FEATURE: Spotlight: Alewya — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Alewya

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I want to bring in…

a few interviews relating to the magnificent Alewya. Here is a stunning artist who was tipped for greatness last year, and she has definitely. In terms of artists to keep a close eye on this year, Alewya needs to be in your mind. Her 2021 E.P., Panther in Mode, was one of the best of that year. I predict we will see another E.P. from Alewya very soon. Her most recent single, Let Go, ranks alongside her best work. I think that 2023 is a year where Alewya will go worldwide and get her music right across America. The first interview I want to bring in is from The Line of Best Fit. At the end of 2021, they marked her as an artist on the rise. With some high-profile collaborations under her belt to that point (including with Little Simz), there was a lot of interest around her:

“Alewya, aka Alewya Demmisse, is a born and bred Londoner. Her creative work embodies her African heritage to the full - from the tribal motifs which feature in her music videos to the percussive vocal music she references in her arrangements. But it was in the rave scene where Alewya first connected with music on a deeply spiritual level.

“Pre-18, I was a raver,” says Alewya. “I would go to clubs and stuff, I loved dancing. However, I lost my love for it as I got older. I’m 27 now, but I think when phones became a thing, something changed.”

Gen Z would be hard pushed to remember a gig without a phone clenched in a spectator’s hand - every second captured, but not always felt. Alewya feels the distance between artist and performer created by phones has gone on to directly affect her musical output. “I don’t think people tune in as much as they used to, which is probably why I make my own energetic dance music,” she ponders. “I really want to reignite that feeling of being present in a club and dancing till 7am. Non-stop, barely going out for a cigarette break, just tuned in. I want to leave [the UK] and go to Portugal, Brazil or Ghana because I know people there really go for it with music and really dance.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Hendrik Schneider

She may not have left for the music of a foreign country just yet, but four pivotal years of Alewya’s life were spent in New York whilst working as a model. Spotted by Cara Delevingne at Notting Hill Carnival, Alewya tells us that she encountered “a lot of good things and a lot of really shit things” while in the US, but that these have all added to her depth of characteral. “In modelling, there’s so many characters you have to be for different casting directors, brands and people,” Alewya explains. “It’s just exhausting. I didn’t have the greatest time or the greatest modelling career, [but it] worked in my favour. Who I am now and what I do, everything aligns and feels right. I just bring Alewya… so, I guess that’s a good thing that came out of that soul destroying four years.”

Alewya began learning guitar in her early twenties. However, her creativity stems from inherently visual realms. She tells me that her music wouldn’t exist the way it does without her making physical drawings and paintings as part of the creative process. “My paintings and my drawings are the root of everything for me,” Alewya explains. “It’s important for me to marry the sound to what I see visually in my head. That’s how I know a song is going to get finished.” Without live performances during lockdown, music videos have provided the canvas for Alewya to express her visual ideas. Single “Jagna” which was directed by the artist and Tom Ringsby, shows her running through eerie darkness out into the desolate expanse of a desert. Newsest release "Play” provides the perfect counterpoint with its sensual low-lit visuals and a club inspired aura.

Alewya’s art has also helped anchor her work with other creatives. Her collaboration with Moses Boyd on “The Code” earlier this year opened up possibilities for her to communicate in a “different language.” She explains: “I’ve always had this idea of wanting to collaborate with an instrumentalist. I play instruments too, but it’s just a different language compared to working with an outright artist… you know when something’s working or if it’s not, you can’t lie to each other. Moses was the person that came to mind because he’s just so talented. I wanted to create live in this space that we were in. I’d paint the paintings for the background, get the lighting right and marry the visuals together with the music to [showcase] the world that I exist in. I started playing the guitar riff, Moses jumped in on the drums and I’m kidding you not, I just started singing the melody. It all happened within the space of half an hour. If you can make music that seamlessly with someone, you’re on the right path.”

Alewya’s releases to date have shown diverse sides to her personality: sensuality, rawness and infectious energy. But given that her biggest single, the sultry, club-fuelled “Sweeting”, landed during lockdown, she says her visibility has been slow to build. “My success has existed on the internet. Now I can see the reality of how things are really catching on. My sound is evolving. [I feel like] the public are going to be quite late in understanding and receiving my music. I’m just on a different planet”.

CLASH honoured Alewya in March last year. If she put out more solo material in 2021 than last year, I think 2023 is going to be a time when she is at her most productive and ambitious. It is clear right now that she is one of our very best artists. Her 2021 debut E.P. definitely announced her as a major talent who was going to have a long career:

“So when her debut EP ‘Panther In Mode’ arrived towards the end of last year, there was no question of its potential to position Alewya as one of the UK’s most intriguing new talents – a huge achievement for any artist, let alone one that only became known to most a year earlier. The EP’s first two singles, ‘Spirit_X’ and ‘Play’, were less about hinting at what to expect from ‘Panther In Mode’ and more to do with Alewya’s statement of intent as an artist, and of her desire to emphasise her independent spirit.

