There’s a kind of magic in music that very few people ever get to experience.
For Canberra-based artist and producer Kojo Owusu-Ansah, better known as Citizen Kay, his daily life is full of that very magic.
While taking me through his brand new studio, Owusu-Ansah also gave me a tour of his life in music, his latest album, and the Lake City Records recording studio.
“For my twelfth birthday, a friend of mine got me a Red Hot Chili Peppers Live In Hyde Park CD. I’ve never shown any interest, and he just bought me this CD and I became obsessed. That same year, [I] got my first guitar, started writing and I’ve just been obsessed with it since.”
After a couple of years making his own music, Kojo shifted focus from making music for himself to making music for others and helping them bring their ideas to life.
“I had friends who also wanted to make music. So without really realising I was doing it, I was, like, taking on, quote-unquote ‘clients’ or ‘artists’ who also wanted to make music because I just figured out how to record,” he says.
Just like the first time he became obsessed with music, helping others bring their ideas to life gave him a new lease on life, and he hasn’t stopped since. Even if the way he produces is very different to how he started.
“It was a Sing Star mic and a free programme called Audacity and that was my first studio setup,” he remembers.
In March 2024, Kojo opened a new chapter in his music journey. Having been a producer for 15 years, he was given the opportunity to create a space that he hopes will become a beacon of the Canberra music scene.
“I have been a big flag bearer of the Canberra scene for a long time,” he says. “I love the idea that people feel like they have to come to Canberra. Not necessarily Lake City, but to Canberra to make music. We have the capability to be a world-class city from a music point of view.”
The new space is extremely significant for the Canberra music scene. From it, Kojo offers exclusive mentorship for all artists and his welcoming demeanour and openness to work with anyone are incredible.
Believing that music is for everyone, he’s trying to break down the wall so the barrier to releasing music can be as low as possible.
Being a community-minded person, Kojo’s vision for the Lake City Records studio is for it to be a community space.
He hopes it can be significantly impactful to the Canberra music community, empowering the current and next generation of amazingly talented artists in the capital.
“I had my own personal space in Mitchell for the last eight years and it was really set up for me and my workflow and what I was doing,” he says. “It was a Kojo studio. The idea [of Lake City] is it’s a quote-unquote ‘community space’ in the sense that it’s set up that if you know how to use basic hardware, you can come in here and hire it out.”
The new space is central to the city and to the Canberra music scene. Even in its short time being open, artists have been flooding through the doors to bring their ideas to life.
As for his own work, it never really stops. Kojo is constantly writing, experimenting and learning new things.
“As a producer, I know there was a few years ago when I set a goal to make a thousand songs in five years,” he says. “And I lost count at three years, and I was up to 400 at three years. In the last five years, I would say we’re nearing that thousand.
“The point of the Citizen Kay thing was always making the music. All the shows, the tours, the radio stuff, all that stuff was like this extra byproduct of just wanting to make music.”
Kojo worked as a touring musician for several years from 2013 to 2017. Having done heaps of shows on some of the country’s biggest stages along with lots of work on his own releases, he reached a point where he wanted to step away from the Citizen Kay project. So in 2017, he made the decision to temporarily stop releasing for Citizen Kay and focus on producing.
That process of producing obviously led him to Lake City Records, and to celebrate the new space he gathered some of Canberra’s best musicians to jam. These sessions became the latest Citizen Kay album.
“The parameters we set was, ten days, 15 or 20 musicians,” he says. “My goal was two cool ideas in ten days.”
The results were conclusive. What came from those ten days was over 100 hours of recording and over 80 “cool” ideas for music. Over the next two years, Kojo worked in his spare time to whittle this collection down to a 41-minute album titled so, where are we?.
“I’ve made music that I like, but I also made it because I thought other people would like it. This is the first record that’s like: that’s the music I like listening to at the time. That’s why all the pressure was off, because I was like, we’re just gonna make this. And that’s the point. Making art for the sake of making art … I would have been just as happy if we made that record and the only people that ever heard it were the people in the room.”
The low stakes recording environment really paid off with the album being nominated for the Australian Music Prize earlier this year. Recognition for an album that is a testament to the incredible work Kojo is doing.
Kojo has come a long way from the Spare Room sessions he had while in high school. The way he produces looks very different, but the music is still incredible and his passion for the art is unlike anyone else’s. It’s safe to say that the Canberra music scene is in the safest possible hands with Kojo.
Photos by James Vandermee