Instead of an artist in a booth, a lone amplifier plays the music of singer-songwriter Beldina Odenyo for a cluster of microphones to pick up during the posthumous recording of her debut album. It is a haunting encapsulation of the absence and presence at the heart of Louise Lockwood’s documentary, which makes a commendably thorough exploration of the mental illness that led to Odenyo killing herself in November 2021, and its roots: exile, loss and racism.
Performing under the moniker Heir of the Cursed, a translation of the Tetela name of assassinated Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, Odenyo was on the verge of bigger recognition at the end of 2021 after a successful performance at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. But hemmed in by successive Covid lockdowns, the 31-year-old is clearly unwell in a discomfiting backstage interview. Squirming, monosyllabic, she seems to be regressing to the non-verbal state of shock in which she arrived in Dumfriesshire from Kenya as a young child.
