HEIR OF THE CURSED – debut album by Beldina Odenyo to be launched with a special live concert in her memory

music

Aug 28

On Saturday 30 August, a special concert will be held in the Mackintosh Church to launch the debut album by Beldina Odenyo aka Heir of the Cursed, who passed away in 2021. Much of it was recorded in her home studio in Govanhill.

“Her voice is immediately perfect. It's a noise that no one else is making. The truth of it – when someone is that level of raw or pain and is turned into something so beautiful, it’s really rare. It felt like she was about to be the most important thing that had come out of Scotland.”
– Kathryn Joseph

Haunting, visceral, defying genre and flipping the finger to convention, Heir Of The Cursed is the debut album by Scottish-Kenyan musician Beldina Odenyo, who died in 2021.

Read our interview with Beldina published in Issue 3 here

Beldina, who had been performing live as Heir of the Cursed since 2016, recorded these songs in her home studios Govanhill and Paisley. In celebration of her unique voice and remarkable talent, her family have arranged for the album to be mixed and mastered, and are releasing it on what would have been her 35th birthday, 30th August 2025.

“The music took my breath away. She looked like a goddess. But also there was a darkness. You could immediately see that there was a sort of intensity and a darkness… It was stunning.”
– Vic Galloway

The songs on this album deserve to be heard and sung again; Beldina’s warm, rich, stunningly distinctive voice soars over layers of delicately woven guitar rhythm. Each track teems with the power and poetry of her lyrics, her imagery influenced by the strange nuances of life, rooted in grief, Scottish weather, the constant and the inconstant.

One of the driving forces of Beldina’s work, which spanned live music, visual art and theatre, was an exploration of the differences and kinships she found in her dual Scottish and Kenyan heritage, and this album is rich in musical and lyrical references and homages to both, while never sounding anything other than utterly unique.

“Just the sound she had – her voice could silence a room.”
– Joe Rattray

The album will be launched with a live performance on 30 August at the Mackintosh Church in Glasgow, featuring guest vocalists Kathryn Joseph, Rick Redbeard, Rae Lena, Callum Easter, Arbor Green, Djana Gabrielle, Leah McAleer, Lewis Semple, Megan Airlie and Kimberley Mandindo.