There’s a scene in the 1988 movie The Princess Bride in which Westley (Cary Elwes) makes a noise described as “the sound of ultimate suffering”. For a family comedy, it’s pretty intense; it’s a raw sound – an animal in anguish – and not played for laughs.
Of course a howl is not the only way to telegraph pain and despair. Similarly eloquent is music, and I have not heard anything in recent years quite as expressive as British musician Sampha. His voice is unique, and I can listen to it for hours on end.
Born into a Sierra Leonean-British family in London, Sampha Sisay, 28, is prolific. I first heard him on Valentine, a track he made with Jessie Ware. I remember feeling startled by the sound of his voice: it’s airy, but somehow packed with emotion; every lyric comes across as deeply felt. He kept popping up over the years: with SBTRKT, another Ware collaboration, then Drake, Kanye West and Solange. His evocative voice lends itself faultlessly to lyrics that conjure yearning and love and loss. When he sings the hook on Saint Pablo (“And you’re lookin’ at the church in the night sky/Wonderin’ whether God’s gonna say hi”), he elevates the preceding verse to a grand philosophical and existential plane. Nobody’s voice swoops more elegantly and mournfully.
On his new (and somewhat uneven) record, Process, he sounds even more intense. The stunning (No One Knows Me) Like The Piano, Sampha is a meditation on home and hurt, and the death of his mother in 2015 (“They said that it’s her time, no tears in sight, I kept the feelings close”).
Sampha’s voice wrecks me every time, but I love him dearly for it.
