Nominated for a record-breaking 16 Oscars, Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” follows Sammie, the son of a preacher whose transcendent voice and Dobro guitar lead him on a journey by vampiric invasion into life as a profitable trendy American musician.
The movie opens with a narration that references the “griots”: centuries-old West African storytellers who transmit oral historical past through the medium of poetry and music. In Tennessee, strumming by the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, a griot for the current age is rising.
Born in war-torn Liberia however raised within the United States, singer-songwriter Mon Rovîa, actual title Janjay Lowe, is out to channel the spirit of these mythic storytellers.
“This is why this movie was so powerful. You see the magic carried in the boy who sings with the voice of his ancestors,” he advised NCS. “They give him this vitality, this present, to assist his folks alongside the way in which.
“It’s interesting because the griots come specifically from West Africa, where I’m from … maybe that’s also my role now, to carry those stories, whether it be of America’s history or even my own.”
The story of Lowe, who takes his stage title from the Liberian capital, is one that shares some overlap with that of “Sinners” protagonist Sammie, albeit that includes a ukulele, not a guitar, and minus any garlic-fearing bloodthirsty monsters.
Born throughout the first of Liberia’s two Civil Wars, conflicts that claimed more than 200,000 lives between 1989 and 2003, Lowe was adopted at 7 years outdated by American Christian missionaries across the flip of the millennium.
Having relocated with the household throughout numerous states, from Florida to Montana, it wasn’t till he settled within the mountain-cradled metropolis of Chattanooga, the place he now resides, that he picked up the instrument that as we speak appears an extension of his personal arms.
In truth, and far to his workforce’s amusement, rising up Lowe barely listened to any music in any respect exterior of church hymns. That finally modified — his eardrums crammed with the folk-inspired sounds of Mumford and Sons, Bon Iver, and Adrianne Lenker — however these remnants of spirituality stay intertwined in his “Afro-Appalachian” music, even when he himself is not notably non secular.
“That wrestling of trying to understand the bigger forces at play in the human experience and the search for identity and belonging is super important,” Lowe stated.
“Spirituality, I think, lends its hand to guide you along that path to finding where you belong and what your purpose is in life.”
The highway to discovering that function has been, within the phrases of his most streamed music, crooked.
Lowe has not shirked from harmonizing the struggles that have formed him, be it a near-death expertise within the face of Liberian baby troopers (“Day at the soccer fields”), melancholy (“Cleopatra”), grief (“Damn These Forces”) or a life away from his organic household (“Whose Face Am I?”) that “tore” at his sense of self.
“I didn’t feel like I could claim my Liberian heritage or the culture … It took a while,” stated Lowe, who has not been again to his delivery nation since a visit along with his father across the age of 11.
“In the music, you feel that — the struggle to claim an identity that was lost, but also the hope that those things can be reclaimed again.”
Though Appalachian folks music is generally related to white artists just like the Carter Family, the “Mother of Folk” Jean Ritchie and Dolly Parton, African Americans have contributed considerably to the Southern Appalachian sound however are “often overlooked” within the style’s native historical past, according to the National Park Service, writing in regards to the Great Smoky Mountains.
As early because the sixteenth century, when West Africans arrived from throughout the North Atlantic as slaves, their use of gourds (hard-shelled fruits) as devices paved the way in which for the eventual emergence of the banjo, which turned a staple of Appalachian folks.
Showcasing vulnerability has helped endear Mon Rovîa to an ever-expanding on-line fanbase, closing in on 1 million TikTok followers — many of them from Liberia.
His most viral post, watched over 4.8 million instances, invitations viewers to lose themselves in “songs that sound like lullabies for adults.” It hints on the unassuming energy of the ukulele to, just like the griots of outdated, ship listeners right into a trance-like state.
That state, Lowe hopes, is a sanctuary for folks to sit with no matter troubles fear them.
“It gives a place for people to not feel the loudness. A safe space, where all their emotions, even if it’s with the times and things that are going on in the world, are not clouded by noise,” he explains.
“It’s them and their thoughts, and it’s a safe space for them to feel those things and also be seen in those things. That’s what I probably mean by a lullaby.”
What’s happening on the earth is of paramount significance to Lowe, who has used his platform to talk about international points, resembling the recent protests in Iran.
On his 2025 single “Heavy Foot,” which some have labelled a protest anthem, he sings “Love me now, hold me down, and the government staying on heavy foot, and they tried to keep us all down.”
“People put a tag on it. It’s just a song about truth, really. I guess when truth is against what people don’t want you to know, I suppose it becomes protest,” he says.
“What works in that song is the togetherness … it’s about the pulling of everyone together.”
Togetherness is the first consideration trying forward for Lowe, who hopes to return to Liberia in 2027 to stage a “reconciliation” live performance, free of cost, to return the love he has felt from followers there and write a brand new chapter in his story.
“It’s the greatest wellspring for me right now … I pull a lot of deep nourishment from that acceptance,” he stated.
“Being ready to return again to my folks as somebody that they will look to is one thing I may by no means have imagined, ever. It’s one thing that you hear in tales and books at instances: coming house.
“It’s a smile that I’ll keep for a long time.”