“Every choice that has been made in terms of what songs come out has really been quite instinctive,” she explains. “I wanted to establish my freedom as an artist before anyone thinks that they can expect anything from me. As artists, we deserve to have our freedom to explore and do whatever the fuck we want.”

Alewya’s music overflows with the sounds of her upbringing and many disparate influences. On the one hand, you can hear Arabic and Ethiopian motifs and melodies and on the other, the gritty sounds of the west London underground; her commanding vocals and lyrics always remaining front and centre. This is perhaps most evident on ‘Ethiopia’, the track chosen for her recent COLORS debut.

“The song is so special, because number one, it was produced by Shy FX [who is also Alewya’s manager] and also because my mum helped me write the Amharic bits. I know my roots and they're here to be honoured. If I'm going to claim any country, it's going to be my mother's land. It's going to be the land that I come from and the land that all this creative blood comes from.”

This amalgamation of influences comes pretty naturally to Alewya, but as a multimedia artist, so too does the idea of taking listeners on a creative journey, from start to finish. As she explains, aesthetics and visuals are a significant part of her overall artistry. – “I think as humans, we are so sensory. There's a picture being painted that I really want to get across and I don't want to just make it 2D; I want to make it 3D. By doing this, I can understand more of who I am and the process becomes the best bit for me”.

One of the big honours of Alewya’s 2022 was being handpicked by Grace Jones for the Meltdown Festival. Alewya and Jones share D.N.A. for sure. Artists with singular and extraordinary artistic visions, Alewya said in this interview with NME how she respects the huge impact Jones has. That uniqueness is something Alewya aspires to. We will get more interviews with her this year, but this is an interesting one from May that I wanted to highlight. Getting that nod and salute from Grace Jones confirms the fact Alewya is an artist on her way up to icon status:

“This level of hard-won self-confidence comes after four or five years making music “super privately” as a hobby and never indenting to make a career out of it. “Exploring music and production and learning instruments helped me find something that I could put so much love and attention into, which is something I never had before,” Alewya says. Doing it all by herself and for herself, she says, “laid the foundations”.

Alewya’s breakthrough was propelled forward in 2018, when Little Simz showed up at one of her early intimate gigs. “She was super early and came through a friend,” Alewya recalls. The pair started chatting afterwards and formed an instant connection: “She’s a human, and it’s easy to talk if you’re human as well.” From then, their friendship was born and they would spend time at each other’s house, which led to the creation of their 2020 collaboration ‘where’s my lighter’, which appeared on Simz’s lockdown EP, ‘Drop 6’.

Joining Simz on her UK tour a year later was a huge deal for Alewya. “For me, that was the crème de la crème of tours to go on, in terms of me being a new artist in the industry and seeing the levels.” Looking back, she describes it as “a beautiful education that I’m really grateful for. Simz is truly amazing and does give me tips. She’s got years of experience under her belt, so it’s beautiful to have that.”

Much like Simz, representing her heritage in her artistry is something that is “innate” within Alewya. She was born in Saudi Arabia and raised in Sudan by Ethiopian and Egyptian parents, before moving to London and Alewya’s sound is heavily influenced by her African and Arab roots. “I know what I resonate with, and I know what I’m made of,” she says, “and that’s naturally going to find its way out of me into whatever I touch”. Although she sees it as more of a subconscious thing, she says “in terms of how I choose to express myself, my head is there anyway”. That’s not to say there haven’t been bumps along the way, though: “sometimes I get insecure, but these are all things that add to the colours to paint the art with anyways”.

Alewya has a similar ethos when it comes to performing live, describing her shows as like a journey and “a time for me to free up and tap into my rawest emotions and dance. I give my 110% at every gig,” she says, adding that she actually thrives off “challenging audiences”. Rather than letting it demotivate her, it has the opposite effect. “It’s like exercise for me. I lose more inhibitions, because where is there to go? Not that she’s worried about that when it comes to Meltdown; “I have a feeling the crowd isn’t going to be like that. Judging by the line-up and Grace, it’s going to attract some really open people and I’m looking forward to that”.

Another huge artists primed for success and acclaim this year, there are so many people watching with excitement to see what Alewya delivers next. The London-based artist is a sensation whose solo material and collaborations are all wonderful. Go and follow Alewya and check out her music, as I think that 2023 is…