IAC Commissions: Loah

“Loah's voice is stunning and so is the music she makes.”—NPR

Loah is Sallay Matu Garnett, an artist and performer of Irish / Sierra Leonean origin who grew up between Maynooth, County Kildare in Ireland and West Africa. 

She has just returned to Ireland after starring as Mary Magdalene in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s iconic Jesus Christ Superstar at the Barbican, London in 2019. With her unique blend of Afro-folksoul, she released her debut EP, This Heart, in 2017, followed by an entire EP of remixes in 2018. She has featured on records by Lisa Hannigan and Kíla, co-written with Hozier, and shared stages with greats in multiple genres such as the Wainwrights, Paul Brady, Bill Whelan, Bilal, and Cassandra Wilson. She has toured in Ireland, the UK, Sierra Leone, Europe and the USA, and has multiple television and film appearances to her name (Striking Out, Finding Joy, Girl from Mogadishu). Over the last year, she's released a number of musical collaborations with Irish, Icelandic, and Sierra Leonean producers, including her sister Fehdah, rapper Drizilik, and her regular collaborator and Corkonian, Bantum. This year, she continues to release music both with Bantum and solo.

Photo credit: Caolan Barron

The pandemic has forced humanity into an involuntary state of uncertainty that may last a long time. This is troubling, of course, but, as with any of life’s terribly sad moments, is not without redemptive possibility. We are challenged to find a new comfort level with uncertainty as a more constant companion. 

Like everyone, we at Irish Arts Center are entering a new phase of grappling with all of this. We still don’t know when it will be safe or allowable to gather in groups for live performing arts experiences. We continue to innovate our digital programming and prepare for our magnificent new building that awaits us, soon enough we hope. We develop scenarios and contingency plans. 

And we challenge ourselves to lean into the moment. For this, as ever, we rely on the artists. 

To that end, we have commissioned more than two dozen artists reflecting a range of perspectives across our artistic community, to create short works that respond to the idea of finding grace in uncertainty, to find meaning in the chaos, and perhaps even some redemption, as we recognize the fear and sadness we feel. 

In his work On the Transmigration of Souls, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic just weeks after 9/11, John Adams sought to create a “memory space” for those who suffered loss of life, of loved ones, of innocence, and to evoke the feeling “that we are all united by a common bond of humanity.” 

In a similar spirit, we wish to inspire a volume of artistic responses that might form a kind of tapestry of emotion, a chronicle of the moment, work that can be appreciated now and for the long-term.

The common bond of humanity unites these artists—and will carry us all through this moment.