Mon Rovîa has kind eyes. Unassuming and watchful, he’s spent a lifetime reading the room and taking the temperature of the situations he’s found himself in. As a child, he was quiet. These days, he exudes calm. When he speaks or sings, people listen closely. If his eyes are kind, his voice is empathetic. Soft and soothing, it embraces the listener like a warm hug from somebody who knows how it feels to be lonesome and wouldn’t wish it on another. Only a fool would take this kindness for weakness. It’s a vulnerable strength, tempered over time in the fires of resilience.
By now, Mon Rovîa’s backstory almost feels etched into stone. Born in Liberia, on the Atlantic Coast of West Africa, he was adopted by Christian missionaries during the violent bloodshed of the Second Liberian Civil War. He traveled with his new family through the Bahamas, Montana, and Florida, before settling by the grandeur of the Appalachian Mountains in East Tennessee. From a young age, he has lived in complexity, contrast, and displacement, a questing soul searching for meaning, purpose, and his place in this world.
As he reveals in our Cover Story interview, he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. However, through music, Mon Rovîa has uncovered a trail to walk along. In recent years, his distinctive Afro-Appalachian folk music sensibilities have earned him a devoted audience through social media, regular releases, and touring.
Across his debut album, Bloodline, he offers memoir and testimony, sharing yet more chapters from his remarkable story. Written and recorded in Los Angeles with producer Cooper Holzman, the album crystallizes his early promise into something timeless, sublime, and deeply needed. In late December, he made some time to reconnect with BGS.
This is more of a provocation than a question, but the highest compliment I could give your music is that it makes me feel that if we all listened more closely, there would be less need for questions.
Mon Rovîa: Thank you very much. That is beautiful. I’ll have to dwell on that.
When was the last time you cried?
I cried this year. That’s a crazy question, because I ask my friends at least once a year, “When was the last time you cried?” or “Have you cried this year?” What made you ask me that?
You seem like an emotional guy.
I guess I am. I’ve cried a couple of times this year.
It’s been a big year. How has your life changed over the last 12 months?
It’s interesting. From the outside, your friends and family see your life changing in a lot of different ways as they watch. Going through it as the artist, many things remain the same for me. I still spend a lot of time trying to reach something, and only I know where that satisfaction lies.
People can look at [what’s] outward and say, “Oh, he’s reached something.” The hard part, probably many artists go through this as well, is that deep down, the search always continues for something that hasn’t been answered. I couldn’t tell you what this is.
There’s the question of ego as well. I always think about these people, like Bill Withers, who were able to do what they needed to do before stepping away from the spotlight.
I hope I’m more of a Bill Withers. My personality leans towards silence and not being seen in general. I could see myself disappearing at a certain point. That would be nice.
Do you think there’s an inevitability to the pathway you’re on, or could you have become someone else?
I definitely think there are other things I could have been. I look back at the circle. The start of coming from Liberia as a young kid, surviving the war, being adopted and taken to the States. From there, I could have become many people. Perhaps it would have been sports, or a person who was not well-known, working a 9-to-5 job, clocking in and out. I also think about the choices I made. You could look at some of them and say, “Those were really bad choices,” but each thing is a step, a piece of this road we walk.
In the end, all of it became the better choice, because everything – the good and bad choices on the journey – led me to where I am now.
It’s great to spend a lot of time making and playing music, but everything that happens in between writing or recording songs is just as important.
You’re right. I did odd jobs. I worked the grounds, mowing lawns. I made flower beds. I was in tech recruitment. I worked at restaurants. Getting paid nothing. Getting yelled at more than getting paid. I took it in. I learned. All of these things became different parts of the story. They became different chapters of songs and elements.
I was thinking about what André 3000 said when OutKast were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: “Great things start in little rooms.” I agree with that, but I also think great things start as a response to big expanses.
I spend a lot of time in a little room with a ukulele, just singing into the ether, but I need both: the silence of a little space, the expansiveness of the world, and the opening of that as well.
