Sampa the Great returns to Melbourne for Rising Festival

She has been dubbed the wake-up call Australia needed, raising awareness on diversity, race and politics through rap and her magnetic poetic persuasion.

Zambia-born and Botswana-raised rapper Sampa Tembo, who goes by the stage name of Sampa the Great, won the prestigious Australian Music Prize twice (the first to do so) and scored a few ARIAs for her album The Return in 2019.

This year she made her debut at Coachella and has just released a song with US rapper Denzel Curry.

On living in Melbourne

Tembo moved to Australia in 2013, originally to Sydney, but moved to Melbourne after a trip here to see a gig at The Evelyn in Fitzroy.

“One of the things that drew me to Melbourne was its people’s courage and openness to talk about things that maybe would be hard to talk about,” Tembo says.

“People say what they have to say, and I love that atmosphere because it allows everyone to have a conversation and grow. I think that is forever Melbourne.”

Tembo recorded 2017’s Birds and the BEE9 in Melbourne, and moved there in 2018. She has since moved back to Zambia, but while living in Melbourne she created music with like-minded musicians who had similar migration backstories.

“Being in places where their families aren’t from is what bonded us; we are the diaspora and it’s something I take with me wherever I go.”

As a black African woman, she uses her voice to raise awareness through song, writing tracks that also challenge the perception that rap is a bloke’s terrain.

Her latest single, Lane, certainly challenges that assumption of gender and identity.

“A lot of artists from Melbourne are in and all over those two records,” Tembo says, reflecting on the releases that changed her life.

A younger Tembo moved to California at age 19 to try her luck, but found her time there a confronting one. It exposed her to what it was really like to be an African woman in America.

“When I was in Melbourne, a lot of people I was making music with weren’t from their ancestral place, but we were all able to create a safe space for each other,” she says.

“I knew I could grow musically if I moved to Melbourne – and I did.”

On moving back to Zambia

But it also took being away from her immediate family in Zambia to help her realise the importance of her African roots and acknowledge it through song – at times in her parents’ languages. Her mother speaks Bemba and her father speaks Tumbuka.

“My Dad got COVID, which was a huge family scare, and it was one of those things where I wanted to go back home and see my family,” she says.

She had a deep longing to be home and it meant she’s been able to slow down, sit with them and do things she hadn’t been able to do before.

“This is the first time I can drive around my hometown, to see it with different eyes.”

She says she’s been able to work with Zambian artists since moving back there, which was something she had never done before.

“There is more a sense of belonging, which is what I was trying to feel when I was in Australia for a long time,” she says.

“I have never been, in this part of my life, connecting with my country and it’s amazing.”

On coming back for Rising Festival

Sampa the Great returns to Melbourne this month for Rising Festival, where audiences will experience her mix of African heritage and rap in a visual feast of song and dance.

According to Rising Festival music programmer Woody McDonald, having Sampa the Great join the festival is a moment he’s been waiting for – he booked her two years ago but COVID cut the winter arts and music festival short after opening night.

“The first time I booked Sampa she had only played a handful of shows. She was ready for a big stage from the get-go,” McDonald says.

“She returned home to Zambia after a decade living and producing music in the US and Australia. She has put together a band there and will be bringing it to Melbourne for the first time.

“I like festival programming that tells a story about the city it’s held in. Sampa has strong links to Melbourne and the line-up she’s curated reflects that [such as artists like her sister Mwanje, Melbourne club DJ C.Frim and Melbourne hip hop outfit KYE]. It’s ideal for us.”

On what’s next

The future looks bright for Sampa the Great, but the hardest part is avoiding being pigeonholed.

“I have always struggled with the idea of being an artist stuck in one box,” Tembo says. “When you think of Sampa the Great, you think of hip-hop, but if you look at all of my projects, the majority of it is anything but. I am still growing as an artist and there are some other genres I want to connect to.”

Her new single Lane is a reflection of that crossroad. Collaborating with Denzel Curry was a happy surprise – she first met him when he performed at the Listen Out festival a few years ago in Australia.

“At the time I didn’t think anything of it – a rapper, cool,” she says. “But when he did a Rage Against The Machine cover for Triple J’s Like a Version I thought, this artist has rage!

“This is what I was able to appreciate, and we’re both in the same shoes as artists right now – trying to express ourselves in various ways.”