WONTEN

Born in the chaos of the Liberian civil war, WONTEN found his voice in the silence that followed. Separated from his parents as a child, his sanctuary became the sound of an e-piano.

That search for a room of one's own eventually led to Cedar Rapids, the city that raised him and quietly nurtured the sound he would grown into. 

Inside a small apartment there, his music was forged through a creative tug-of-war with his brother, a church drummer. WONTEN leaned toward sentiment and melod, the oceanic pull of choir music that lived deep in his bones. His brother pulled toward the complex, grounding rhythms of home. For years the two sounds wrestled with each other.

The compromise became the music. A sanctuary built from creative friction. Now that sanctuary steps outside the room where it was born.

WONTEN brings his debut performance to the stage at CSPS in Cedar Rapids, the very city that shaped the music. Blending soul, subtle gospel influence, and the calm pulse of Afro rhythms, the performance marks both a homecoming and the first chapter of a story finally ready to be shared.

Watch as it unfolds in a space meant to be felt together, an evening of music that carries the spirit of where it began and the anticipation of where it is going next.