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As a folk musician, Mon Rovîa has never been much of a planner. He didn’t plan on pursuing music as a career; he never imagined going on tour, nor does he map out the lyrics in his music that’s going viral on TikTok. When inspiration strikes, he scribbles in a notebook and the rest flows from there. “I hate sitting and trying to make up a song. It’s better if it’s just fluid and it just comes to me,” he says via Zoom from his home in Chattanooga.
Among the furthest from his to-do list was finding himself in a genre he calls Afro Appalachian. A bridge between his worlds, he and his music manager use the term for marketing purposes— Mon Rovîa is from Africa and lives in Tennessee. It just made sense.
But since 2020, when he began pursuing a musical career, fans applauded him for giving credence to the historical contributions Black people have made to the music traditions of Appalachia, a region stereotyped by poverty and whiteness. Commonly referred to as the Affrilachian community, African Americans there are often overlooked in discussion about the area. Mon Rovîa is the first to admit he all but tripped into the category, but the praise has him newly invested in the history of the place he calls home. “I just wrote songs and sang this way,” he says about his gravelly voice and confessional lyrics. He’d draw on the gentle, unfussy melodies that spoke to him most. “And then it became, I guess, folk.” Despite his informality, Appalachian anthropologists, including Dr. Fred J. Hay, who’s researched the region’s music, write that not only is much of Appalachian folk music and its instruments Black in origin but sectors of it are derived from the traditions of West Africa, where Mon Rovîa was born. Seems there was always a place for him here.
Mon Rovîa, born Janjay, was adopted by Christian missionaries at seven years old during the Second Liberian Civil War. His family’s relocation that followed — from Monrovia, Liberia, to Florida in 2001, to Montana, then to the Bahamas, all to the exclusive soundtrack of Christian music — muddled his musical tastes. He’s not the guy who can sing along to a 2008 banger when it comes on. In fact, most hits are lost on him. “A lot of people make fun of me for it,” he says, shrugging.
Mon Rovîa’s exposure to popular music came at 13 when his foster brothers introduced him to Fleet Foxes, Radical Face, and Vampire Weekend. He was especially taken by Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig’s grasp of metaphor.
Though less jaunty than Vampire Weekends’ sound, Mon Rovîa’s nostalgic and ethereal instrumentals tend to back impressionistic lyrics too. “I wouldn’t say my songs are very happy,” says Mon Rovîa. He often sings about hurt while voicing hope for a better future, which requires him to reflect on his past. It’s painful, but he’s been committed to vulnerability in his music since 2020 when his mental health took a dive. “I was having a huge meltdown,” he says about that year. “I felt like I wasted a lot of time in the U.S. and didn’t give anything back to my people.” He couldn’t reconcile his privilege and the survivor’s guilt he’s carried since his adoption, sparing him the turmoil in Liberia. Investing in music felt selfish, so he decided to quit.
He sent three final songs to a friend, Eric Cromartie, whom he knew from university in Chattanooga, and planned to focus on a typical career path. “I heard those songs and said, ‘No, you’re not, these are incredible, let’s get to work,’” Cromartie writes over email. “It was in that moment our journey began.”
And work they did. Mon Rovîa settled in Chattanooga, chose a stage name that honors his birthplace, released two EPs and his debut album; Cromartie sold him on the star-making powers of TikTok (where he first used the term Afro Appalachian). In a matter of months, Mon Rovîa was catapulted to the realm of viral sensations dominating the FYP.
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He started by duetting other musicians. “People would go on there and they would write melodies and I would just write lyrics over their instrumentals,” he says. His music was finally raw, examining the pain attached to self-discovery, healing, and war — songs that drove his following from 10,000 at the start of his year to nearly 300,000 by its end. In one TikTok, which caught the eye of two Mega House Music managers, he sings along to the whirring of a sewing machine. They’re now co-representing him with Cromartie from Los Angeles. In August, Bella Hadid filmed herself on a mental health walk in which his song “Watch The World Spin Without You” plays in the background. It was liked 1.9 million times. And in February, he’s headed on a 31-city tour to open for Josiah and the Bonnevilles with whom he connected on the app.
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These days, his videos are gaining traction for how they make viewers feel. “pov you just found a song that sounds like waking up from a dream,” it’ll say on screen, behind the words is Mon Rovîa, gazing into the camera, strumming a ukulele to his latest single. Or sometimes he’s making tea. Viewers will stop scrolling for the folk music they say is reminiscent of falling leaves on a crisp day and they’ll stay awhile for his narrative lyrics familiar to anyone plagued with self-doubt. Appalachian natives, meanwhile, are grateful to him for putting bygone music with papered-over history on the map. “We’re with you,” and “Thank you for putting us out there,” they say.
They’re referencing the often-disregarded role Africa has played in shaping the musical traditions of Appalachia. “I'm currently still trying to learn the actual history of the Black people that lived in these places and somehow were forgotten in time,” Mon Rovîa says. He’s familiarizing himself with the history of the banjo, derived from the African gourd instrument, the typical folk rhythms borrowed from African cadences heard during enslavement, and the infusion of gospel and blues, reminiscent of African spirituals. Like folk, a host of other genres and artists regularly dip from the well that is African music: Beyoncé, Paul Simon, and even Vampire Weekend credit two African-pop cassettes for inspiring their sound.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard Liberian music,” Mon Rovîa ponders. “They change a lot of different melodies as they sing, so I tend to do that a lot in verses.” He starts humming a tune which abruptly shifts to a different one and back again. Though he hasn’t yet read up on it, he’s describing a West African practice Dr. Fred J. Hay, professor of Appalachian Studies, writes was adopted by Appalachian folk music and documented in folk scholarship in 1917. Without knowing it, Mon Rovîa’s repeating history, merging the textures of his heritage with the sounds of the American South.
Mon Rovîa isn’t much of a musical planner. When he writes songs, he dials into something within, a process he calls “downloading from the source,” and song springs out. If it were ever possible to reach back in time and connect with ancestors, Mon Rovîa honoring the folk traditions extracted from West Africa is a sign it could be. “Maybe it’s something lost in time and translation that still lives in me somewhere,” he says. “I can just hear what this needs to sound like.”
