SIRA* – Songs For the End Of the World
British-Nigerian musician, filmmaker, and visual artist SIRA* (Zina Saro-Wiwa) announces her debut album Songs for the End of the World. Set for release on October 4, the collection of songs acts as a toolkit for the apocalypse – how to survive and thrive in the hardest of times.
Alongside the announcement, SIRA* shares the captivating lead single + video, “Cosmic Shebeen.”
SIRA* says, “‘Cosmic Shebeen’ came about because I, like many people at the moment, am obsessed with the idea of the end of the world. But the end of the world is not a fixed linear thing or idea. There are many worlds, many endings, many beginnings and actually it’s about cycles.” She continues, “’Cosmic Shebeen’ is urgent and upbeat. I don’t think apocalypse needs to be represented only by dirges, atonality, dissonance or sadness. This is too simplistic. The human response to the apocalypse is more varied and dynamic than that. And many people all over the world are or have been experiencing their own apocalypses as a result of global systems. Moreover, I think dance, community and connection is the way through whatever this transition those of us are facing. And I think the shebeen represents that space. I don’t know if you are dead or alive in the ‘Cosmic Shebeen’ but you are free.”
SIRA* wants to talk about the apocalypse. She’s prepared to tackle the weight of such a controversial topic, because she’s already spent so much time doing it. SIRA*’s upcoming debut album Songs for the End of the World is a carefully curated collection of tracks that serve as an outlet for these emotions towards the apocalypse. Composed, arranged and sung entirely by SIRA*, the album also features heavyweight musicians such as Mark de Clive-Lowe, rising LA-based star Daryl Johns and it includes a conversation with the Australian aboriginal writer and academic Tyson Yunkaporta. It also contains field recordings from her art making in Ogoniland. The timing for this album couldn’t be better. SIRA* is the musical alter-ego of visual artist and filmmaker Zina Saro-Wiwa and is a proud member of the Ogoni, indigenous people of the Niger Delta region. Her father was Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer and human rights activist executed by the Nigerian military government in 1995 for leading peaceful protests against Shell Oil and its environmental and economic denigration of Ogoniland.
“My art life has been a way of taking hold of that legacy and transforming the pain into something powerful and beautiful,” she says. “But I’ve been singing and composing since the age of four. And whilst art has been good for trying to manage the psychological and political fallout from my father’s death, music is actively healing my heart in a deeper way. It is a return to my truest self. The lynch pin to all my creative outputs.”
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