PUBLISHED April 13th, 2015 04:52 am | UPDATED June 12th, 2020 04:18 pm
Irma didn’t force her way to fame – she was recognised after posting covers on YouTube. Her videos immediately started getting shares and received lots of enthusiastic comments and her first album, ‘Letter to the Lord’, has been a huge success.
It was the beginning of an incredible music success story with her fans pushing her to perform more than 150 concerts and festivals at some of the best and most well known venues in France and around Europe. Following this success, she was nominated at the prestigious music French awards, Victoires de la Musique.
As the 25 year old Franco-Cameroonian singer explains: “With my first album ‘Letter To The Lord’, everything happened so quickly. After the tour – which was amazing, mind-blowing – I felt the need to be alone for a while. Ok, but why New York? Because it’s a city where people go when they’re looking for something, trying to find a dream.”
Holed up in a tiny studio in the East Village, she started an astonishing writing process, bought a small camera, walked around the city a lot, filmed anything that inspired her: ‘The leaves, the trees, red lights, passers-by…’ What interested her the most was people, anonymous individuals, chance encounters – talking to them, filming them, listening to their stories.
This second album is more pop and at the same time more personnal. For the first time Irma talks about her Cameroonian roots.
“Dad played guitar at home and our childhood was rocked by Michael Jackson, Jeff Buckley, Ben Harper… It was a happy time, albeit with a certain reality check. In the Cameroon, just 1% of the population is rich and the remaining 99% are suffering. I saw the injustice, the misery on my doorstep and it made me incredibly angry.’ She was just 13 when she composed one of her first songs, the prophetic ‘I Know’ in which she sings ‘My only weapon is this song.” Little did she know her stock of weapons was soon to expand in unexpected ways.
Irma is performing live in Singapore on Wednesday, 20 May from 8pm onwards at SCAPE, The Ground Theatre (Level 2).
To purchase tickets, please click [here](http://www.sistic.com.sg/events/cirma0515).