On October 3, 2025, Warner Music Central Europe put out ‘Hutia‘, where producer Madism and vocalist Sofiya Nzau remixed Robert Miles‘ ‘Children‘—the ’95 dream trance cornerstone that paired emotive keys with steady beats to claim number ones around the world—into an afro house vehicle. Nzau, raised in Kenya and a fixture in its music circuit since her early twenties, first turned heads with 2023’s ‘Mwaki‘ alongside Zerb, a track in Kikuyu that captured her direct, affecting style and pulled in listeners tuned to house’s global wave. By May 2024, she’d crossed into rare air as the first East African on Spotify with 10 million monthly plays, a run capped this summer when she opened Tomorrowland as Kenya’s inaugural act, her sets weaving local inflection into festival-scale sound. Madism matches her reach; his UK triple-platinum single “Crazy” broke through charts, and his takes on material from Dermot Kennedy, Sam Smith, James Arthur, and Lewis Capaldi have built him a rep for flipping introspection into club currency, all off a billion-plus streams.
The rework keeps ‘Children‘s core piano motif front and center, but Madism wraps it in afro house’s toolkit—repetitive kicks, layered congas drawing from township grooves, and a bass that sits warm and insistent. Nzau‘s Kikuyu lines tackle intimacy’s overload, the way closeness scatters focus, peaking in “Tondu wahutia wahutia … Ukangorokia” to sync her rise with the drop’s tension. Pads and subtle effects hold the spacey original vibe, yet the added swing turns it into a track that moves crowds as much as it lingers.
From its start in Johannesburg’s spots blending house with African loops, afro house has echoed trance’s build-and-release playbook, influences that rippled to Paul van Dyk and Tiësto in the late Nineties. ‘Hutia‘ leans into that overlap, using Nzau‘s phrasing to give Miles‘ relic a voiced, regional edge that feels earned rather than forced. Drop it into a playlist today—it’s the sort of link-up that shows electronic music’s threads still tightening across scenes. 
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