Lafawndah
Lafawndah's journey to her current incarnation as a devotional pop polymath has wound as unpredictably as her compositional style. The ceaseless artist returns with ‘The Fifth Season’, released in September 2020 on Parisian label Latency. In contrast to the precision-tuned industrial productions of debut album ‘Ancestor Boy’, her second album breathes a different kind of volatility, inviting a new degree of spontaneity into her process, as reflected in collaborations from live sessions with tubist Theon Cross from Sons of Kemet, trombonist Nathaniel Cross, percussionist Valentina Magaletti, Nick Weiss on keys and additional production, French rapper Lala &ce, and with visual artist Marguerite Humeau.
2020 saw Lafawndah harnessing the year's energy with waves of synergism starting with Concordia 01, the first in a series of nocturnal performances produced and directed with Trustfall. This first edition was commissioned by Lafayette Anticipations, and was also displayed at a virtual event by the ICA Miami. Later in the year Lafawndah further expanded the interaction between her own storytelling and Jemisin’s to create the radiophonic play ‘Antimony’. Commissioned by Somerset House as part of their ‘Assembly’ series, ‘Antimony’’s narrative is crafted through the interweaving of newly recorded elements with the live and improvised takes that make up ‘The Fifth Season’ repurposed and arranged with spatialised production to create a piece that suggests a physicality; organic and alive.
2019 was a banner year for Lafawndah. ‘Ancestor Boy’, released on her own imprint Concordia that spring, was met with enthusiastic acclaim. A record loaded with trap doors, Lafawndah’s intricate production style marries with her vocal performances which oscillate between the warm secrecy of a whisper, and a loud and generous rallying cry. Co-produced with fellow travellers Nick Weiss, ADR and L-Vis 1990, and featuring performances from the likes of Jon Hassell, Kelsey Lu, Gaika, and more, it featured on ‘Best of the Year’ lists from the likes of Dazed, Resident Advisor, Bandcamp, Dummy, and FACT, as well as collecting praise from NPR, Vogue, and The Guardian. ‘Ancestor Boy II’, released at the end of the year, proved her curatorial ear and passion - a call for kinship at the forefront of new music, and from across the world.
Lafawndah’s work is a ranging discourse with cultural cornerstones, upending the concepts of tradition and institution. In 2018 she adapted her Honey Colony mixtape into a barrier-breaking concert experience at the Southbank Centre, deconstructing the relationship between performer, producer and audience, along with a curated line up of peers such as Tirzah, Kelsey Lu, Elheist, Bonnie Banane, Nídia, Mica Levi and Coby Sey. Further, a long-awaited live performance of ‘Le Renard Bleu’, her 2018 record with Japanese ambient master Midori Takada, took place in the form of ‘Ceremonial Blue’, commissioned by the Barbican in London. Adaptive and unrestrictable, Lafawndah has taken her expansive and dynamic shows around the world, featuring at pioneering festivals such FORM, Le Guess Who, CTM, Eurosonic, Pop Montreal, New Forms Festival, Way Out West and LOOP.
She has scored work for projects across art and advertising, collaborating with the likes of Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel for RIBOCA, Xavier Cha (Art Basel, Empty Gallery HK), Jacolby Satterwhite (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) and Laure Prouvost, for whom she collaborated with on the music for Prouvost’s French Pavilion project ‘Deep See Blue Surrounding You’, shown at the Venice Biennale. Meanwhile the fashion world has embraced her for custom composition for adverts and runways, from Kenzo and Vogue Italia to Chanel and Fendi, plus an emphatic partnership with Jeff Mills for Courreges, culminating in a coruscating live performance on the Canal Saint Martin. Lafawndah’s work as a director continues to expand, too, with films for her lullaby ‘Joseph’, standout single ‘Daddy’, and the captivating ‘Substancia’ showcasing her cinematic eye, selected for presentation by Nowness and Boiler Room’s 4:3.
This year anchors Lafawndah as a descendent of forbearers Brigitte Fontaine and Scott Walker - a born theatric who finds her imagination more agile than ever, with a drive to push her compositions into live iterations ever deeper and more aflame.
WORKSHOP | Fantasy at a Distance
A workshop about post covid musical performance aesthetics. The default look and feel of streaming has been a stripping away of fantasy and illusion, but how can we study key moments of performance documentation created under tightly constrained conditions to recover cinema magic for an era of new austerity.
