Singer-songwriter BEKA has always been an all-embracing conversationalist, and it certainly shows in her atmospheric brand of pop music.
The Nottingham-based artist’s emotive lyricism and soulful vocals manage to not only draw in her listeners but also effectively engage them in open dialogue through the universality of human emotion.
Originally a touring musician who lent her voice to HONNE in several of their tracks including ‘Location Unknown—Brooklyn Session’ and ‘Crying Over You,’ BEKA has since come into her own and has penned several dynamic pop tunes over the course of a year—these include her debut single ‘I’ll Be There’ and her most recent release ‘Thorn.’
Bandwagon recently caught up with BEKA for a chat regarding the inspiration behind ‘Thorn’ and her experience headlining her very own show for the first time.
BANDWAGON TV
Tell us more about your single ‘Thorn’ which came out last October.
So ‘Thorn’ was written because I was in the shower and my husband came in, opened the door, and was like, “what would happen if you wrote about the most painful thing in your life?” which is a very traumatising question but I had this phrase that came to mind straight away which was “that thorn in your side is hurting me.” I think I was just really intrigued by the fact that this line had come to me straight away. It made me have to go away and sort of think about what that was about, and the pain from my teenage years came up.
When I was a teenager, in my big family, we had some family breakdowns and I think at the time it was really hard but you just get on with it don’t you because that happens to loads of families. And I think as a woman, it was me sitting with my younger self and listening to what she had been going through, and what that younger self was feeling and as a woman now recognising that where there’s love there’s also great pain but that’s okay. The thorn in your side is that pain point with someone else and I guess we all also have them.
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Can you break down the lyrics: “that thorn in your side is hurting me”?
The phrase ‘thorn in your side’ is about having something that’s your stumbling block. It’s like the challenge about you or the thing you find most challenging about somebody else and I think we all have it don’t we. We roll our eyes at somebody in our family and we think “here we go again” but we choose to stick around because we love them and I think the thorns in our sides are sometimes the things we see and decide to deal with but sometimes we let them fester and become gammy. It’s a visual representation of the pain points in our life.
Was there a particularly painful experience you went through that inspired you to pen those words? If so, was writing ‘Thorn’ a sort of catharsis for you?
It was so cathartic. I think it was a catharsis I didn’t know I needed. I’ve written about love and mental health and other nostalgic elements I guess but I didn’t even know if I should release this because it felt so personal. The vocal kind of sits on this point where it’s higher than I’ve ever sung because I wanted it to be a sound representation of what I was feeling. It all felt very vulnerable but I also just love a vulnerable song so.
On the cover art for the single, you can be seen posing beside a huge teddy bear; that imagery seems to be evocative of childhood memories. Is there any significance behind such a visual?
Absolutely, yeah. The song came from a place of nostalgia so I wanted something that represented that universal feeling of childhood, youth and innocence. For me, that’s like a teddy bear but I wanted something as well, that was a bit playful and the scale of it… it represents that these childhood things can grow with us. You’ve got this massive bear and me as a woman with all the vulnerabilities of my childhood as well. You try and squash it down but they’re all still there. I love that you picked up on that.
When you released your single ‘You Got,’ you announced headline gigs in Nottingham and London—what were those shows like?
I wish that you were all there. They were so crazy. It was like, I’ve done so much performing in my life and obviously got to tour with HONNE and I love those shows but there’s nothing like going into a room where people have paid their actual money to see you. It was absolutely crazy and I think I’ve always wanted my shows to feel like a room where we’re all just a family. Do what you want—sing, dance, look stupid because this is a safe space. It really felt like that. It was very surreal though, and people sang back parts of songs which I didn’t know anyone knew. I feel very lucky to have international, well, I call them friends but I guess fans around the world. To have people actually in a room singing with you...it was nuts.
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Speaking of shows, you also played at Rough Trade Nottingham at the end of October. How was that different from your previous gigs? Would you say you prefer more intimate shows since that was essentially in a record store?
I was a bit nervous about the Rough Trade venue actually because I knew it was a hometown show and there were loads of people who messaged saying they wanted to come but we decided to do this very intimate show. I was nervous about whether it would feel too disappointing and if we should we have done a show with more people but it was so precious. I think it was the first show ever that was solely mine. Already it was a night I knew I wouldn’t forget but to have a room where you could see people’s faces and hear individual voices, it felt like being inside a womb almost? Not that I can remember that sadly but I’m so grateful that my team knew what they were doing with that decision because it really did feel like everything I hoped it would.
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While we’re still on the topic of shows, you headlined the BBC Introducing Stage at Latitude Festival for your first-ever live performance. Please tell us more about that experience.
The BBC Introducing team had been so amazing this year and we had this BBC Intro spot on Radio 1 which in the UK is our main radio station so to then be told we were headlining one of their stages was nuts. And, to find out it was at a festival that I’ve never been to but always wanted to go, was really overwhelming and exciting. I didn't know if anyone was gonna know any of my songs but there were so many people there who knew all the words. There was this one guy… I ended up finding out his name was Tom. He had this amazing Hawaiian shirt on and he was dancing super free and wild, and it was amazing. It was also kind of nuts to be in a forest because obviously the sound is crazy and you’ve got a really quick change-over but it was a real honour.
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What was it like supporting Griff at Lafayette for War Child UK’S ‘Day Of The Girl’ show?
