Festival hosts rising star at epicentre of Irish hip hop

Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

Afro-Diasporan musician/poet Denise Chaila should have been live in Oranmore this weekend – a real coup for the local Arts Festival to land one of the hottest names in the business – but the pandemic put paid to performances in person.

Adversity, however, can present opportunity – and instead the Limerick-based artist will headline Festival’s online event, Bean/She, on the festival’s official website this Friday at 8.30pm; the live stream will also include performances from Niamh Regan and Gráinne Conaty. It’s a show that offers a chance to hear parts of the tracklist from her upcoming mixtape Go Bravely ahead of its release later this year.

Denise Chaila is at the forefront of contemporary Irish hip-hop. Since the beginning of 2019, she has received critical and commercial success for her renowned live shows, frank lyricism and unique songwriting style.

The latest of her four singles, Holy Grail, is the debut track from Go Bravely – a title befitting the journey she has undertaken en route to national acclaim.

Although it wasn’t initially intended to portray any concrete message, the mixtape feels like the culmination of several years of growth.

“I found myself making things aimlessly for several months without any real intention to do anything with it,” Denise recalls.

“Through that process, I kind of planted my feet so much firmer into music that by the end of the recording process we turned around and were like ‘Oh, this is a fully body of work’ and I think releasing it as a body of work is the best thing to do for it.

“In this project, you’ll be able to see all of the aspects of me that I haven’t been able to share so far because there’s only so much you can do with a song or a few singles. I’m really anticipating how it will feel to allow people to see me as a three-dimensional person and not the snippet of me that was captured on Chaila or on Holy Grail.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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