When you’re deported from the country you call home, most would pack up their dreams and disappear. Mumba Yachi didn’t. He rebuilt his life, embraced both his Congolese roots and his Zambian home, and kept making music that refuses to fit into a box.

Since then, the man behind the mealie meal sack suit and the underwear-on-the-head fashion statement has continued to walk his own path. He’s won a Zambian Music Award, picked up an international film prize in Paris for his short film Tazara, survived his bamboo studio burning to ashes, and built a sound he calls “Yachi Music” — a fusion of Kalindula, Rhumba, and folk that is unapologetically his own.

Mumba Yachi sat down with Chana Musakanya for an exclusive interview and we were fortunate enough to get to know the man behind the headlines, the costumes, and the controversy.