19th-century Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh had this thing about bringing permanence to the impermanent. A flower will last for a season, but his paintings of those flowers still endure with us today. We can immortalise something through painting, or do the same with song.
I find from the artist’s standpoint that is, perhaps, the goal: to make something that is immortalized, that surpasses your own life, and carries on when you’re no longer here or present. I think that would be the greatest achievement. If there were an end goal to make something that lives on longer than I do, that would probably be the biggest joy of my life as an artist.
What does water mean to your music, and could a river be considered a bloodline?
Water is the source of all things. Rivers remember where the headwaters lie. They know where they come from. They never forget, no matter how far they come from the source. Bloodline for me is exactly that. It’s a reclaiming of remembering. A lot of the time in the States, I tried to forget. I wanted to assimilate into an American way of life that is built on forgetting. Over time, music brought me back to remembering the cornerstone of my life, the headwaters – which are Liberia, West Africa – and the gift of being able to make something out of a lot of pain, turmoil, and uncertainty. So water is crucial.
When I think about your story, how and why you left Liberia, and what has happened since you arrived in the United States, I think about how this was all preceded by an even more complicated story. As you’re reminding us, it goes deeper and deeper.
There’s truth there, and it’s crazy to me, too. I love that you brought this up, because there are a lot of people who live on the land here in America who don’t even have that in their consciousness, don’t even understand the relationship between the two countries in a way that isn’t talked about. It’s complex. The Back-to-Africa movement. Monrovia after President [James] Monroe. It’s embedded in the very fabric of the country of Liberia. A lot of Liberians feel a kinship to America, but they don’t understand that America doesn’t think one bit about that.
A fascinating thing about cultural exchange is how, through the good and the bad, it can create new cultures. It’s so deeply woven into the foundations of country, folk, and bluegrass: the musical techniques, the instruments, everything. I imagine you often meet people who are excited to tell you about different musicians, scenes, and eras from the past.
Yeah, people have. Growing up, I was pretty locked into a religious space. I listened to a lot of Christian music, but I had no idea about mainstream anything. That wasn’t based on living in Liberia either; it was just the family I was adopted into. I’ve been enlightened by things in the past, and people have referred to music. More importantly, I’ve learned some things on my own from Appalachia and folk music. As a Black man, one of the things that kept me away from the [folk music] space for a long time was feeling like it wasn’t mine.
The truth of the matter, as you have brought out so well, is that a lot of these things do come from cultures that have mixed over time. Slaves were brought over from West Africa, but they brought those instruments, sounds, and sang those songs. That’s another thing that has been stolen along the path, whitewashed, you could say. It’s been beautiful to reclaim things as they’ve found me unknowingly. I’ve learned a lot by looking back on that. It’s been super special to know that I do have a heritage in this space. It’s a beautiful thing.
How important is food to your music?
Food? How important is food to my music? Well, as someone who doesn’t eat that much food, I tend to be quite empty when I make songs, play shows and stuff. I don’t know why.
Do you think you fast for your art?
Yeah, I fast for my art. Perhaps I’m more filled by what music brings to me lyrically and sonically. Food, I guess, is a necessity to live, but for the soul, it’s music. You’ve got your body, but then the soul has to be higher. What’s filling that for you? People have to ask themselves that question.
Something I notice everywhere is people looking to country music and the culture that surrounds it for some form of direction. We’re two and a half decades into the 21st century, living in what used to be considered the future, and yet so many people are looking backwards through rose-tinted lenses.
If we look closely, the rose is very much withered. You can look back and romanticize the South, and its culture, as everyone in the States is doing; they love to be cowboys and farmers, but you know the hardships and the pain that this land has brought, right? Let’s look back on that, if we’re also going to look back and romanticize this. The piece of clarity people often miss in the whole system is the truth, the full truth.
The truth is ugly.
The truth is ugly, but I’m wondering, though– at least for me, there was a time when it was ugly, but the acceptance of it in my own life has brought some sense of beauty at the same time. Once you see the truth – which you know well – it will never leave you. That’s why people are afraid of it. That’s why they never look at it. They don’t want that thing to haunt them through time.
