Multi-hyphenate creative Amyra announces the presales for her compelling debut body of work WITNESS -out September 15th- with the video for vulnerable yet impassioned single ‘On the Run.’
A musician, playwright, author and activist, Amyra artfully blends music and poetry to deliver powerful performances focused on anxieties that rest within inequalities and injustices of the current world while prompting healing. Described as “a testimony, a hymn, a battlecry,” WITNESS is a work of art that celebrates love, blackness, and womanhood as it urges anyone listening to dance out of the shackles of societal captivity with strength and peace.With heartfelt lyricism that borders on a brilliant stream of consciousness, WITNESS gives the world a view into Amyra’s world as she urges listeners to introspect and overcome the weight of silence to find their way to the freedom that awaits them on the other side. Her latest offering from the album ‘On the Run’ is this empowered artist’s journey to learning to love themselves and others, finding safety in an unsafe world that makes hatred and fear its weapons. Speaking of heart-wrenching experiences that inspired the track, she says “ I wrote On the Run during a time of excruciating tension, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile had just been murdered and my spirit didn’t quite understand how to feel safe in my body. As a Black woman I often find myself shifting paradoxes, even when at peace I am forced to decide whether I am Black or Woman. On the Run was an attempt to write myself into a safe place. It is an odyssey of love. It is about the overwhelming fear of loving a black body as a black body.” She continues,” It analyzes the cyclical madness that has made this history of violence all we know to expect. We did not come here as slaves, we were made into them. There was a time before this, before the theft of limbs and melody, before the constant bloodshed, a time when we were free, free enough to love unapologetically. My hope was that this song could take us there, or at least remind us that this time and place existed before and will again. I was born on the run and will not rest until I wake to a morning without mourning.” With her timely and impactful music, Amyra speaks out for every Black person targeted by the ignorance of the world, and Amyra’s work teases out narratives that deserve to be explored. An urgent look into themes of love and loss, bliss and bloodshed, WITNESS is just the brave beginning of a long fight. The presale will be available on Amyra's bandcamp page : https://amyraleon.bandcamp.com/ About Amyra : Musician, playwright, author and activist AMYRA has performed throughout the United States and Europe collaborating with the likes of The Apollo, BAM, BBC, Roundhouse, Amnesty International and more.She composed Una Mujer Derramada in collaboration with Sivan Eldar commissioned by and performed with Lisbon's Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Montpellier National Opera, and the Paris Chamber Orchestra. She is the inaugural recipient of the Battersea Arts Centre Phoenix Award which led to the 2019 London premiere of her debut play VASELINE.She is also the author of Concrete Kids (Penguin 2020), Freedom We Sing (Flying Eye Books 2020) and Darling (Walker, Candlewick 2022) . Amyra has shared stages with Common, Robert Glasper, Nikki Giovanni and more. This was written by Malvika Padin, journalist and editorial coordinator of #WCM
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