Apple Music has announced Afro-pop songstress Abigail Chams (real name Abigail Chamungwana) as the latest artist to be featured in its new Up Next artist development program in East Africa.
“I am excited and honoured to be the focus artist on Up Next East Africa. I am thrilled for this opportunity to celebrate East African music and I represent Bongo Flava on my debut EP 5.”
Growing up in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, music has always formed an integral part of Abigail’s life, as a multilingual singer who performs in Swahili, French and English, as well as a multi-instrumentalist who plays five musical instruments, namely the violin, piano, guitar, flute and drums.
Collaborating with Tanzanian artists like Rayvanny (“Corazon”), Harmonize (“Leave Me Alone”) and others have helped Abigail build her fanbase across Tanzania, while being featured on The Kelly Clarkson show and performing the national anthem at some of the country’s biggest football games, have shone a bright light on her talent.
Her debut Afro-pop EP 5 (2023), available to stream on Apple Music, is a fun, adventurous body of work that examines the multiple layers of a 21st-century romance, weaves threads of pop, amapiano and bongo flava to form an Afro-fusion tapestry that showcases her range.
Apple Music today announced Afro-pop songstress Abigail Chams (real name Abigail Chamungwana) as the latest artist to be featured in its new Up Next artist development program in East Africa.
Apple Music’s Up Next artist development program has had a fruitful history of spotlighting the next wave of creative talent since it was established in August 2017, with Nigerian Grammy Award winning superstars, Burna Boy and Tems, the first two African artists to be spotlighted on a global scale in 2019 and 2021 respectively.
As the next Up Next act to be spotlighted in East Africa after Platform, Abigail Chams will be featured across Apple Music’s East Africa Up Next playlist. The curated Up Next playlist features a dynamic class of new and emerging artists, thoughtfully hand-picked by Apple Music editors from around the world. The playlist is genre-agnostic and represents a line-up of artists our global editors are passionate about and eager to expose to a larger audience.
/Release
