Davina Oriakhi’s Love to a Mortal collects poetry and soul music

8 Sep 2017 - 14:37

The centrepiece of Davina Oriakhi's first album Love to a Mortal is 'Juju', the project's last track.

Cover art for Davina Oriakhi's Love to a Mortal

A coolly rhythmic track laced with African drum patterns, it works that peculiar magic of the semi-gospel artist working in pop: its lyrics could be about God or man. There would be no real loss if, for 'Juju', you switched the album title from Love to a Mortal to Making love to a Mortal.

“It's divine," she sings, "so divine.” Her pastor might have to investigate that pronoun.

Of course, there’s a long list of tracks in the good-guy-sings-an-ambiguous-song genre: the tradition recently accepted Cobhams’ ‘Empty’ and Funbi’s ‘Hallelujah’. And all three songs are connected in two ways. First, the artists are actual singers—not for them the melodious talking that passes for singing in Nigerian pop.

Second: These acts are influenced by both African and western forms, with vocal styling leaning towards the latter. If Cobhams is the classical music singer who’s missed his way and Funbi is made in the image of the 1990s R&B man, the UK-based Davina Oriakhi recalls American songstresses in the jazz/soul music tradition.

On ‘These Feelings’, for instance, big band instrumentation surrounds her scat singing. Even on soft reggae tune ‘Silence (Father Have Mercy)’, her voice retains its soulful clarity. Outside of her vocals, her video for the single 'F.S.L.S' is reminiscent of Jill Scott's video for the 2000 single 'A Long Walk'.

The Love to a Mortal project, which talks about love from several angles, is held together by some spoken word poetry, an inclusion which feels right on a soul record, but holds the album's weakest arrangement of words.

It is conceivable that her spoken lines would draw applause during a live performance, but that is because a significant part of spoken word’s appeal is the form’s ephemerality, the artist’s delivery and the bodily presence of the poet. On a recording with replay ambitions, though, such lines as “how can destruction feel so good?” and “how long does it take for a corpse to realise the difference between sleep and death?” are trite and absurd respectively. Nonetheless, the music—singing and production—on Love to a Mortal is gorgeous all the way through.

Davina Oriakhi employs phrases popular in the Christian church, quotes the Bible and might be on a subtly proselytising mission. But it's a testament to her gifts that she never comes across as preachy, and her music is always softly ravishing.

Buy Love to a Mortal on iTunes.