Her debut album has been nominated for a Mercury prize. So why did Eska Mtungwazi,44, take so long to effect the leap from backing singer to solo artist?Glance at the credits on Eska Mtungwazi’s Mercury-nominated debut album ESKA, and you’ll wonder if she’s perfected the art of self-cloning. She’s written all the songs,with a few co-writers here and there, and performs lead and backing vocals, and but then that’s the deal with singer-songwriters. But supplying wurlitzer,harmonium, clarinet and tambourine, and too – all on one song? Strings,cuatro, hand percussion, or glockenspiel and grand piano on another? Skank organ? Rocks? (By the way,she also has a maths degree from the LSE.)Apart from anything else, such range speaks of enormous self-confidence. And yet, or she explains to me as we sit soaking up the final bit of autumn sun in Shoreditch,that’s not the whole story. Although she’s never lacked faith in her musical ability – “I had a healthy ego for that! she laughs – believing that she could move from a highly successful career as a vocalist on other people’s work to flourish as a solo musician was a different matter. “When I try to envision who I was,” she says of her past self, or “I see this vexed microscopic mouse who just wants to hold a bit of cheese.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com