When covid-19 turned musicians into internet personalities, Gemma Griffiths did not need a WiFi budget for her lockdown playbook. The Zimbabwean pop singer went off-grid and drove open-air through 10 African countries over 500 days to sponge inspiration for her debut EP, Pamwe (2020). Roughly translated “window of possibility,” Pamwe exploits the sunlit, breezy possibilities of Gemma’s 24 000-kilometer writing trip. The album art, a nude collage of full moon on Mt. Kilimanjaro, symbolizes the EP’s sultry blend of elements, and nods to East Africa, the region Gemma has since honored with few remixes and many happy returns. She has gone on to release two full-length projects, A Girl from Harare (2022) and Gemma (2025) but her lockdown EP remains a canvas of its time.

“The goal with this EP was to write the music as I was travelling the continent, and with this the influences of sungura guitar and other sounds became part of Pamwe. When I spend time in a new place, I write what I am feeling – not just lyrically but sonically – it’s like a soundtrack to my emotions in that moment,” Gemma said in an interview with Fired Rock. 

Heard through lockdown ears, Gemma’s album captured the idea of disappearing otherness through themes of love and distance. Travel images of spring scenery, retreating views and making it to the top of the world are redirected into the poetry of love but they also dissolve the difference between place and the beloved. Of the 10 south, east and west African countries she visited, the 27-year old particularly remembers Mombasa as a preferred muse.

“I’ll tell you about a place that made me write a lot,” Gemma says of the Kenyan city, before hijacking the interview into her own poetry setpiece:

“Blue and white. Bustling streets, tuk tuks and tuk tuks, and blue and white blue and white blue and white. The coastal city, home of a busy port and busier roads, had a personality all of her own. She would cultivate energy from her belly, and spread it through the streets via vehicles, and vendors and under the shoes of passers-by. 

Blue and white. Bustling streets, tuk tuks and tuk tuks, and blue and white blue and white blue and white. The coastal city, home of a busy port and busier roads, had a personality all of her own. She would cultivate energy from her belly, and spread it through the streets via vehicles, and vendors and under the shoes of passers-by. 

“And then you, her audience, ride steadily with a row of creeping cars, until you arrive at a bridge, and all of a sudden she changes the scene – to water ways and lush green trees, and boats on their way to the ocean. She thrives on the element of surprise, this place, this city so unapologetically herself. A place that made writing so simple, a blue and white Mombasa,” said the singer.

Tems, Adekunle Gold, Patoranking, Sauti Sol and Diamond Platinumz soundtracked the trip but Gemma did not always have to tie a place to its own sounds as home artists Oliver Mtukudzi, Jah Prayzah and Nutty O (the only feature, with Asaph, on her EP) also made her writer’s playlist.

The moon-on-Kilimanjaro cover is the work of Marc Neilson, Gemma’s frequent visual collaborator and travel companion for the 500-day trip. Merged to hide traces as if the 35mm film photographs of the full moon and mountain, taken from the Amboseli, across the border in Kenya, the collage is a metaphor of Gemma’s artistic vision to “blur the lines” and “show the similarities we can create to through music.”

“Because I wrote most of Pamwe in East Africa – I wanted something to represent that, hence Kili,” Gemma revealed. Although she hopes to start her ambitious trip all over and check more African countries off her bucket list, she has already returned to Kenya few times since the late 2020 release of her EP, recruiting Sauti Sol for a 2021 remix of the lead single, “Only You.”

Main producer Charlie Kay converted sounds and concepts sent by Gemma from her trip into a cosmopolitan and sometimes Zimbabwe-heavy EP. Simba Tagz co-produced ‘Only You’ with Charlie while band member Mattlixcs did guitars on most of the EP, along with bassists Seb Hill and Alex Mayers.

One of the highlights of the EP, “Ndinewe”, is sung to the sungura guitar, Zimbabwe’s foremost genre historically borrowed from Tanzania and Kenya. The song recently got a Tanzanian remix. If only for the album titles, this paying of dues subconsciously takes me back to Simon Chimbetu, a sungura immortal who also loved East Africa, often singing in Swahili and maintaining Pan-African themes.

Gemma’s understated guitarists contrast Chimbetu’s bass-heavy maximalism, but I am drawn to conceptual parallels of her Pamwe and his Pachipamwe. The ideas of freedom and confinement meet from two settings, lockdown in Gemma’s case and imprisonment in Chimbetu’s case. Chimbetu evokes the four corners while Gemma travels them with the simple message, “nevertheless…” seeking out brighter possibilities within lockdown gloom.

“Pamwe” literally means “possibly.” In the night of the pandemic there was still beauty, a full moon over Kilimanjaro, a peak after the hard climb. Whatever the possibility opens into, we still got music. Pachipamwe, whose refrain translates, “nevertheless, loved ones, we meet again,” is heavier, often slipping into mournfulness and punctuated by stormy sounds, still maintains the all-important “nevertheless…” 

Regarding her songwriting process, Gemma has no fixed answer as each song demands to be written its own way. “The only similarity between each process is that it happens, in an instant, and then the song almost writes itself in my eyes, I just feel ready, and it feels right, and the music flows. Some songs start with a beat, some with a chord progression, some with a voice recording I made at 3am on my phone, some with a melody, a lyric, a concept.”

The song almost writes itself in my eyes, I just feel ready, and it feels right, and the music flows. Some songs start with a beat, some with a chord progression, some with a voice recording I made at 3am on my phone, some with a melody, a lyric, a concept

gemma griffiths

Gemma gained prominence with a spirited 2019 feature on the Winky D classic, “MuGarden,” but she had already been a musician forever. Her grandmother and mother were pianists as were a number of family members. After making her first stage solo at six, she and her family knew just what she had to.

“Mum taught me guitar and trumpet, and we had a piano in the house so I learned that too, and it became my main instrument. I studied music at university – majoring in piano and trumpet, but I sang a lot too, and wrote music constantly. I’m grateful for the support of my parents and the opportunities I got through having instruments and teachers at home,” told Fired Rock.

Having travelled Africa to soak up energy for the debut offering, Gemma has the right mix, “a work that told the stories of loving a place, a sound and a feeling.”

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