Some projects arrive as entertainment. Others arrive as testimony. Colours of Life, a new collaborative EP by Zimbabwean artists TaffyRue, Swazy, Sally 8N and Liberaxe, belongs to the latter category, bringing together four distinct musical voices to explore love, healing, surrender, faith, resilience and purpose. Created through the Music Connects Africa Programme in partnership with Terminal One Africa, an arm of Kay Media Africa, and the British Council Zimbabwe, the three track project moves between urban gospel, contemporary Christian music, hip hop, R&B, Afrobeat and soul.
Managed by Elisha Tonderai Dausi, the EP grew out of a collaborative process that brought together artists with different musical backgrounds and approaches. The result is a project that treats faith not as a simple answer to life’s difficulties, but as part of an ongoing process of confronting uncertainty, carrying burdens and finding a way forward. That idea is reflected in the EP’s three songs: Love, Wozah and Through Christ. Together, they trace a movement from longing and uncertainty towards healing, surrender and renewed purpose. Each track is also associated with a colour and an emotional state.
Love, represented by purple, explores acceptance, healing and unconditional love. Wozah, represented by orange, turns towards the burdens people carry and the peace that can come through surrender. Through Christ, represented by blue, closes the project with themes of strength, courage and purposeful living. The colours give the EP a visual language, but the music remains grounded in recognisable human experiences. Pain, doubt, faith and growth are treated as connected parts of the same journey rather than separate emotional states.
At the centre of that journey is TaffyRue, a Harare born singer and songwriter whose work has increasingly found space within Zimbabwe’s urban Christian music scene. Influenced by CeCe Winans, CalledOut Music, Blanca, Annatoria and Manuchie, she combines contemporary gospel with R&B, pop and Afrobeat. Her 2023 single Hold On reached number one on the Classic 263 Gospel Chart, while subsequent releases including Nothing Sweeter and Nemi, a collaboration with Pastor G, helped broaden her audience.
On Colours of Life, her contribution sits comfortably between faith based songwriting and contemporary African pop, giving the project’s message an accessible entry point. Swazy brings a different perspective. The Bulawayo born artist has built her reputation within Zimbabwe’s Christian hip hop movement while using hip hop, Afrobeat and R&B to explore subjects including mental health, identity, personal growth and ambition. A five time Zim Hip Hop Awards nominee, Swazy’s songwriting is rooted in vulnerability. Her approach does not present faith as a state of perfection, instead allowing room for uncertainty and personal struggle.
That perspective becomes particularly important on Wozah, where the emotional weight of carrying personal burdens meets the possibility of finding peace through surrender. Sally 8N brings the EP another texture. Influenced by artists including India Arie, Teyana Taylor, Tems and Prudence Katomeni, the singer songwriter works across soul, R&B, Afro fusion and contemporary African music. Her experience as the only female member of a live band since 2021 has also given her a performance background beyond the studio. The group reached the top two at the Chibuku Road to Fame National Finals, leading to performances across Zimbabwe.
Following singles including Wakuvhaira and Famba, Sally 8N released her debut EP Unrequited earlier this year. Her presence on Colours of Life adds another dimension to a project built around emotional honesty. Holding much of the sonic architecture together is Liberaxe, a producer, artist and creative whose work draws from hip hop, electronic music, R&B and African rhythms.
His creative journey began in dance before expanding into music, eventually developing into more than a decade of work as an artist and producer. That multidisciplinary background informs his approach to sound, allowing experimentation and accessibility to coexist. On Colours of Life, his production provides a common musical space for artists whose individual styles could otherwise pull the project in different directions.
The collaboration was guided by Dausi, who managed the project throughout the Music Connects Africa Programme and worked with the artists and creative team to maintain the EP’s central themes. What emerges is not simply a collection of songs by four artists. Colours of Life is structured around a shared idea: that different seasons of life can contain pain, uncertainty, faith and growth at the same time. That makes the EP particularly relevant to a generation of African listeners negotiating questions of identity, mental wellbeing, spirituality and purpose without necessarily fitting neatly into one category. Its faith is personal rather than prescriptive. Its optimism does not require the difficulties to disappear first.
Instead, Colours of Life suggests that healing can exist alongside struggle, that surrender can be an act of strength, and that every season can carry its own meaning. For TaffyRue, Swazy, Sally 8N and Liberaxe, the project is therefore both a musical collaboration and a document of a particular creative moment: four artists bringing different experiences into the same room and finding common ground through sound.
