Mon Rovîa
Mon Rovîa’s recent song “Heavy Foot” asks a simple question: What if we cut the bullshit and chose to love one another?
Sparsely arranged and performed with hard-earned clarity, “Heavy Foot” listens like an instant folk classic, grappling plainly with a litany of current social ills, including gun violence, homelessness, the prison industrial complex and genocide. Then the piece urges listeners to hold onto love and hope in the face of despair.
The Chattanooga-based singer-songwriter performed “Heavy Foot” as part of his Grand Ole Opry debut in late July. That appearance is the latest milestone for the quickly rising artist, whose backstory is as compelling as his songwriting. Born in Liberia during the country’s first civil war, Mon Rovîa — whose birth name is Janjay Lowe — was adopted by Christian missionaries after losing his parents to the conflict. Raised in Florida, Mon Rovîa later landed in Chattanooga to attend Covenant College on Lookout Mountain. It was a disorienting experience that spurred an identity crisis and, after he dropped out, eventually led him to songwriting.
Sonically, Mon Rovîa blends traditional, plainspoken folk music with contemporary indie influences, citing artists like Bon Iver and Adrienne Lenker as early influences. Thematically, his music brims with compassion and hard-earned wisdom, as on fan favorite “Crooked the Road.,” which he performed as part of his Opry set.
Mon Rovîa tells the Scene that the gravity of the Opry moment wasn’t immediately apparent to him. He didn’t spend his formative years in America and didn’t grow up with country music. After some of his bandmates expressed the significance of being invited to perform on the historic stage, he read up on the program.
“I wasn’t really nervous until probably two minutes before, and then we got onstage,” Mon Rovîa explains. “I didn’t know the process, but because it’s live, you stand up there in the circle and you wait for a bit. And that’s when I think it hit me, the importance of the moment and the people who have been onstage. And as an African as well, the importance of my time up there — and what it means, hopefully, for future musicians that get the opportunity.”
Mon Rovîa made the most of his time in the circle. He introduced a crowd largely made up of tourists and die-hard fans of radio country to his globally informed take on American roots music, as well as to his compassionate worldview. His performance of “Heavy Foot” was especially potent, with the often-rowdy room growing quieter with each verse.
“There’s a lot going on in these times, and I think there’s a lot of controversy out there,” he says. “I didn’t want to shy away from it just because it’s a special occasion. … There are people who have different opinions and different ways of thinking about people and life. But the beauty of the truth is that sometimes it has to hit you where you are first. I think it was a really powerful moment for people in there to hear it.”
Creating those kinds of moments is inherent to Mon Rovîa’s artistic MO, and is at the heart of the upcoming trek that will take him across the country this fall. Called A Place to Gather, the tour is an intentional act of community-building, one he hopes will be a galvanizing force for people feeling despair at the current state of the world. On Sept. 4, he’ll bring a taste of what fans can catch on that road to the Bobby Hotel, where he’ll perform a free show — RSVPs are at capacity as of this writing — as part of the Bobby’s WNXP-curated Backyard Sessions. After the first few days on the road, he’ll be back in Nashville briefly during AmericanaFest for a performance Sept. 13 at The Blue Room at Third Man Records.
“Resisting together and not doing things alone is important. And it’s super important for people to know they can make an impact in these times, and to be encouraged to continue in the process. … I think you can be sunken a lot and still try to resist, but there’s a beauty when you can capture happiness and joy in standing in something that is completely difficult. That’s what we’re trying to capture at these shows.”
