One of the things I really miss about Dublin is popping into town and seeing some of the great local musical acts gigging that week. I haven’t seen Loah live yet but I really can’t wait to.

Who is Loah?

Loah is Sallay Matu Garnett, who grew up between Maynooth in Co Kildare and Sierra Leone. She’s already worked with Villagers and co-wrote ‘Something New’ with Hozier, from his mega selling album. Oh yeah, they only went and won BMI award for that.

Loah describes her sound as ‘ArtSoul’, combining soul with West African influences. The first track I had heard by Loah was ‘Cortege’, a song sung in Sherbro and Mende, languages of Sierra Leone.

‘This Heart’ is sung in the English tongue and will make the track far more accessible to a radio audience. I’d like to add here that people are weird, we’ll watch the Eurovision which has the guts of 40 countries and different languages, but many don’t want to hear anything else on our radios only English. Much like ‘foreign film’, ‘World music’ seems to be a niche for the masses.

‘This Heart’ puts Loah firmly front and centre of the great soul singers of our generation. Her influences are blended together beautifully on ‘This Heart’. She’s got a fantastic tone to her voice, she reminds me of someone or something in a time of yore. Listening to ‘This Heart’ gives me the hairs on the back of my neck that I don’t feel too often and wish I felt more with some music, like the first time I heard Sade’s Ordinary Love.

I’ve listened to this song over and over in the past few days. It doesn’t dull, it doesn’t lessen the impact. Loah and ‘This Heart’, we’ve got something special.

‘This Heart’ is the title track from and EP released on June 16th and this is the first time Loah has tried the UK market. She’s going to make a splash.

You can find out more about Loah on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.