Singers with Unique Voices: Marcus Harvey (The Unique Voices Club #41)

Every other Friday, I write a post about singers with unique voices not commonly heard in mainstream music. My goal? To educate emerging artists and music lovers while inspiring them to embrace their own quirks. This week, I'm writing on Marcus Harvey.

Picture from Spotify

Seeing as this is the first Unique Voices Club post during Black History Month, I figured I should cover a black artist. And so will the next one this month. And in case you've happened upon this blog for the first time, I grew up in South Africa amidst a bunch of different genres including kwaito, afrobeats and isicathamiya (also in a bunch of different languages) and sang in a choir that also reflected this. So this week, I'm covering an artist from South Africa: Marcus Harvey. He released his debut in 2020 (years after I moved back to America) so he's fairly new to my ears. And as you will see in the video episode below, I relish in the nostalgia.

Harvey Lawrence Ofentse Mashiloane hails from the Alexandra township and has a stage name similar to my ancestor, the Pan-Africanist political activist Marcus Garvey, understandably. His debut album You Don't Know Me Yet soared to the top of the Apple Music Charts, and he was named Apple Music Artist of the Month. He also appears on Mashbeatz's album This Is Religion, which won the South African version of a Grammy. All this to say, he's toured internationally as well all over the African continent. Besides all the genre bending, what really captivated me was of course, his voice.

Watch my fangirling below:

So yeah, for any artists of color that are reading this, keep sharing your work. I really do miss the stuff I would hear on the radio and being able to play stations right from my cellphone, and dancing to the Parlotones and Jimmy Nevis. I've been back in America for ten years now and I don't even listen to the radio anymore since it's mostly mainstream and sounds the same (opinion further expounded in the above video).

If you agree with this sentiment, then you really need to be a part of the Firebird Flock. Because for a small monthly subscription, you can share artists with me and other people that I can cover in future episodes of the Unique Voices Club. And I'll shout you out too!

Libianca broke the mold with her afrobeats song "People." And in case you missed them, you can go learn from and listen to Lorine Chia, Zolani Mahola, and even Musa Mashiane (who I talk about in the above video) , among the other previous artists.

Stay educated,

Alexia