Live Review: Sampa The Great

Sampa The Great brought her new record The Return to Adelaide with gusto and strength. A slowly building force, the crowd was in full form by Sampa Tembo's arrival, ready to receive her words and might.

Her singers and drummer laid down the beat and melody, the rich tracks building from there. The music was not self-serving, but pointed to and held up Tembo’s voice. She took no prisoners with a hard-hitting opening verse, setting the stage for the more mellow tracks she had in store.

Lazy beats turned to slow jams, with vocals soaring around Tembo’s raps. Singing in English and in Bantu language, Bemba, Tembo took us through her experiences of her last year. Inspired by African rhythm and spiritual jazz movements past and present, Tembo’s cohesive sound pulled from far and wide.

A journey to freedom and to home, Tembo’s verses explored identity and place. The drive of her album and of the evening was that search for something greater. It was an introspective story of immigration to Australia and the return to find the origin, a place of belonging. 

Tembo dished out love, exuding happiness. These signals were returned to her on stage, the crowd relishing in her joy. Where her music hit with bite, its beginning was from a place of peace. Shouting out the Black queens in the house, we followed her chant “I am beautiful”, a response to her dialogue of empowerment.

From great to greater, Tembo moved from Freedom back to Rhymes To The East, reaching her Final Form and closing with OMG. The closer brought us right back up, a track shaped by her roots in African rhythm, clashing with the intensity of hip hop. With dancing and celebration, the narrative of the night was ascendance, one deeply grounded in self-discovered identity.