Kabusa Oriental Choir Reimagine ‘Folded’ Through Afrosoul

I’ve been in music for a long time. Long enough to think I had a decent grip on African music, which I’ve always loved. Then Kabusa Oriental Choir arrive with Folded, and show me how much ground I still have left to cover. And I swear to God, that’s a good feeling. I like when music does that.

Kabusa Oriental Choir and the Abuja Spark

Kabusa Oriental Choir started in Abuja, Nigeria, back on 11 March 2019. It all began when Austin Chinemezu Nwamara imagined Kizz Daniel‘s Baba through the bones of an African Catholic church choir. A law firm, an Uber ride, one funny thought, then boom – robes, Samsung Galaxy S9 video, internet attitude, and half the continent laughing. Why? Because they recognised the joke, the church, the drama, the aunties, the whole Sunday morning cinema.

Since then, the choir has grown far beyond viral choir covers. They have worked around major records, touched TikTok madness with Soso, pulled huge Spotify numbers, caught attention from names like Swae Lee, and picked up Best in Music Comedy at the Humour Awards 2023. Also, with over 1.6 million monthly Spotify listeners, that little choir experiment from an Uber ride has grown into a rather serious situation.

Folded Turns Regret Into Afrosoul Theatre

Their new cover single Folded, released on 22 May 2026, reimagines Kehlani’s song through a deep Afrosoul pocket, produced by David Acekeyz. Funny enough, Austin first heard the beat and had doubts. Then he felt something. That tiny little danger sign musicians know too well. Yeah, the one that says: “Ignore this and it will follow you into breakfast.”

The lyrics deal with post-breakup regret in a way that feels painfully domestic. “Come pick up your clothes, I have them folded” might sound simple, almost ordinary. Then we start feeling the weight of that sentence and the way they sing it, and suddenly you’re standing among all the things two people never figured out how to say. It’s like someone in need of distance, then realises distance was the request, not the destination.

The choir starts sorting out that emotional mess into something warm and very human. Names flying through the arrangement, voices answering each other, like the whole village knows your business and sings it back with better harmony. Give the video below a watch too. Half the charm lives in those faces, those reactions and the way everybody seems completely invested in the story.

That Folded Answered Back

Kabusa Oriental Choir said the recording process felt like breathing air, and I think I know what they mean. Folded deserves both a listen and a watch. The video, I mean. Then that natural movement starts making sense, along with that strange feeling of a song searching for the exact place where it belongs. Their influences – African village church choirs, Handel, Gregorian chant, Kirk Franklin, Maasai singers, and global ethnic sounds – come from very different corners of the map and somehow end up becoming friends.

So yes, go follow Kabusa Oriental Choir, hear Folded, check their world through this linktree, and start folding your own emotional laundry while you’re there. Clean heartbreak, dangerous stuff. I’m all in.

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