22/04/2020
Don't miss Sampa the Great's short film premiere of "The Return" today on YouTube.
Sampa The Great will be available for a Q&A on YouTube chat 15 mins before the premiere to answer any questions about her music and the album.
Starts today at 3pm (GMT+2) at sampathegreat.lnk.to/filmAP'
The short film "The Return" shot in Lusaka, Johannesburg and Swaziland explores themes of belonging, heritage, diaspora and freedom.
Raised between Zambia and Botswana, left for California at 19. In 2013 she moved to Sydney where she's became a big name but also felt unease being labelled Australian hip-hop without acknowledgement of her African background.
“I felt a sense of being lost in that narrative because it wasn’t fully describing who I am. You walk into an industry that doesn’t look like you and you become an ambassador because there’s not a lot of representation. I was afraid I’d do something that would reflect wrongly on a whole group of people.”
And back home she found herself being the stranger.
“They were like, ‘You’re different.’ People can hear the change, the displacement, in the way I speak [Bantu language] Bemba. It shook my core. I became the diaspora, which was a perspective I had sympathized with but didn’t think I’d have myself. I didn’t expect to be the displaced one.”
The complexity of her identity and others response became a source of anxiety until she realized that she is an artist and meant to create. For those who trying to erase her African heritage she would show them that she was raised by a "Bemba mother and Tumbuka father! And indeed, after watching "The Return" no one will doubt where Sampa stands!
See you 3PM (GMT+2) at sampathegreat.lnk.to/filmAP'
(Quotes from The Guardian interview: Sampa The Great: 'I went back to Zambia and people said, you're different')
