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We invited artists to write music for our series.
Wonda Wendy is our next musical star.
She has a voice that captured my attention right away.
I feel African because I was raised by Africans.
My culture is totally African. But I was born in France.
And so I got the other side, another part of me, which is totally French.
I'm happy to wake up in the morning and say I'm doing what I like the most:
Singing.
My father is a musician.
So I heard about Gabonese music from the day I was born, I think.
From the beginning it was like that. My father used to bring me to rehearsals.
I was 2 months, you know. So I will always live with music.
And that's something very present in my life.
Here we are in the studio of her producer Gyver in Paris.
Wonda Wendy is writing a track for us called 'Best of Both Sides'.
What's the tempo?
My music is a kind of mix between hip-hop, soul...
sometimes reggae. You get different flavours.
I'm a part of this Surprising Europe an African soul in Europe
My first time in Africa was to live there.
It was the biggest change of my life.
Because I didn't know that country...
except by the speeches of my father and mother.
It's the part of my life where I learnt the most about myself.
And I realized that there was a part of me missing.
Because I can't live off my music...
I've had to find gigs and sing background vocals... to pay bills.
Now I'm a mother, I've realized how expensive it is...
to find somebody to keep your child while you're working.
In Europe, you have to pay for everything.
You are so alone that you have to pay somebody to keep your baby...
while you are working and everything and that's very expensive.
In Africa you didn't even think about money.
There's always somebody to keep the baby...
not only the mother.
The relationships are totally different.
Europeans got to learn that from Africans. They need to learn that.
guess who's back
Wonda Wendy has another push up track
it expresses the best of me
my African roots and my Parisian neighbourhood
I keep the mix, I exchange, the words of angels, my past
Europe is progress, individualism Africa is respect and surrealism
let me, let me take the best of both sides, the best of both sides
I know where I come from today I know just who to be
I'm a part of this Surprising Europe an African soul in Europe
You can find the complete track 'Best of Both Sides' on the website.