it.
You're both going to South Africa soon, right? What are your plans while there?
Koek Sista: Yeah, I'm going home. I think for us, it's probably also going to be good for sourcing music, figuring out what's going on, what producers are making, and not necessarily releasing and how we can find sounds that we can then transform. Maybe record some mixes and collaborate with producers, film visuals, just yeah - whatever comes from being in the source, right? Because the music we work with is in South Africa. Life is just leading us there.
The lack of sunshine and the fast pace of this place can really take much more than you're willing to give, and I think for the chapter we want to take The Ascension into, it would be nice to kind of just hit the reset button. When we come back, and the weather's better, we want to be more serious and also not even just more serious, but like, enjoy what we're doing also. The joy basically is in the process, and this homegoing is part of the process of The Ascension, ascending to wherever we're trying to go.
Charisse C: It's something that's been calling me for a long time, in a way of needing to anchor myself by going to the source, given that my identity is kind of something that straddles between the UK, Zimbabwe and South Africa. I've been in the UK since I was three years old. I was born in Zimbabwe, we moved here, and I haven't had the privilege of spending any significant amount of time outside of the UK. So, there's a lot that I kind of only know through others and not for myself, and that's been bothering me for a long time. The first time I went to South Africa [by myself, as an adult] was [in] 2018, and this will be the second time that I'll be going, and with a lot more understanding of who I am and what it is I want for my life and for myself. So, that's been calling to me for a while, and I think music has always been the way that I connect to this idea of home that I carry within myself. I think, for me, it's like going to the source of where this music is coming from by being in that space. I'm trying to go to Zimbabwe as well in January and come back here with a lot more to give. I personally really need that.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.