Speech Debelle – free live gig on Friday 31 July
Mercury-nominated Speech Debelle teeters between rap, hip hop, spoken-word and the smoothest jazz. Beautifully supported by a background band, these are songs that tell wistful, warm tales of South London lessons and make fiercely personal admissions. A recent invite to the fabulous Book Slam night provides an idea of quite how narrative-driven and complete her tunes are. I’ve yet to catch her live, but the idea of listening to those profound stories and drifting along with the soft swoon that accompanies each thrills me. I see a candlelit, slightly smoky room, eyes agog and mouths agape, and a cold, wicked world safely locked outside.
Whether it’ll be quite like that remains to be seen, but one thing’s true: Speech is playing the Southbank Centre this Friday. It’s a clone of an evening, fusing the experimental electro night, Trouble Tune with regular live music show Friday Tonic. Speech will be on at 8.30, in support of jazz legend and equally rare talent Soweto Kinch. How much does it cost? Precisely nada – you just need to squeeze in. See you there…
Live date:
Fri 31 July – South Bank Centre (info here)
Speech Debelle on MySpace (including gigs streamed live via UStream)
Speech Debelle’s website
MP3:
Speech Debelle – Searching (zSHARE)
Buy Speech Debelle’s Speech Therapy here (Play.com)
[...] Debelle My reaction on seeing Speech play at the South Bank Centre last month was that her music’s very difficult to follow in the flesh. Perhaps my ears [...]
London Live Dates – Bell Orchestre, The Phenomenal Handclap Band, Speech Debelle and more… « Some Of It Was True! said this on August 28th, 2009 at 9:10 am