Lira

In a global music world brimming with solo female performers, Lira stands out as that rare thing: an artist who has been able to create a formidable career without compromising the very values that feed her creative soul.
This may not sound like much but cast around the current charts and it becomes clear that Lira’s ability to retain a deep sense of integrity whilst selling Double Platinum and raking in the awards is not commonplace.
For this 31-year-old, it’s a no brainer. “If something doesn’t resonate with me, I won’t do it,” she says simply. “I have to really connect with the words that I am singing or the statements I am making or the clothes that I am wearing – or else I’d rather not be in this.” Indeed, because of this commitment to herself, Lira almost didn’t pursue the kind of music career that has seen her become one of South Africa’s most successful artists, respected by her peers and critics alike and adored by fans.

What was remarkable from the start was Lira’s ability to reach out and touch the widest spread of music fans, young and old, black and white and she is now established as a crossover artist capable of delivering to everyone from
hip, black urbanistas to suburban grannies and everyone in-between.
For Lira, the personal pleasure she takes in being able to create music that so many different people “get” is undisguised. “If I look back on the past five years, the most amazing thing to me is the way that I have been able to break new ground in a country that was previously built on division,” she says. In this Lira sees herself as a product of the “new South Africa”. “Even though I was born when apartheid was still in force, I never experienced the hecticness
of it. I was able to go to a ‘white’ school and so learned to see white people as equal and when I look at my audience it just makes sense to me that it is so mixed and diverse.”
But even though Lira sees herself as a product of a democratic South Africa, she’s not blinded by the challenges her home country faces. “South Africa is not the easiest place in which to live but even though I am aware of this, I
choose to live my life in positivity and I want to be a beacon for others in that.”
Indeed, a deep sense of positive spirituality increasingly filters into Lira’s music and the way she lives her day-to-day life – and it’s not a stretch to discover why she called her now platinum-selling, multi-award winning 2008
album ‘SOUL IN MIND’.
When the album was first released Lira described the 13-track record as “the sound of a woman getting into her own skin, of finding her own creative voice”. “My music has to be empowering,” Lira says of the songs on the critically acclaimed ‘SOUL IN MIND’. “I am very, very conscious of that – especially growing up in Africa. I don’t want to bring anything negative into my music yet do that in way that is not preachy.”

‘SOUL IN MIND’ also proved to be the hot favourite at the 15th annual South African Music Awards (SAMAS), the country’s most prestigious music awards event, winning a leading four SAMAs including the prestigious Album of the
Year and Female Artist of the Year.
Ask Lira about the armful of SAMAs she received at the early May 2009 ceremony and the most important thing to her was the acclaim her multiple win earned from ordinary fans. “Immediately afterwards it really had not sunk in. But on the plane to Cape Town the next day I had people congratulating me in a way that showed they felt like they had also triumphed that night and that is when what we had been able to achieve really hit home.”
It’s this attitude, coupled with her ability to still see the small (but important) details in things that ensures Lira remains solidly on firm ground in a career that can so often catapult its stars into a world of rampant egoism. “Just the
other day I was driving in Joburg and these two older white ladies began hooting at me like crazy,” Lira confides. “At first I thought there was something wrong but then I realised they just wanted to wave at me because they had
recognised me. At the same time, I stopped at a traffic light and an older black lady on the pavement also began shouting and waving to me, in support. It’s at those times that I really feel blessed to be able to do something I love, in
the way that I want to.”

Now, early 2011, sees the multi-award winning artist return with a brand new single ‘Phakade’ off her fourth studio album – RETURN TO LOVE (scheduled for release on 31 Jan 2011). An album reflective of her true identity, leaving
no doubt that it’s lyrically and musically her most powerful album to date!
“I was very focused on defining the ‘Lira’ sound even more, with this album,” Lira says of the vision behind possibly the classiest – yet infinitely accessible – record to come out of South Africa in a long while. “I wanted to send this out
into the greater musical world with a real solid, really refined sound that is unmistakably my own.”
In this quest, Lira, and producer, Robin Kohl, have succeeded handsomely. There is a real feel of Lira’s scorching, soul-filled vocals. And the subtle sense of her South African roots flickers throughout the material, along with Lira’s
unique vocal stylings, which means RETURN TO LOVE, is evidently true toLira’s evolution as composer, co-producer and performer.