Sanya N’Kanta On Precious Time With Family

Published: March 11, 2021, 5 p.m.

Jamaican-born, North Carolina-based singer and songwriter Sanya N’Kanta has written songs about race and immigration, but his new EP is about the simple pleasures of family and home.  N’Kanta started off in music producing hip hop, but he’s adept at all kinds of styles, with an impressive vocal range. He is a self-taught musician and multi-instrumentalist, and a self-avowed “studio rat”, who has already completed another album, due early summer 2021.

Sanya N’Kanta moved to North Carolina a few years ago from Chicago, after a long bout with illness. Later, he’d discovered that there had been a carbon monoxide leak that had been slowly making him sick, in the basement studio of his place in Chicago. On his recent EP, These Are The Days, he concentrates on the joy of family and focuses on feeling good, clearly full of gratitude for life, place, family, and home. Sanya N’Kanta gets the whole band together to play some of these songs, rooted in classic rock sounds, remotely, from North Carolina.   - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Waste My Time”, “North Carolina”, “Hold On”

Watch “Waste My Time”:

Watch "North Carolina":

Watch "Hold On":