Music Review: Matala By Winnie Nwagi

Matala is the sort of melody that is deceptively simple – it fluctuates wildly between low registers and high ones. Because of this, it is hard to think of anyone who could have pulled this off.

But what makes the song even more complete for me is the wonderful production approach used on the song. Swangz Avenue went all out on this one – the bass line on that groove is breathtaking.

Swangz Avenue have a history of tapping up some of the best session musicians in town when they are putting a track together so the idea that they might look up a bass guitarist to ensure the song has such an organic groove is not so farfetched.

Another aspect of the production was how the groove was developed – it is a sort of mish mash of pop reggae and dancehall, a groove that makes it easy to bop your head to or hit the dance floor to, making it work for everyone.

Matala is the sort of song that you can imagine simply sounds amazing when performed live, particularly because it had session musicians involved at production level, and indeed, the crowd went WILD when that familiar bass line started to introduce the song at her Fire concert.

This made the road down memory lane an admittedly pleasant one.