“It wasn’t about arrogance,” he explains, thumbing the edge of that now-framed letter. “It was about not apologizing for existing in full color.”
If that sounds rehearsed, it isn’t. Hanzel Bold—born Hanzel Kimathi in Dar es Salaam, raised between Nairobi, Berlin, and a brief, rain-soaked year in Glasgow—has spent a decade building a reputation not on branding, but on presence . The kind that makes a room tilt slightly when he enters. The kind that turns a low-budget music video shot in an abandoned tram depot into 14 million views. hanzel bold
“I’ve been writing a story about a woman who walks across a frozen lake every night to send a single sentence to a dead physicist via ham radio. It’s not about the lake. It’s about why she keeps walking.” “It wasn’t about arrogance,” he explains, thumbing the
His music—a visceral blend of lo-fi industrial beats, spoken-word poetry, and sampled field recordings from half a dozen countries—carries that same DNA. His 2022 album Cracked Teeth & Stained Glass opens with the sound of a train braking, then his voice, unadorned: “They told me to lower my voice / so I swallowed a megaphone.” Hanzel Bold is famously allergic to the attention economy. No TikTok dance challenges. No beefs. No sponsored posts. His Instagram is a single photo—a black square—posted in 2019. His manager (a former librarian named Indira) handles press only for projects, not personalities. The kind that makes a room tilt slightly when he enters
Critics have called him pretentious (“a starving artist who chose the menu,” wrote one Pitchfork columnist). Others have questioned his use of African rhythms while living primarily in Europe—a charge he answers not with defensiveness but by releasing a live EP recorded entirely in Dar es Salaam with local taarab musicians, proceeds going to a community arts space there.
His live shows are rituals. No opening act. No encore as a gimmick. Instead, he enters from the center of the audience, walks slowly to the stage, and pours a small vial of earth from his birthplace onto the floor. “Grounding,” he says. “You can’t fly if you don’t know where you’re from.” Of course, “authentic” doesn’t mean “universally loved.”
At the door, he turns back. “Tell them I said: Don’t be loud. Be bold. It costs nothing and changes everything.”
