Lakitah

About

Born in Poland and raised in Germany, Lakitah is a musician who performs a mix of Latin, Blues, and Pop and Rock. Torn between two different societies in the 80s, when cultural boundaries were still quite strict, she searched for shelter in the world of poetry in order to find and exit from the emotional scars caused by a rigid religious education and being an outsider in a strange society.

Since her teen years she has lived on the edge of society, but her natural curiosity has kept her from turning her back to society completely. Throughout her teenage years she was inspired by bands as Therapy, Rage Against the Machine, Such a Surge, Hole and Guns´n ´Roses. Later on she started listening to songwriters like Tori Amos and Ani Difranco who became her new role models. In the Spanish speaking community she would be inspired by Silvio Rodriguez, Bebe, Lhasa da Sela und Jarabe de Palo.

After finishing University in 2010 she went to Nicaragua on a development aid mission. There she met jazz musicians like Natalia Leschenko and Ramai Das, who would influence her decision to focus more on her music and on studying guitar. By that time she performed as a singer in the Ramai Das Band and solo with her guitar as a guest musician of Eduardo Araica, one of the most talented Nicaraguan guitarists.

Back in Germany in 2013 she chose Berlin as her residence and studied vocals at Jazzschule Berlin, a Berlin-based private Jazz School. After leaving this school, she studied guitar with Amr Hammour, a Syrian Jazz musician and played several gigs with Amr and his brother Bilal, who is a bass player. At the same time she started performing her own music at bars and open stages all around Berlin and decided to make her first album in 2014, which contains her musical heritage of the times before, during and after her stay in Nicaragua.

Her album “Bricks of little Hopes” deals with relationship issues, surrealistic situations, facing and channeling strong emotions and dealing with difficult situations without losing hopes and dreams.

“Bricks of Little Hopes” is an appeal to calm down and valve to prevent emotional explosion, it is a homage to multiculturality using genres as Latin, Blues and Pop/Rock to embed her message.

Going public was one of the biggest challenges in her life. Experience told her that being close to people rather hurts and that one is better off hiding and dreaming inside a world of fantasy and music and keeping the public at a safe distance. Going public with her music mean facing her biggest fears, be it fear of rejection, fierce criticism or just not to be heard. This record is a statement towards overcoming, the past, facing the dark spots inside you, recovering dignity and opening up to a world that is still not completely lost.