‘A natural born storyteller giving such a spine tingling vocal performance that I couldn’t keep count of the amount of times I had goosebumps’.
BRISTOL 24/7
Samantha Lindo is a Bristol based new wave jazz & soul artist with a retro indie edge, speaking & singing about some of the most relevant issues of our time.
‘Weaving poetry, spoken word and beautiful lyricism through her songs, Samantha presented some very real and raw issues of love, life and the human condition through her uplifting tones.’
Nitelife
Recently featured on the BBC Sounds Hot List curated by BBC Introducing, BBC 6 Music and Jaguar Worldwide, Samantha Lindo is described as having a voice that is ‘hauntingly flawless’, ‘having crowds mesmerised within seconds’.
Inspired by the vocal greats of jazz and Motown discovered in her father and grand father’s record collections, her new music borrows flavours from gospel and R&B as well as taking influence from the soul and indie pop of contemporary artists like Michael Kiwanuka, Cleo Sol, Kai Tempest, Celeste and mystery collective, Sault.
Covering subjects such as climate & racial justice, mental health and feminism, Nitelife magazine recounts how, by ‘weaving poetry’ and ‘beautiful lyricism through her songs’, Samantha presents some ‘very raw and real issues about love, life and the human condition’.
After launching her first single Turn & Leave alongside James Morrison at Sofar Sounds & Amnesty International’s global event ‘Give a Home’, Samantha also performed it as a featured artist at TEDx event ‘Daring to Disrupt’ in front of a live audience at Bristol’s Colston Hall and over 1M online.
Turn & Leave was featured on Saffron Records all female Spotify playlist, Sofar Sounds City Spotlight and in award winning short film ‘About’, by Brixton based Authentive productions, recently receiving several nominations in L.A & New York International Film Festival and now streaming on Amazon Video.
Having set up Girls, Girls, Girls, a London based all-female arts collective, with The Orchid project, a charity campaigning to end Female Genital Cutting, Lindo embarked on her first UK tour with co-founder Eliza Shaddad, collaborating with female artists all over the country including London’s Union Chapel.
As well as being celebrated in an interview in Oh Comely magazine’s issue on sisterhood, the pair were honoured to be chosen to perform in the Museum of London's ‘Votes for Women’ exhibition in 2018, singing the suffragette anthem in celebration of 100 years of the vote.
She appeared in The Guardian’s photographic essay last year, telling the story of being arrested for standing in solidarity for an indigenous Amazonian woman protesting to save her home, which inspired her single, Lips. The track was released November at her sell out show in Bristol and celebrating all the women stepping up into activism across the world to demand a just and urgent response to the climate crisis.
She released her single Underside at Rough Trade, written for her friend, a survivor of sexual abuse and CPTSD, performing it live on BBC Radio Bristol, alongside the launch of their podcast, Let’s Hear it from the Underside, in collaboration with Time to Change, a national charity aiming to de-stigmatise talking about mental health.
Bristol 24/7 described Samantha’s ‘warmth, honesty and spine tingling vocal performance’ and shared how they ‘couldn’t keep count of the amount of times [they] had goosebumps’.
After her re-imagination of Chaka Khan’s ‘Ain’t Nobody’ was released mid-lockdown, her single ‘Lights Go Out’, about the crumbling of white privilege and structural racism, was celebrated on BBC in the West’s International Women’s Day show in March 2021 in conjunction with a mini series of her podcast exploring the issues of the track.
Previewed at the BBC’s Airwaves festival, her last single - ‘Those Kids’ - was produced by Kat Deal with composition from Marla Kether: bass player for Ego Ella May and Yasmin Lacey. She released it at her sell out ‘Girls Girls Girls’ show at St George’s Bristol alongside Brit Award nominee Beth Rowley and Eliza Shaddad which she curated and produced.
The music video, a collaboration with videographer Lizzie Goldsack and contemporary dancer Tim Firmin, was made in support of Shelter’s campaign for fair renting rights to address youth homelessness in Bristol and is an emotional and poignant comment on healing, trauma and hope.
In late 2021 she was awarded a significant Arts Council project grant to record and promote a new album about her ‘ancestry’, exploring the different figures and relationships in her family history and drawing on themes of duel heritage identity, climate justice and intergenerational healing through telling some of their stories.
She is working with some of the best musicians and producers in Bristol’s new wave jazz scene on this project: Doug Cave, who plays and produces for Bristol Band Cousin Kula; Chris Langton who drums in jazz collective Snazzback; Marla Kether, who plays with Ego Ella May, Yasmin Lacey and the Ezra Collective; composer & keys player Alex Veitch, who she is co-writing with, and Jackson from the Worm Disco club on percussion.
Samantha describes the new sound as being ‘like the love child of Marvin Gaye and Carol King, with flavours of Corrine Bailey Rae, Cleo Sol and Leanne La Havas and hints of the RnB jazz of Robert Glasper’. She has also just received MOBO award funding from Help Musician’s UK to produce the visuals to accompany the album and will be releasing it in spring 2023.
This spring and summer she’s playing at the Bristol Beacon for Bristol Jazz & Blues Festival's Tonic sessions, celebrating key women in Bristol's music scene, on the St George’s Bristol stage at Bristol Cathedral to celebrate the jubilee, on the main amphitheatre stage at Bristol Harbour Festival and at her favourite Bristol festival, Valley Fest.
Backed by her new band of ‘exceptionally talented’ musicians, Nitelife Online conclude that they ‘can well imagine Samantha shooting up to the top with an alarming speed – eyes peeled for this girl!