Pasly Yat

Pasly Yat grew up in an African refugee camp before moving to America. Now he’s introducing the sounds of his home continent to a New Audience.

When he grew up in a refugee camp in Tanzania, Pasly Yat had two choices to entertain himself: soccer or music.

“And if you’re not playing soccer or interested in music then you’re not having fun,” he says. “Those were the only things to do there.”

Pasly chose music, and now seven years after his family emigrated from east Africa to the United States, he hasn’t changed his mind. Now an up-and-coming Afrobeats artist based in Ohio, he’s since released twenty songs and is preparing to make a big splash in 2024.

“I start with dancing,” he says,” and did a lot of dancing events and then when we came over here I wanted to keep going with the dancing but kids over here, they want to become football players, basketball, soccer, whatever. I didn’t get people to keep me company in the dancing and didn’t make the connections and just dancing by yourself and not doing events, not dancing for people, it’s really boring.”

So Pasly, born mwenebatu, decided to try a different angle with music. At school in Denver, Colorado, one day his teacher told the class that everyone had to make a presentation, but they could do it however they wanted, and she mentioned singing as a possibility.

“I was like maybe I want to try to sing,” Pasly says. “I’ve done the reading a lot and I want to try something different. So I tried singing and everybody ended up liking it. And it let me do the music, too, since music is already in me. It’s hard to keep a distance from music.”

Ever since that day, singing and music production have been Pasly’s passion. A few months after his presentation, he approached the same teacher and said, “I want to do this.” The teacher, in turn, helped him get his start; she sent him home with a school computer so Pasly could start producing.

By 2020 he was done with school and started working, giving him enough money to start paying for studio sessions. He officially released his first tracks in 2021 – six in all, plus the four-song Say Less EP. And then he released four more singles in 2023 before dropping the Chamelove EP and its six songs.

Pasly is now making a name for himself in the Afrobeats scene, even though genres like bongo flava – influenced by American hip hop and traditional Tanzanian music – are favored in his native country.

“I’m mixing the sound,” he says. “I’m from the east and Afrobeats is basically from the west but spreading all over Africa. I’m mixing both but I’m more based with the Afrobeats.”

Diamond Platnumz, a bongo flava recording artist who’s the highest-selling artist in Tanzania, has been a big inspiration.

And now Pasly is preparing to release his biggest project yet, an as-yet-unnamed EP due out late this summer. He’s already been working for nine months writing and recording the music.

“My only plan for this year is just to work hard,” he says. “I really have a lot of projects, a lot of different sounds and different stuff that people would never expect from me. Really good stuff.”

Pasly isn’t yet sure how many tracks will be on the project, but figures at least seven. The indecision is because he essentially has too much music at the moment after all his time in the studio refining and developing new ideas.

“The decision becomes hard when you have so much to choose from,” he says. “I’m also a perfectionist and we are redoing too many things, sometimes several times, to make sure we come out with the very best.”

He’s written about several different topics for the EP and promises, “there’s dancing and there’s relaxing.”

Pasly has also released three official music videos in the last five months. The most recent, for the song “Alone,” premiered in January.

Make sure to stay connected to Pasly Yat on all platforms for new music, videos and social posts.