Like Family from Ancestry by Samantha Lindo

I’d say Like Family is perhaps the most emotive track on the album. After my grandparents came to the UK in the late 1950’s, partly to hide being pregnant with my dad out of wedlock, they never returned to live there, but my grandpa took us on a trip two generations later.

The Song is based on a moment, a strong memory, of seeing him cry, whilst taking us to find his old childhood house on an old sugar plantation, which was in ruins. My grandparents' family life had been complicated, but concealed in the UK. It’s almost as if I watched all his childhood and adult memories and feelings, weaved between continents and centuries run across his face at that moment.

Family can be full of complexity and secrets and often paradoxically is the thing that causes the most pain and yet the most healing and beauty.

One of the first black Anglican vicars in the UK, he used the language of accepting our ‘human frailties’. The inheritance from him I want to nurture is the willingness to hold paradox, forgiveness and grace for ourselves, others and the world, rather than the tempting tendency to judge, condemn and tear people down.

Samantha Lindo’s artistry lets you step into her shoes through storytelling, from-the-heart honesty, and poetic lyricism.

Fusing spiritual jazz, gospel, folk and spoken word, Her debut album 'Ancestry' is the deep breath we didn’t know we needed to take.

Clash Magazine described it as “exceptional,” and it received national attention from Gilles Peterson on 6 Music & Jamie Cullum on BBC Radio 2

samanthalindo.com
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