Jidenna’s transcendent trip

Directors Wesley Walker and Sam Pressman have created a sumptuous film for Jidenna’s first track from the upcoming project, African On All Sides, an album that brings together artists from across Africa, the Americas and the West Indies, in a blend of Afrobeat, dancehall, Latin trap, R&B, hip hop and beyond.

Launched through Janelle Monae's Wondaland Arts Society, the Black Magic Hour promo follows Jidenna’s chance meeting with an ancestral spirit that, literally, turns his world upside down.

The directors describe the film as “an invocation - a space of intuition and the channelling of ancestral African spirit. Jidenna enters the sublime, a state of surrender, of healing through the abandonment of self and recognition of his roots."

Jidenna – who is Brooklyn-based, but was born in Wisconsin and raised in Nigeria then Massachusetts – said he wrote the song when inspired to consider his own heritage and lineage. The song’s opening line, “ I'm from a long line of chiefs, I was made in their image,” references his belief that his ancestors are the ‘deities’ in his own life. “We, as people of African descent/black people, need to recognise and celebrate our own deities.” 

He goes on to comment: “I don't believe that we can have the economic progress that we need to empower communities without spiritual progression. We will never see our worth in our bodies if we don't see our worth in our spirit.”