ZeMe

ZeMe (meaning ‘land’) is a duo consisting of kokle player Laima Jansone and DJ Monsta. Jansone started out by playing traditional music on the kokle, but she soon developed an exquisite mastery of the instrument and is able to instantly express even the most nuanced of thoughts and emotions through its strings. DJ Monsta (Uldis Cīrulis), for his part, has long been active not only in the genres of dance and electronic music but also in stepping across musical boundaries to, for example, collaborate with the Latvian Radio Choir and jazz musician Nic Gotham. Among many other locations, ZeMe has also performed in Japan, a country that the two musicians find quite similar to Latvia. It therefore comes as no surprise that quite a number of Japanese have begun learning to play the Latvian kokle.