Biography

My name is Mark “Baliva” Johnes. I was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1983. Growing up in Harare, I was exposed to the music industry from an early age. I learned a lot from my father who worked for the national radio station. I would follow him to private functions wanting to learn all I could. I spent hours going through his collections recording songs onto cassette tape and learning lyrics then rapping them with my friends at school. I started recording with my school friends back in 1998. After moving to London in 2001 to study media, I spent my spare time in community studio projects recording songs and performing at open mic events around the city.

After attending a youth bible study in Summer 2003, I began to follow Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour. I felt a call to use my musical gifts to spread the gospel but for almost two years I lived a double life, I was half in the church and half in the world. Music was my idol and I often put music before my relationship with God as I compromised in order to achieve worldly success. I quickly learned that what the world defined as success was in complete opposition to what the bible taught so I gave up on all my solo pursuits in summer 2005 and decided to use my money, my talents and my time to show the world that God is real and alive.

Since then I have had the opportunity to travel around the UK performing with other Christian Mc’s on street corners and church events. A group of us put together a gospel mix tape in 2006 and I then released my first EP called “The Resurrection” in 2007. In Summer 2008 I released a 10 track EP called “Sunrise” and took to the streets of London performing and giving out copies to people who were touched by the music.