Singles

'Ancestry' explores the stories from my family history, including my great, great grandfather: a black methodist minister who defiantly married a white Scottish teacher in Jamaica in 1880;  his son, the Conservator of forestry of the whole island, who planted and protected the trees that are now under threat from the extreme weather and flooding of the climate crisis; and the living and future children in our family, all framing the expression of themes of climate justice, dual heritage identity and inter-generational healing.
 
The album was funded by Arts Council England and the MOBO fund of Help Musicians UK. It was produced by Doug Cave, whose music features regularly on BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Worldwide FM and has frequent rotation on Spotify's jazz/leftfield Playlists, as well as some of Bristol's finest new wave jazz musicians from Snazzback, No Go Stop and Cousin Kula. 

The sound was inspired by classic artists like Marvin Gaye, Carole King and Minnie Riperton as well as Robert Glasper-esque RnB and jazz, and contemporary artists like of Cleo Sol, Sault, Michael Kiwanuka and Jordan Rakei, as well as spoken word of Arlo Parks, Kae Tempest and Self Esteem.

Ancestry

The idea behind 'Ancestry' was to explore the stories from my family history, including my great, great grandfather: a black minister who married a white woman in Jamaica in 1880;  his son, the conservator of forestry on the island, who planted the trees that are now under threat from the extreme weather and flooding of the climate crisis; and the living and future children in our family, all framing the expression of themes of climate justice, dual heritage identity and generational healing.
 
The album was funded by Arts Council England and the MOBO fund of Help Musicians UK. I worked with producer Doug Cave, whose music features regularly on BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Worldwide FM and has frequent rotation on Spotify's jazz/leftfield Playlists, as well as some of Bristol's finest new wave jazz musicians from Snazzback, No Go Stop and Cousin Kula. 

The sound was inspired by classic artists like Marvin Gaye, Carole King and Minnie Riperton as well as Robert Glasper-esque RnB and jazz, and contemporary artists like of Cleo Sol, Sault, Michael Kiwanuka and Jordan Rakei, as well as spoken word of Arlo Parks and Kae Tempest.

Legacy

Finally Free

Bloodline

Feel This Home

Everything I Need

Shades Of Yellow

Like Family

Little Songbird

Worthy

Child In Me

Curl Up & River River

I'd die a death to love you
I'd lay it all down.
Let go of what I cling to
all the faults that I've found. 

I'd die a death to love you
I'd give up the fight. 
A change of heart 
and a sleepless night. 

Deep down low
deep down low
deep down low
deep down low.

I'd die a death to love you
I'd lay my weapons down. 
I'd rather suffer at your hand 
than defend myself right now. 

I'd die a death to love you
I'd give up being right. 
My spears of blame, 
turn to rays of light. 

Deep down low
deep down low
deep down low
deep down low.  

Deep down low, face down on my knees
a greater love is washing over, over me.
Deep down low, face down, close to the ground, 
coz' death is the place, where my love is found. 

(repeat) 

Deep down low
deep down low
deep down low
deep down low.

Deep Down Low

Performed with The Homegrown Collective. 
www.facebook.com/thehomegrowncollective

'A heart that's grown wilder is totally free, free enough to give in it's...entirety'.

Wilder

This is a preview to Samantha Lindo's debut album 'Gateway', to be released and toured in May 2016.  All songs by Samantha Lindo and Jacob Spencer. Produced and recorded by Daniel Cole. Mastered by Daniel Cole. Recorded at Wick Court, Bristol, 2015.  

Shine

River River

Heaven

Curl Up

Mirror

Turn & Leave

Butterflies - Recorded Live at Swiss Church
Written and sung by Samantha Lindo
Piano by Tom Coxhead
Recorded and mastered by Dan Cole

Butterflies - Recorded Live at Swiss Church

'Ruby loved her man. Like he was the King. And like an old oak tree he reigned'...

Ruby was written about my Grandmother, and her Mother. About what life dealt them, the dreams they had, and the deep pining for place called home, far, far away. 

Written by Samantha Lindo, James Cameron and produced by Daniel Cole. 

Ruby

'The Rush, The Light', put simply, is about a very real thing living in you, called hope. 
And about wishing the future could be different for the ones you love, who aren't even here yet! 

Written by Samantha Lindo, James Cameron and produced by Daniel Cole. 

The Rush, The Light

'The Rush, The Light' and 'Ruby', written by Samantha Lindo and James Cameron. Produced by Dan Cole, Remixedd by James Cameron. Released in April 2012. 
Watch this space for epic remixes by Weathstorms collective. 

