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Visceral! Animalistic! Women! 6 pioneering acts you need to hear

6 March 2018

To celebrate International Women’s Day (8 March 2018) Mary Anne Hobbs champions six artists making waves in the music industry.

6 Music’s Mary Anne Hobbs is an advocate of interesting music makers everywhere. So we asked her to recommend six women across the globe that have got her attention right now – three relatively new artists, plus three more established acts.

From a young MC to an enduring inspiration, here are Mary Anne’s top picks, and where to start your listening:

1. Janelle Monae

Mary Anne Hobbs: As a child growing up in Kansas City Janelle Monae dreamed of a world where music fell from the sky. I played on the same stage as Janelle at Sonar Festival in 2011. I remember standing watching her totally own the place… thinking, how is anybody going follow her tonight?

Janelle dreamed of a world where music fell from the sky.

Mary Anne's essential track: Make Me Feel, an homage to 1980s Prince, it’s all about the sexy guitar motif, and the way she punctuates, with silence.

2. Tune-Yards

Mary Anne Hobbs: Merrill Garbus, from New England, is the vivid creative force behind Tune-Yards. I love the way she takes the free spirit of jazz and re-interprets it so uniquely for contemporary 2018. Her music feels like a stolen kiss.

Merrill Garbus' music feels like a stolen kiss.

Mary Anne's essential track: Look At Your Hands is written, she says, about "blame culture". Instead of looking for a corporation or a government to point a finger at, take some responsibility for the preservation of the natural world yourself.

6 Questions for... Merrill Garbus (Tune-Yards)

Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards answers six pressing questions from Mary Anne Hobbs.

3. Aldous Harding

Mary Anne Hobbs: Aldous Harding set out singing in fishermen’s bars in the port of Lyttleton in New Zealand. I was at her first Manchester gig, playing to 20 people in a room no bigger than a cottage kitchen. I’ll never forget the magic of her presence and her extraordinary voice.

I’ll never forget the magic of her presence

Mary Anne's essential track: I’m So Sorry which she recorded twice, the second version is on her album Party – Rough Trade’s Album of the Year in 2017.

Aldous Harding Manic Q and A - yes please.

Revealing her first record purchase was Neil Young and why she cries at folk festivals.

4. Anna Von Hausswolff

Mary Anne Hobbs: Nils Frahm introduced me to Anna Von Hausswolff, who is from Gothenberg, at his festival Possibility Colliding, at Barbican in London in 2016. I loved the primal, animalistic elements of her performance. I went home and bought every record she’d ever made.

I love the primal, animalistic elements of her performance

Mary Anne's essential track: The Truth, The Glow, The Fall recorded with a beautiful gothic organ in the church where she created her album Dead Magic.

Anna Von Hausswolff: "I've been striving to contact my inner voice that is free and raw"

Stuart talks to Anna Von Hausswolff about her newfound vocal freedom

5. Flohio

Mary Anne Hobbs: I’m not the only woman to champion Flohio, she was booked by Emily Eavis to play Glastonbury and she’s been featured in Vogue. She’s a visceral young MC from SE16 in South London, with so much promise.

She’s a visceral young MC with so much promise.

Mary Anne's essential track: Fights which she recorded with God Colony. Flohio says: “I'd play this song to a younger me, and I’d tell her: Focus on who you envision your future self to be, and let that motivate you.”

6. Laurie Anderson

Mary Anne Hobbs: Laurie Anderson is an enduring inspiration in my life, a pioneering multi-disciplinary artist who would encourage all of us to destroy our boundaries. I saw her perform with Philip Glass at the Barbican in 2017, she posed a question about how you actually look for and locate "the future", which has stayed with me ever since.

Laurie is an enduring inspiration in my life

Mary Anne's essential track: The Mother Meditation is one of the most powerful of all her pieces:"Just one more question…" she asks, "did you ever really love me?"

Laurie Anderson: Memories of NYC

Pioneering artist Laurie Anderson talks about her experience of living in NYC.

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