If the term ‘World Music’ can be personified and placed, it nestles deep in the body and soul of Emily Radke, aka Emileo. Born in Berlin in 2000, she moved to Spain at 16 before heading south to the romantic, mystical terrain of Morocco before winning the inaugural Sinead O’Connor BA Commercial Modern Music Scholarship in the BIMM Institute, Dublin in 2020, the city where she currently lives and writes. This fearless sense of pioneering, nomadic adventure mirrors Emileo’s extraordinary musical talents and communicative skills – studying piano at 6 years of age, drumming in a jazz band at 12, a lead singer/guitarist in a pop duo by 14 and now lyrically proficient in five languages – to reveal an artist that delivers a remarkable kaleidoscope of sounds and imagery that soars with individuality and heart. Her music is firmly rooted in those sun-kissed, travelled cultures but is also informed by the glacial textures of her Germanic origins. Emileo’s quest for knowledge, cultural appreciation and appropriation is a cornerstone of her aesthetic and she recently completed a short course in Classical Indian Vocal Singing in Jaipur, India which we will, no doubt, hear seeping into Emileo’s wonderful musical palette over the coming months.
