Well you might be late as GRRRL, an all female music group came together and had their first performance within six days.
The UK based GRRRL’s powerful live performance on Wednesday night would have left you still wondering if they’d only met six days before.
The seven-piece all-female band came from the four corners of the world to perform at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in the heart of Soho for their first ever gig, it was a live gig.
Ghana’s Wiyaala aptly describes the GRRRL with this beautiful satement “and when we come together and sing you can hardly tell we are from different countries. Its like branches of the same tree”.
GRRRL can best be described as “a bespoke electronic music collaboration between independent, revolutionary women artists from around the world, coming together to tell their collective stories of life, conflict, inequality and change through music”.
They were assembled together, and brought to the UK, by charity organisation In Place of War, with CEO Ruth Daniel saying that the all female band are “packed with purpose and have a message to tell.”
GRRRL’s music fuses together sounds of dark techno, ghetto bass, hip-hop, dancehall, reggae, soul and electronica that draws from their different cultures and musical styles.
The band’s composition is made up of:
• Speech Debelle – 2009 Mercury Prize winning rapper
• AWA – African Women Arise – Zimbabwe’s Rapper Queen
• Lei Di Dai – ‘The Queen of Brazilian Dancehall’
• Wiyaala – ‘The Young Lioness of Africa’
• Nono Nkoane – Original Nu-Jazz and folk singer from Cape Town
• Sohini Alam – British Bangladeshi singer
• MABE – DJ & percussionist from Caracas, Venezuela
• AFRODEUTSCHE – British born Ghanaian electronic artist
With Brazil’s Laima Leyton, one half of DJ duo Mixhell and member of Soulwax, being the musical director.
The project was funded by PRS Foundation and Arts Council England, and GRRRL is now starting a tour of the UK, with gigs at Shambala, Greenbelt and Freedom festivals.
