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Farai Katiyo breaks down the symbolism behind his two new EP covers

Farai Katiyo crafts powerful stories within each of his songs. With the release of his debut  EP Yesterday, Today & Forever God is Good 1, this became immediately clear.

Now, before he releases the follow up to this EP, Yesterday, Today & Forever God is Good 2, we caught up with the artist for a breakdown of the symbolism behind the two EPs’ respective front covers. Take it away, Farai Katiyo…

Before he releases his next EP in a couple of weeks, we caught up with Farai Katiyo for a run-down on the meaning behind his album art.

The artwork in my project tells a story. It’s a picture of a person in an art gallery staring at the images on the wall. The art is me; it is my life being put on display. I live my life visibly for all to see, to learn from it and be inspired. The three pictures represent the different stages of my life. The child is a younger me, the middle picture is me now and the old man represents me in my old age. Together they depict my entire life from birth to death. The silhouette represents the “youth” or young people who will and are gazing at my life through the music I make.

With part one, the gallery is dark; the mood is serious. This was done to show the tough times we will face in life. In the first part of the EP, I talked about the elephants in the room such as homosexuality, child abuse, suicide, domestic violence, and self-esteem. These are very serious topics which is why the artwork has a very dark mood. Life is not always full of laughs we will all encounter challenging periods and moments of sadness.

However, life is also beautiful and does have joyous moments. Which is what we wanted to capture with the artwork in part two. The mood is very vibrant because I talk about light-hearted things. I talk about love, getting engaged, partying, apologising, writing our wrongs, overcoming bullies, and God’s goodness. If you look carefully you will also notice that my facial expressions change. In part one, I am not smiling in all my pictures in the art gallery I have very serious faces. In part two, however, I am smiling in all the pictures to symbolise the happy moments in life.

Together the two projects speak about how God is always good irrespective of what is happening in our lives. We give thanks to God in the good times for the blessings that have come our way and in the bad times, God is good enough to give us the grace we need to navigate our way through our trials and tribulations.

Yesterday, Today & Forever God is Good 2 will be out on February 15th.