Premiere: Sophia Thakur and UnFold urge you to dance on energising EP2

Mul­ti­tal­ent­ed poet Sophia Thakur and UnFold, a per­form­ing arts project by Lyrix Organix, have teamed to cre­ate a stir­ring com­bi­na­tion of music and spo­ken word poet­ry, titled ‘Dance’.

The song is a cel­e­bra­tion of life and “the art of music”, and it leads the way for Lyrix Organix’s forth­com­ing UnFold project, UnFold EP2, which is built around col­lab­o­ra­tions with ris­ing stars of the spo­ken word circuit.

The visu­als for ‘Dance’ – direct­ed by David Fitz­patrick – make their debut here on Fringe Fre­quen­cy. They are as ener­getic as the song itself.

Speak­ing about the cre­ation of ‘Dance’, Thakur said: “It was writ­ten for one of my best mates that passed away just over a year ago. He was a poet. He pushed me to do poet­ry and I’ve kept him in the focus point since grad­u­at­ing, which is when I first got involved with UnFold.

“The mes­sage itself is to cel­e­brate the nuances of life, the nich­es of life, and find the art of music in just about every­thing – and he encap­su­lat­ed that. And UnFold encap­su­lates that and I’m try­ing to encap­su­late that.”

Watch the visu­als for ‘Dance’ below.

Thakur’s mes­sages of encour­age­ment, under­stand­ing and resilience are touch­ing a gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple. So far, she has attract­ed more than 14,700 YouTube sub­scribers, giv­en two TEDx Talks, per­formed at Glas­ton­bury Fes­ti­val 2017 with musi­cians from the Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, and recent­ly signed a book deal with Walk­er Books. Last Decem­ber, she spoke with Fringe Fre­quen­cy about her life and work.

Cre­at­ed by the arts col­lec­tive Lyrix Organix, UnFold is a live con­cept led by some of Britain’s lead­ing young poets, rap­pers and change-mak­ers. The project invites them to explore their craft anew with sup­port from a string ensem­ble, per­cus­sion­ists and visu­al artists.

UnFold will release EP2 on Octo­ber 4 – Nation­al Poet­ry Day. Along with Thakur, the six-track EP also fea­tures Nation­al Poet­ry Slam cham­pi­on Solomon OB, Bar­bi­can res­i­dent Kieron Ren­nie, Round­house poets Lau­rie Ogden and Chloe Flo­rence, and “gift­ed word­smith” Toby Thomp­son.

The viva­cious rhythms on ‘Dance’ give some idea of what you can expect. The EP is a blend of spo­ken word and con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal, new wave jazz and elec­tron­ic instru­men­ta­tion, and is described as “Ezra Col­lec­tive meets Kate Tem­pest, dipped in strings and tabla”.

UnFold musi­cians per­form­ing on the EP include Tanya Crack­nell (The Grime Vio­lin­ist), Cami­lo Tira­do (James Hold­en, Nitin Sawh­ney, Talvin Singh), and Tim Doyle (Nubya Gar­cia, Chiminyo).

To accom­pa­ny the EP’s release, UnFold’s musi­cians and poets, along with spe­cial guests, will tour Lon­don, Man­ches­ter, New­cas­tle, and Bris­tol this autumn. See full tour infor­ma­tion on the UnFold website.

UnFold EP1 was released in 2015, and fea­tured Toby Thomp­son, Sarah Eliza and Bxnjamin.

EP2 by UnFold will be released on Octo­ber 4, 2018. Vis­it the UnFold web­site for fur­ther information.

Image: Lyrix Organix / Owen Davies