You give a lot of yourself through your music. How do you fill your own cup?
Honestly, being in nature. Being back home in Chatt[anooga], and also being very far away from music. That’s how I refill, 100%. When I’m back home, I do little things, like going back to where I started, which is being on TikTok, playing for these people. I didn’t know them. They didn’t know me. But they raised me up. So I give back that time. I’ll never stop doing that. No matter how big Mon Rovîa gets, I’ll always go back to the people in that space. That fills my cup.
Also, playing soccer. I play tons of soccer. Outside of music, it’s my favourite thing in the world. I would probably drop everything to be a professional soccer player.
If you’ve spent time in Europe, Latin America or Africa, you know what time it is. For many people in many parts of the world, soccer is more important than life or death. It is the game.
I never get tired of playing soccer. I play all the time. It’s my favorite thing and a big part of my joy. Also, my community here has been so beautiful to me. Whenever I get to be home for a long time, I’m just preparing to be filled, and then hopefully ready to pour it out when the road calls again.
It’s important for an artist to have a relationship with a place and its people. There is a value in being accountable to a community, and having a community that is accountable to you.
I would agree. They get to ask me questions about things I struggle with on the daily, and how I’m actually doing as an artist. People who don’t know me might say, “Man, touring must be the best thing in the world?” They’ll want to see if it’s just parties and going out every night in big cities. It’s not like that for me, but maybe it is for some artists.
How many years do you think it takes to become an overnight success?
I don’t know. Nobody knows the years someone has been working towards something like this. What’s your answer?
Five to ten, but people won’t always be transparent with you about how long they’ve been trying to get there for.
That’s a good point.
The other thing about being a musician or an entertainer is you’re operating in a space where you can easily spend 25 years being 25.
Yeah, and for some reason, it’s allowed. Maybe that’s why people don’t take musicians too seriously until they become really big. It always just seems like a hobby, or like you’re trying to stay young. I’ve always wondered about that. Even with my work, some people don’t understand that it’s my job. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to pay some bills and live okay, but they’ll still talk to me as if I’m still looking for the dream. Like, “How’s that going? Are you doing okay?”
But maybe there’s a point: so many people grow older, but their mind and spirit stay the same age. I’m not sure whether our dreams should be all-encompassing. I think it’s good to dream, but when you have that big dream, you need to have little dreams as well, things that can come alongside the bigger picture and also bring life to you, because everything is fleeting, right?
Before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you something. When you think about everything that had to happen for you to arrive at this moment, how does it make you feel?
I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot, the feeling of it. Everyone around me is very happy about the things that have come to pass, but a lot of the time, I still feel a very great loss. I think about my mother, my father, my siblings, whom I have not seen, and everything that had to happen for me to come here, and come to it. I often wonder if I would trade all of that, perhaps, to look at my mother’s face, hear her voice, or remember what she looked like. I think all I can say is that it’s a beautiful sadness I’ll carry forever.
The late French illustrator Jean “Mœbius” Giraud loved to tell these stories that were essentially the same story. They’re all about someone who wants something more than anything, and, upon obtaining it, realizes they don’t want it at all.
I have had many thoughts of laying down the pen in that way. It’s a difficult thing. Joy for me is very elusive. I call it the elusive flower. In moments, I feel it, and it is amazing. A lot of the time, it’s very far from me.
I think that was how Mon Rovîa came to be, through my search for joy in all of these things that have happened. Really, happiness has been the connection with people. Having them relate to the songs, and the songs helping them on their journey to becoming.
My purpose is to focus on the human condition and the realities we all live day in, day out. I’m here to tell that story because it is the only one that is truthful currently. I’ll accept wherever that takes me. If it makes me super poor, great. If it makes me able to live a life aloof in the woods with some land and animals, great. At the end of the day, my path is set, and I walk it the way I must.
Photo Credit: Carter Howe
