Get to Know Muso Hanna: Embarking on Her Journey to Fulfil Destiny
For singer/songwriter Hanna Kuruneri, music has always been a part of her life. Although growing up in Zimbabwe, a country that is rather simple in its approach to life, offered fewer opportunities for her musical expression, she knew deep within herself that music was for her. Somehow.
“I am generally a very open and curious person, and I just think I wasn’t really thriving here (Zimbabwe) because I don’t think there was enough room for me. I felt a little stifled all my life. There was never enough room for me to fully express or explore a lot of things,” she said.
But in the true sense of destiny fulfillment, music found Henna when she moved to South Africa, where the youngster was furthering her studies at the University of Cape Town.
“While in Zim, I just enjoyed the craft—not to pursue a career in it, but I just enjoyed the artform. Thinking back, I used to get in trouble at school a lot for bunking classes because I would spend a lot of time in the music room, teaching the younger kids songs and stuff. I just didn’t think of it as a career, but it was definitely my ideal pastime.”
“I got to UCT, and my sister encouraged me to join a hip-hop society based on my interests as a consumer of hip-hop, and I just went to ‘go see’. They would do these ciphers on campus every Wednesday, and I thought they were super cool. After a few weeks of spectating, I thought, ‘Okay, same faces, same people, plus they are always trying to get new people up, but no one ever does go up’, so that’s when I decided to jump on it and see,” she said.
That marked the beginning of a radiant career in music, which saw her get nominated for Best Female at the South African Hip-Hop Awards for her debut mixtape, gracing impressive stages such as Rocking the Daisies (for the years 2022 and 2023) and gaining a loyal following that is always ready for new music.
Music kept beckoning her, with a few signs along the way all leading her down the path of music. The first was the time a video she posted on Twitter trended overnight in 2018.
And the second being around the same year when two music search competitions came to town, with Hanna making the cut in 2019 (just as she had lost hope) for Mr. Eazi’s #emPawa100’s talent search, an empowerment initiative that aimed to empower individual artists in Africa, and the other being Nasty C’s “Lift As You Rise” talent search, where she actually won.
“Winning both of those talent searches was super encouraging for me. It was one of those moments where I didn’t know why I shot, but I did, and it actually worked out. And it showed me that anything is possible—an unreal experience because, despite loving music, I never thought I wanted to pursue it professionally. I always had that reservation against it, but at that moment I really felt like God or the universe, whatever you believe in, was trying to tell me something that I should actually listen to.”
Looking at all the opportunities that came flooding her way, the connections she was making effortlessly were proof enough that she belonged here. In music. A turning point.
With her computer science qualification in the bag, Hanna went on to sink her teeth a little deeper into music.
With all eyes on her, a mixtape was the next step in releasing The Girl in the Durag, which further cemented her name. Over five years of her career, Hanna has been a true believer that ‘what is yours will find you.’
“I have also learned that while it finds you, you have to choose it back with as much intentionality as it shows you, and that’s the only way it will work. And I think it’s easy to think that because something has chosen you, that’s kind of where the buck stops, but it’s not. It’s hard to choose something back; it’s just as much work; it’s just as much as betting on yourself, and there are doubts if you will put all your eggs in one basket.
“For most of this journey, I’ve had one foot out of the door, and it has taken a lot of growing up and growing into being secure and wanting to be secure. Making decisions to make music that I love and let the world do the rest from there instead of vice versa. And that is the only way to feel secure in this.
The release of her latest single, Pride, comes as part of her upcoming second body of work, dubbed, that she will release.
“I have never believed in anything as much as I believe in this project, and I think it is one of the most genuine and authentic projects I have ever worked on. It was born after a lot of trying out things that weren’t working and trying to fit in ways that weren’t working out for me, and I think this was just me purely telling my story in the way that I wanted to and kind of a rebrand sonically as well. So I am really excited,” she added, adding that above all, she believes it’ll impact people, which is the reason she is making music.
“The story that people can learn from is that you get to choose. You get to choose who you want to be, no matter how crazy it is. You get to choose how to be that, how you move, who and what you support, and whether you want to be on the right side of history or authentic and real. And I’ve been fortunate to have been afforded a lot of choices; even in some cases where it seemed like there was an either-or choice, you can choose both.
“I had to choose between school and music, and I chose both. I chose to finish both and be both. So you can choose who you want and how you want, and that is my story,” she said.