UMAAH

The Umlazi born Joburg based mystic singer/songwriter known as UMAAH arises from the

van-guard of new black artists in South Africa blooming in tandem across a vast array of
creative disciplines aiming to reconfigure Africa’s narrative through aesthetics. Growing up
in the barmy urban cacophony of Durban, Kwa-Zulu Natal, she was plunged into a whirlpool
of musical influences from a formative age.

Song was her first discernable language. Her birth place in the animated Umlazi Township
was swollen with the sounds of Zulu folk music, Motown and Afro-jazz, cultivating her first
palette of reference to music.
When she grew older she nomadically gravitated toward R&B, neo-soul and hip-hop
influences eventually settling in the emergent leftfield electronica scene erupting in South
Africa’s largest cities. She now creates a cornucopian blend of emotive electronic music
rooted in hip-hop, neo-soul brazed with Afro-Caribbean rhythmic influences. Through the
genre-bending medium of electron-ica, she delicately interweaves ethnocentric elements
into her songs including those of her native oral tradition. Her raspy voiced harmonies are evocative of the guttural chants of the Nguni spiritual doctors common to her homeland.

Being a fashion design graduate and self-taught musician, Umaah’s aesthetic is moulded around the tactile and naturalist possibilities of music, her often philosophically themed songs gleam with layers of melodious texture. The timeworn, granular tones of her voice, resembling decadent folds of smoked silk, forms the
hauntingly raw foreground to her music, shadowed by low-end heavy beat compositions.

Umaah’s compelling range as a live performer has escorted her to a wide variety of coveted
local stages, playing unforgettable sets at festivals including Splashy Fen, Awesome Africa,
Smoking Dragon and Moshito Beat and Interpret Durban. And in November 2016 she was
selected as the second runner up of the My Connect Music Session, the culmination of which
was a series of live performances in New York City. Umaah’s collaborations as a recording
artist have been equally eclectic with acts such as fellow Durbanite indie artist Moonchild
Sanelly, Raheem Kemet, , Ian Kamau (Canada), Young Nations(US) , Faka (Italy) and Micr.Pluto
adorning her list of past collabo-rators.

In the winter of 2018 she released her first official EP titled SHEILA, a futro-spective EP is a
matriarchal themed eulogy to her grandmother. The record is her fist solo release and is
executively produced by SUbWav co-founder Joburg beat aficionado Micr.Pluto.