The Rush, The Light (Weatherstorms Remix)

Lips

Written by Samantha Lindo 
Produced by DJ Bunjy & Chris Gould

Underside

Ain’t Nobody

As president Trump leaves the seat of power, UK Soul/Jazz artist Samantha Lindo releases new track ‘Lights Go Out’ about the crumbling grip of white supremacy and the process of relinquishing privilege to achieve freedom for all. 

After the feature of Samantha Lindo’s first single in the BBC Sounds ‘Hot List’ curated by BBC Introducing and BBC 6 Music, her latest track ‘Lights Go Out’, written on ‘black out Tuesday’, promises to pack just as much of a punch. 

Samantha Lindo is a Bristol based soul & UK jazz artist of mixed Jamaican heritage making waves both locally and nationally. She has been championed by the Bristol Post as having ‘a voice that is hauntingly flawless’, which has ‘crowds mesmerised within seconds’. 

Her track, ‘Underside’, was launched at her last live show before lockdown at Rough Trade and was performed live on BBC Radio Bristol, receiving rave press reviews of her ‘spine tingling vocal performance’. It was also at this show that she debuted her chilling spoken word piece ‘Naming the Water’, about white privilege, climate change and police brutality. 

Following that, on Black Out Tuesday, an action originally organised within the music industry in response to the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, Samantha took out her pen once again to say that, although good, we need to be doing more than posting black squares to show our commitment to racial equality.

Achieving racial equality involves not just shaming individual acts of racism & racist attitudes, but recognising and being prepared to relinquish white privilege. Author Otegha Uwagba, says “if white people take allieship seriously they stand to lose the privileges that are as integral to their lives as breathing. Losing those privileges is necessary, that allieship will cost them the shape of their lives as they know it”. Equalling the playing field might feel like losing out to some in the short term, but the song asserts that as a society, we’ll ‘find our freedom underneath it all’. 

Speaking as someone who is mixed race but passes for white, her perspective straddles experiences and identities and Samantha has been talking about issues of racial justice for a decade. Nitelife magazine describes how she ‘weaves poetry, spoken word and beautiful lyricism’ through her songs, ‘presenting some very real and raw issues of love, life and the human condition’ and the new track ‘Lights Go Out’, which brings together her music and activism, is no exception.

“The song is upbeat, fun and hopeful but it also speaks truth. The words ‘frozen still, scared to give it up, one more sip, from the silver cup’ describe the kind of last ditch attempts to cling to racist power that we saw so clearly with the recent invasion of the US capitol. 

However, the lyrics ‘you know it wasn’t earned, so we unpick and we unlearn’ describe the more subtle necessity of recognising privilege on an individual level and doing the work to dismantle biases. I think that there is real hope and freedom for everybody on the other side of that process.” 

Lindo explores this in more depth in an episode of her podcast ‘Let’s Hear it From the Underside’, which will be released alongside the track. She has a moving conversation with diversity coach & educator Will James as hip-hop rap artist and ‘Check Your Blind Spot’ campaigner Joshua Luke Smith, a white man who is using his privilege to & educate his audience and platform black artists. 

Lights Go Out is inspired by Janelle Monae’s Turntables, the gospel roots of Micheal Kiwanuka and BBC 6 Music’s 2020 album of the year winners, Sault and you can hear flavours of the Afro-beat, soul and RnB sprinkled in that influence her sound. Her authentic style and musicality draws from a wide range of influences, from vocal greats like ‪Etta James to spoken word prophetess ‪Kae Tempest, as she harnesses the intrinsic power of the female vocal to speak beauty & truth.

Lights Go Out

Samantha Lindo is a multidisciplinary RnB and Soul artist whose sound spans the realms of spiritual jazz, gospel and spoken word. 

Her forthcoming album, 'Ancestry', was funded by Arts Council England and the MOBO awards and uses the stories from her family history to explore themes of dual heritage identity, inter-generational healing and climate justice. 

Her music was featured on the BBC Sounds Hot List curated by BBC Introducing & BBC 6 Music, in award winning short film ‘About’, currently streaming on Amazon Prime and she was invited to perform it and speak about her activism at the TEDx ‘Daring to Disrupt’ event in front of 1M+ online. 

She is influenced by classic artists like Marvin Gaye, Carole King and Minnie Riperton as well as contemporaries such as Cleo Sol, Sault, Robert Glasper and Jordan Rakei.

Samantha Lindo

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