Lady Donli Says Enjoy Your Life

Lady Donli is the name everyone wants to drop in the Alté scene.

Alternative used to be mean the opposite of mainstream until a cohort of new-school bourgeoisie with some international exposure and just about the same measure of swag swung by. They took Alternative, contracted and revolutionised it with a diacritic on the alphabet e. For them, taking charge of the name and narrative did not require any kind of violence, just some assertiveness and a drab wardrobe.

Given the niche market they embraced and their internet savvy, the music was decidedly underground, becoming popular on SoundCloud solely by word of mouth and serendipity.

This meant that you had to seek out this music for yourself when you tire of the pangolo (or is it pon pon?) on the radio. The downside of this music is that it hasn’t crossed to the Mainland and its suburbia yet.

Lady Donli is, however, not complicit in this class snobbery; she is from Abuja, that capital city with rocks and hills and the cool ambience reflects, even in her music.

Trained as a lawyer (check) in the United Kingdom (check), Lady Donli has always pursued music as a side hustle (check). This, for the most part, is the reality of the Alté squad. They embrace that tendency to double lives that Carl Thomas aptly describes in his song, ‘Dreamer’…