South African folk songwriter back in Putney

Laurie Levine, a South African folk songwriter, is undertaking her first UK tour since visiting the UK in 2012 when she released her critically acclaimed album Six Winters. She will be in Putney on Tuesday 13th May.



Laurie’s music comes from the “heartspace’, a word coined by poet Breyten Breytenbach to describe South Africa’s anguished beauty. Since surfacing with her debut Unspoken back in 2007, Laurie has taken her original material and soulful voice to an ever-growing fanbase, earning multiple accolades along the way.

Among these was winning ‘Best Producer’ award (producer Dan Roberts) for her third album Six Winters at the annual South African Music Awards (SAMAs) in 2012. Levine’s second album, Living Room (2009), was also nominated for a SAMA in 2010, and her performances at South Africa’s Largest Arts Festival. The National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 2011 earned Levine a highly coveted Standard Bank Silver Ovation award. Laurie recently released her fourth album, ‘Border Crossing’ in South Africa, which is nominated for best producer at the SAMAs this year.

With the acoustic guitar as her main instrument, her recordings see Levine – and a host of musicians – deploy an array of instruments (pedal steel, dobro, banjo, mandolin, harmonica, strings) that add the kind of atmosphere and layers that propel her songs out of simple singer-songwriter territory.

Remarkably, however, Levine manages to locate her contemporary folk stylings with a singularity
that only the very best in the genre achieve with ease (the likes of Lucinda Williams, Alison Krauss, Anais Mitchell and Emmylou Harris). This has led to critics in South Africa (many of whom have likened her material to Alison Krauss/Robert Plant and Ryans Adams) uniformly praising Levine’s output.

April 23, 2014