First Listen: Gaidaa asks you to "Let Me"

(April 5, 2021) It’s hard to keep a good artist down. Last year tried really hard to silence the music, but musicians are a creative lot and they keep finding ways to get their work into the atmosphere. Hopefully, we’ll soon be able to return to venues and see performers like the Sudanese-Netherlands singer/songwriter Gaidaa.

Gaidaa is one of those artists who made a lot of noise in a year that tried its hardest to keep creatives quiet. Essence Magazine noticed and selected Gaidaa as one of their 21 musicians to watch in the year 2021. Gaidaa got on The Fader’s radar as well.

Gaidaa set the scene for a breakout in 2021 by staying busy and releasing the highly regarded Overture in 2020. Tracks such as “I Like Trouble,” “Stranger” “Ride My Way” and “Falling Higher” found their way onto streaming playlists and reached my ears. Now Gaidaa returns with her new song, the percolating and percussive  “Let Me.” Listening to the lyrics, it’s easy to see how Gaidaa’s world view is impacted by being Sudanese born and raised in the Netherlands. She starts the song by asking “I been wondering/where should I fit in.”

That’s the kind of question asked by someone who is acutely aware that some may see them as having a different status than the native-born people. Gaidaa is the child of a psychiatrist mother and a musician dad, so perhaps the questions that she asks and the observations that she makes come from psychiatry. The open, percussive and acoustic bass driven arrangement that draws on African rhythms and jazz draw their inspiration from her dad’s profession. Check out “Let Me” here.

By Howard Dukes

Gaidaa – “Let Me”