Interview

Singer Loah on identity, friendship and why she doesn’t discuss her age

Singer-songwriter Sallay-Matu Garnett has dabbled in acting, poetry and presenting in addition to her genre-defying music career

Sallay Matu Garnett, aka Loah: the musically precocious and sensitive girl grew up in the Kildare suburb of Maynooth before leaving with her family for the West African nation of Gambia at 12 years old

Late on a Thursday afternoon, Sallay-Matu Garnett is in a windowless, air-conditioned recording studio on a Dublin 2 backstreet, wearing a floor-length structured blue dress. The dead heat of this overcast day bellows as executives enter and leave the front door, yet Garnett, known by her stage name Loah, is unbothered. Her willowy frame remains focused in front of the camera.

“We just have one more shot to get,” someone smiles in my direction. “This ...