Sate

SATE is the stage name of Saidah Baba Talibah Matthews, a Canadian rock singer from Toronto, Ontario.^[1] Her 2021 album The Fool was named a Juno Award nominee for Alternative Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2022.^[2]

The daughter of influential Canadian blues and jazz singer Salome Bey,^[3] she began her musical career as an occasional performer with her mother under the name Salome Bey and the Relatives.^[4] She was a vocalist with the funk rock band Blaxäm in the 1990s, alongside her sister Tuku and Washington Savage of Infidels.^[5] The band released the EP Kiss My Afro in 1998,^[6] but broke up before releasing a full-length album.^[7]

 

As Saidah Baba Talibah, she continued to perform as a solo artist,^[8] and released her debut solo album (S)cream in 2011.^[9] In this era, she described herself as having been inspired in part by Black Rock Coalition artists such as Living Colour.^[10]
In 2014, she performed at Toronto's Luminato Festival with TV on the Radio.^[11]
She subsequently changed her stage name to SATE, on the grounds that performing under her given names was giving audiences a false impression that they would be seeing a world music artist, when in fact her music blends elements of soul and funk with blues rock and punk rock.^[12] As SATE, she released the album RedBlack&Blue in 2016;^[13] the album's track "Know My Name" has been used as backing music in promotional advertisements for Sportsnet.^[14]

The Fool was released in 2021.^[14] Her video for the song "Nobody" features The OBGMs appearing as her backing band;^[14] the album track "Guardian Angel", a short interlude, is a recording of SATE as a child singing along with her mother, which Saidah found in her mother's possessions only after her death in 2020.^[12]MORE