Akawui

About

The artist

Akawui is the musical name of Nelson Akawui Riquelme-Catalan, a Canadian singer-songwriter of Chilean and Indigenous Mapuche descent based in Montreal. Introduced to South American folk music by his father, he developed a multilingual, percussion-forward sound that combines Latin urban music, hip-hop, rock, cumbia, Andean instruments, and Indigenous vocal traditions. His debut album El Futuro Es Tribal brings artists and musical practices from several Indigenous and global communities into a contemporary setting. Akawui won the Syli d'Or de la Musique du Monde and Afropop's stage-performance prize in 2015. He remained active through a series of 2024 and 2025 releases and has expanded into theatre with a role in Medea Luz.