African Siren Artist: Pchords

Ndoh Favour Afaah-Nyu, known as Pchords, is a 25-year-old Cameroonian film composer, producer, mix engineer and siren artist. He began producing in 2016, and his work now moves through African chants, percussion, piano, cinematic sound, strange vocal sounds, whistles and siren vocals. In 2023, he was selected for Goethe-Découverte, where he presented Apollo at the Goethe-Institut. His recorded work includes the This Is Afro-Spiritual EP, Chants of Favour, Percs & Chants with Forbin Audrey and the Passage original motion-picture soundtrack.

For Listen Closer, Pchords curated a series of stand-alone vocal recordings without the music usually built around them. Effects remain central to his performances, where electronic ambience and technology meet African chants and percussion.

Pchords in conversation with Listen Closer

Take me back to the sounds you grew up around.

Nothing out of the ordinary. There wasn’t any peculiar sound I was tuned to. Maybe I can say church hymns and chorals, since I grew up in the church. My parents were choir leaders, and I later joined the church choir too.

When did you start noticing your own voice?

There was a time in my life when I noticed I would just want to say things, but I didn’t know what I was saying. I wasn’t thinking; I would just say whatever word came from my mouth. Even if I wanted to exclaim, I wouldn’t find myself saying a random English or French word. I would blather something out.

I think that behaviour subconsciously found its way into my music and, eventually, into the sound I was developing. When you are chanting, you cannot always use words that have meaning. My chants are a manifestation of those things I usually say. That’s what I think, though. I’m not certain.

How did that become music?

I started music production in 2016, and I found my way into university in 2019. That was when I discovered spoken-word poetry. Before that, I was a producer making hip-hop beats, Afrobeats and normal contemporary music. The way spoken-word poetry is performed does not follow a steady pattern. The pace can go up, come down or change completely. So, when I was producing music for spoken-word poets, I had to score the piece into existence. I had to follow the emotions. Most of the artists I worked with were African and Pan-African. After recording, we would sometimes say, “Can we just put some African chant in it?” That’s how it started. I had always been doing ad-libs for artists, especially on hip-hop songs, because I was melodically inclined. I tried to bring that knowledge into the idea of African chants. I would make random sounds, use effects and put them into the music. Gradually, I discovered that I had a repertoire of these sounds. Then I realised that maybe I could make my own kind of music and incorporate them into it. From there, it kept growing.

What does an “African chant” sound like to you?

We as Africans know what an African chant will sound like. Even though we might not know the particular chant, we know what the melody and harmony give off.

Where did you go from there?

I started studying sounds I felt connected to, like the Arabic scale, the Phrygian scale and the Carnatic scale. More recently, I have been researching the Mongolian voice technique. I have also been looking into Arabic and Fijian vocal techniques. I don’t know what it is, but something drew me to those sounds and frequencies. Later, I came across frequency music and frequencies such as 528Hz and 1111Hz, which I understood as healing. I studied a little, not professionally, but through my own personal research. I understood that frequency or sound could trigger responses in the brain.

I also came across ASMR on TikTok, which is a kind of sensory response where certain sounds can trigger a tingling feeling in the brain. All of this contributed to my interest in frequency music and sound. Little by little, I just kept doing what I was doing, and it grew into what I am today.

What’s the story behind the chants in the video?

As much as my chants can sound very intentional, 99 percent of the time they are subconscious. I do not write chants. If I want to sing a chant, I just put on the microphone and go. Whatever comes, I let it out. I never sit and plan to create. If I am moving on the road, or after I have slept, and I suddenly feel, “Hey, you need to create this,” I just go and start creating it. However, if I am trying to create a very specific project, I need to follow a particular pattern because certain techniques have a particular way of sounding. If I need to score a movie that has a Chinese or Spanish theme, for example, I might construct the chant around that pattern. But on a natural day, my chants are spontaneous. They just come out of me. They cannot be scripted.

Most often, I have to come back and study the chants. If I want to make a lip-syncing video, I have to come back and learn what I was saying, because I never really know what I said. It is just how I feel. I can be feeling sad and trying to sing in a certain way and I believe any other person who listens to it will feel what I felt. It is kind of like a very universal, powerful sonic language.

How did the siren enter the picture?

The siren singing is the latest stage of my sound. It started around 2023 or 2024, after I relocated. I was experimenting with my voice, trying a head voice, a wail or a cry. Then I started asking what would happen if, instead of only trying to make a head voice, I put my hands in my mouth so I could trigger the air to come in in a particular way and control it with my vocal cords. That was how the siren in me was born. The chants gave me a starting vocabulary, but the hand technique was my own. I kept developing it from there. The sirens give me room to express unknown emotions: things I cannot express through writing, words, conventional singing, painting or drawing. Sound is vibration and frequency; it carries a signal or a message. But if you are not in the right space or on the right vibration, maybe you will not receive it. When I discovered other siren artists, it gave me a sense of community. It brought happiness, grounded me and connected me to my roots.

What does making this sound do for you?

I think one of the greatest experiences is being able to transform an experience or a feeling into music and sound. Doing that brings me closer to it. I understand it more. Even if I find myself in a bad situation in life, these sounds help me heal from it very fast.