'I was up for the challenge': Sadé Awele on how music competitions helped her artistry
The emerging singer-songwriter also shares the inspiration behind her new EP
Nigerian Canadian singer Sadé Awele's songs are a refreshing blend of R&B, soul and spice. On her latest EP, Intuition, the pairing of her sultry vocals with simmering Afrobeats grooves radiate confidence.
She tells Angeline Tetteh-Wayoe on The Block that her love of music goes back to her childhood, as she would perform in music competitions at school.
Awele shares how her schooling and upbringing informed her artistry, her passion for her craft and more in an interview. You can hear the full conversation above and read an excerpt below.
So was music always involved in your life in Nigeria and Canada, or was it when you moved here [that] you started to want to express yourself musically?
It was involved in my life in Nigeria as well. Definitely not to the capacity that it is now, of course, but in Nigeria, I remember [my father] was the music enthusiast of the family, full-on. We'd have all these family trips and ... he was a huge fan of jazz and R&B and soul and gospel, just about everything. So he was the kind of person that would analyze the music as he listened to it. So he'd be like, "OK, can you hear the bass on that? Can you hear the keys on that?"
Most times he was talking to my brothers, but I was paying attention. I was like, "Oh, that sounds interesting." So I found that his love and passion for music definitely flowed to me and to my brothers: my brother produces and my other siblings as well, they're very musically oriented. So it definitely started back home.
And so the track we just heard was produced by your brother?
Yeah, it was.
Okay. Shout out for the production on that one.
Yeah.
So I heard that you.... would jump into [music] competitions.
Yeah.
Some people don't want to go that route, but you were down for [a] challenge.
Yeah. And honestly, I have to say, shout out to my teachers at the time, because they were really the ones that encouraged me and they were the first ones to coach me on stage presence. I remember the principal and their family being huge on music. So I remember even as early as ... around five years old or so, we would have these theme songs for the school specifically. And I remember we went to a studio and we did a little video.
I don't really remember what it looked like, but the school was very big on the arts and putting the students on stage to perform. And so competition only seemed right because I'd been in such a great environment already, and so I was up for the challenge because of how much they encouraged me and others that wanted to play a part in that.
I love that because I feel a lot of times, arts programs are the first thing that gets cut from schools when they're trying to fiscally be responsible. And so that's lovely because that was able to sort of support you in the pursuit of this dream, which is being a recording artist and a performer.
Yeah.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length. To hear the full interview, listen to The Block on CBC Music.