Matt Swallow

Matt Swallow is the Founding Director of Baobab Studios, a label, collective and off-grid studio set in the heart of Beneath The Boababs Festival grounds, Kilifi, Kenya. Formerly a teacher for 10 years, Matt left the profession in 2016 to build platfforms that serve the music scene and build festival culture in Kenya. He opened his first studio and label, ADA Creatives, in Nairobi in 2016. During this time Matt helped to introduce Funktion One PA systems to the market by supporting emerging festivals in the regaion with subsidized, quality audio systems and team.

In 2018 he opened Muze Club, the first dedicated electronic music club in Nairobi, and was a core member for the development of Kilifi New Year Festival, re-branding it as Beneath The Baobabs Festival in 2021 and launching Kaliedoscope Festival, Watamu to further devlop the festival industry in the coast of Kenya.

Matt is now finishing an 8 year tenure as Creative Director at Beneath The Baobabs, having built a solid team to take over in his stead; so that he can focus on developing Baobab Studios, an off-grid music studio, label and collective in the coast of Kenya. Matt is focussed on providing a unique creative space for artists to develop their sound and take their music to the next level. A touring and recording artist himself, Matt is dedicated to artist development and advocates the growth of live, human made music.

Experience Matt Swallow at The Ethics of (Re-)Issuing African Music