Loah

Loah is Sallay-Matu Garnett, a singer songwriter of Irish /Sierra Leonian descent. She performs her unique blend of Afro-folksoul across solo projects and with collaborators including Hozier, Lisa Hannigan, Fehdah, and Bantum, and most recently during quarantine, Queens rapper Bas and Ron Gilmore Jr (J Cole, Ari Lennox). She starred as Mary Magdalene in the 2019 Barbican production of Jesus Christ Superstar. During the pandemic, she returned to her old vocation as a pharmacist to work on the frontline, and still continued to contribute culturally, co-presenting the primetime RTE music show The Heart of Saturday Night with Úna Healy and in 2021 releasing When I Rise Up, an EP of poetry from the 1920s set to music. She is also an actress with several TV and film credits, including the highly-anticipated Conversations with Friends (2022) in which she plays Evelyn. With 80,000 monthly listeners, her sound combines the folk-inflected singer-songwriter styles of her natives Ireland and West Africa, the soul of the New World, and language and poetry reflecting both.