I love Griff. I admire her so much and I’m a huge fan of her music. I had her on my show Cuppa & Natter and that’s where we kind of first met and had this girl romance for months but I’ve actually never met her in person because of the pandemic so arriving and meeting her for the first time, and then getting to play a show alongside her, it was such a joy, and she’s so much fun. Live shows are only just coming back in the UK so to have so many female artists on one line-up was amazing. Olivia Dean played and I’ve always wanted to see her. I met Dylan for the first time, it was really fun. It felt like a real girl power spice girls moment.
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How did it feel playing for a show that champions women?
Well, that was the most beautiful thing about the night. There was this point where these two incredible women got up and they spoke about the experience globally for young women and what they’re going through, and how the charity helps. One of the women had been directly impacted by the work of War Child, and she made everybody be silent, and close our eyes as she walked us through this experience that we then found out was what her mom had gone through. It was spine-tingly. For me, that’s what I love most about music—it’s what it does in culture and what it does to bring about change. I know that sounds a bit dramatic but music does that doesn’t it, it penetrates things like nothing else can so it was a real honour. This is a part of the reason why I do music.
You mentioned your social media series ‘Cuppa & Natter.’ I understand it’s a series where you establish meaningful conversations with your audiences. How important is creating a dialogue with your fans through the platform?
I think in my upbringing… because my family are from different parts of the world, and my dad was adopted, I’ve always had this real fascination with people’s stories, and how much more there is going on for people than what meets the eye. I kind of love the power of hearing a story because it makes you feel empathetic, and suddenly you have more of a care for someone who you might’ve once looked at and thought “oh, they’re this.” I’ve always wanted to make a space for those curious questions I guess we’re scared to ask. You know, there are so many things in different cultures that we all think privately in our head but we never have a way of asking. Or maybe we don’t have friends with disabilities or friends of different races or friends who speak different languages or friends who are on a different gender journey. So I think getting to have those conversations that stop us in our tracks allow us to be a bit vulnerable, and penetrate these topics. It’s the thing I find most exciting and I love it. It’s a bit scary sometimes because you don’t want to overstep the mark and equally, I feel for my community, that we all want to understand and learn, and hear about these different opinions. So that also gives me the momentum to keep doing it.
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How did you come up with the concept for this series?
In my family, my grandma is from North Yorkshire in England and they drink loads of tea so she’s this white British lady who lives in the West Indies. Every day at 4 o’clock, she has tea in a china cup, and so in our family, we all love tea. If anything’s going on, I’ll be like “should we make a cup of tea?” and we’d have a chat. For me, my curiosity has always been able to come on in that one-to-one cup of tea setting so I thought let’s call it a ‘Cuppa & a Natter’ because that’s what I spent most of my time doing. Being in Asia was the thing that really provoked the idea for me because there was so much within this wide Asian culture that I’ve never experienced in the UK and was so fascinated with wanting to ask questions about the things that I was seeing. So shout out to Asia for inspiring me. It just felt right.
I know about this whole obsession with tea because I studied in the UK for four years prior. I was in Sheffield and everyone’s crazy about Yorkshire tea there.
That’s amazing! Aren’t they? Everyone’s constantly drinking tea.
But I digress! Back to the questions. The first anniversary of your hit 'I’ll Be There' was on 2 October. How does it feel knowing it’s been a whole year since you’ve put that song out?
On that day, I’d woken up and I’d gone to visit my dad in Liverpool, and it was raining outside, and I was standing by the window when I realised that it had been a year, and I just burst into tears. I’m an emotional person but I don’t just burst into tears randomly. I think I just felt really moved that it has been a year of people supporting my music, and I think for me, it was a personal journey just realising that I’d done the thing I’d wanted to do. It was very humbling actually. The response to ‘I’ll Be There’ is always the most wonderful out of all the songs so the song feels like a little gift in my life. The gift that keeps on giving.
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Can you tell me more about the lyrical inspiration behind ‘I’ll Be There’?
Yeah, so the song I started when I came back from tour and my best friend, my husband, had been really struggling with his mental health, and I kind of hadn’t realised how bad things were. I was just really moved, wanting to be able to help him, and mental health is something that’s only just being spoken about in the way that it deserves to be. If you had a broken leg, no one’s gonna be telling you to just walk on it, and I think mental health can be so misunderstood so I was making some toast and tea, and I had this little melody that came to mind. Before I started writing anything, I had a session coming up with HONNE and I was really nervous about what I was gonna bring to the session but I had that melody so I began recording it, and when I sang those opening lines “You don't always feel like being centre of attention/And there's a side of you that sometimes gets frightened,” in true me fashion, I just got really teary. It was one of those magical songs that I guess is a message to him, and a bit of a message to myself as well, saying you gotta show up for yourself. In British culture, we’re not good at saying how we feel. We’re not very good at reaching out so I wanted it to just be a thing you could send to somebody without having to say anything to let them know that you’re there.
Since you’ve been touring for quite a bit, what have you learned both musically and personally since you’ve started?
That’s an amazing question. I think musically I realised how much I love 80s music. In everything that I create, I’m just so influenced by that and those big beautiful classical lines. I think the thing I’m learning both musically and personally at the moment is you can keep pushing as far as you want to, there really are no restrictions, and I think letting something come from a pure place in yourself, whether that’s how you express yourself, whether that’s in conversation, I think something coming from the truth in you on that day is more phenomenal than any curated, contrived thing that looks cool but actually isn’t you. You just gotta back yourself.
Lastly, is there anything you’d like to say to your fans?
So many things. I think I just want to say I’m very grateful for their love and support and as contrived as this may sound, genuinely if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to even start this journey. I read every single message I ever get and I cannot wait to come out and play, and have cuppa and natters together, and connect because I’m just a normal weird person so I’m excited to meet all the fellow weirdos to say thank you in person.
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