KOKOKAINA AKA ZEE, 22

I met Zee through Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind.” Her cover of the classic was posted as a response to one of my own songs. For a moment I thought it could just be more video spam, but I was very wrong—it was one of the most beautiful voices I had ever heard. I sat transfixed. The web cam fizzed and crackled relaying the voice of an angel, a voice that seemed from another time and space. Each word melted and melded into the next, the folky fingerpicked guitar line edifying this otherworldly experience. My heartbeat racing, I quickly scribbled off a comment: “Get some decent recording equipment—your wonderful voice deserves so much better, from an admirer...”. Then I realised that the video’s graininess is part of its allure. An apologetic, digging-yourself-into-a-hole e-mail followed. She was the song she sang, inhabiting each line. And when she spoke she spoke with gentle curiosity and humour and our friendship became potentially lifelong, despite having only known one another for weeks. The rest all happened so fast. First a YouTube feature, then the growing adulation from music fans all over the world, flocking to her channel. A phone call from LA telling me that she’d been signed to Brushfire Records stirred a medley of emotions, the same way I felt when I began sharing her videos on my YouTube page. For a spell I was Howard Carter, excavating the tomb of Tutankhamun; a precious secret worth keeping that way. Yet this was a secret the more needed to know about. Zee is not an artist that requires a foreword or a rationale, needing not the PR bolster that the pallid “pop stars” of today buy at great expense. She is real. What you see and what you hear is what you get—a refreshing originality which the whole world will soon thank Malaysia for.

Kris Rowley is a singer-songwriter from Derbyshire, England. He enjoys the Great British summer. His first album “Unequal Measures” is out now. Find him at www.krisrowley.com and www.youtube.com/zzzzzzzzap