HOT LUNCH | The Spotify boss they call Nokia - TimesLIVE

Pink Mama’s in Rosebank evokes Capri or Lake Como in deep summer, all Italian gestures, striped umbrellas and Aperol spritz, while the periodically thwacking balls reflect the sudden onset of padel competitiveness sweeping across Joburg courts as the season turns.

Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy likes it because it is close to Spotify’s new Johannesburg office, and the Spotify team tournament is imminent, although she insists she is “not the best at it”.

Within minutes we have established that her friends called her Nokia because, like the old slogan, she is always “connecting people”.

It turns out to be a remarkably accurate assessment of her life.

Muhutu-Remy is the daughter of a Rwandan refugee mother and a Burundian father. She was born and raised in Addis Ababa during one of Ethiopia’s most turbulent periods. Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown when she was a small child, followed by the communist Derg regime.

“My childhood was a mixture of a very deep sense of understanding politics at a very young age, understanding dynamics that were way beyond my age, but also a very pan-African and global environment.”

Her mother worked as a secretary at the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), today the AU, and the family lived in a tiny studio apartment a stone’s throw away. The world came to them.

There were Eastern Europeans, Indians, Armenians and Greeks in Addis. Hong Kong textile traders came through her mother’s office with fabric samples, took orders and returned with finished clothes. Cuban soldiers were stationed nearby. South African exiles studied at Addis Ababa University. Yvonne Chaka Chaka and, later, Brenda Fassie were part of the soundtrack to her youth.

When Nelson Mandela was released, she remembers going to see him during an early visit to Addis. South Africa already occupied a place in her imagination, although she could not have known how completely it would eventually become home.

At 18, an OAU scholarship took her to France. She studied languages, then journalism and international relations. After university she returned to Africa with her French fiancé, now her husband, settling in Kenya, where she worked as a journalist and eventually joined Reuters. They stayed for 11 years, married and had two daughters, now 27 and 23.

We were blown away by the music. The bass, the speed. It just felt extremely contemporary, creative, fresh

At Reuters came an unexpected pivot from journalism into sales. It would propel Muhutu-Remy through some of the most influential media and technology companies of the past two decades. In 2009 the family moved to Johannesburg. Work provided the practical reason, but the city itself provided the seduction.

On a reconnaissance trip they walked into a restaurant where the South African house duo Revolution was playing. “We were blown away by the music. The bass, the speed. It just felt extremely contemporary, creative, fresh. We looked at each other and said, ‘We need to do this.’”

They came to South Africa determined that this would not be another three-year expatriate posting. “For me, because it had been two generations of displacement, belonging becomes a choice. So we made the choice to belong.”

This is Muhutu-Remy’s philosophy. Belonging, for her, is active. She learnt Johannesburg through culture, music and people. And she also bought “crap cars so that I can go to town easily; I wanted to embrace the city and make it embrace me”.

Her career followed much the same instinct. At MTV Networks Africa she worked at the intersection of entertainment, music and commerce, including bringing BET to the local market. At Disney she learnt the global economics of content. Meta followed. Then, almost five years ago, Spotify.

She talks about Spotify being embedded in culture rather than hovering above it. “We go where culture is made,” she says, from university campuses to townships.

We’re punching so much above our weight. Our culture is prevailing

One of her favourite memories is of a Spotify event in KwaMashu celebrating gqom. Thousands of people, electronic beats, repetition and rhythm created something approaching a collective trance.

“You could tell it was visceral. Rooted in the place.”

This matters because African music is travelling with an intensity that would have been almost unimaginable a decade ago. Amapiano, afrobeats, gqom and African electronic music are no longer curiosities being exported from the periphery.

“We’re punching so much above our weight,” she says. “Our culture is prevailing.”

Spotify tries to accelerate that movement through global editorial teams, marketing and programmes such as EQUAL, which supports female artists. A South African track can be surfaced to an editor in Berlin or Tokyo. An artist who might once have needed proximity to London, New York or Los Angeles can suddenly find an audience across the world, their faces on billboards in Times Square in New York.

Muhutu-Remy sees enormous possibility alongside difficult questions. Spotify already uses AI for personalised listening experiences and playlist creation. For musicians, the technology can dramatically lower barriers to making music.

“Before, you needed a full studio. Now you need less of that. It’s access that is going to be unlocked.”

The harder question is where assistance becomes deception, particularly around synthetic artists, impersonation and ownership. Spotify, she says, has been developing ways to identify AI-generated personas and tackle fraudulent tracks.

Muhutu-Remy grew up surrounded by women: her mother, sister and the women who moved through their lives. She has raised two daughters. “Womanhood is central to who I am.”

She once imagined leaders as “sharp-elbowed people who garner troops by shouting orders, but I feel that gentle ways and the love of service can sit alongside clarity and resolve.”

Her mother remains the great example. After decades in which circumstance allowed little room for risk, she retired at 65 and seemed to explode into a new incarnation: entrepreneurial, adventurous and bold.

“I’m a firm believer in late blooming.”