When the rumours started that Baz Luhrmann was snooping around Nashville for someone to play Sister Rosetta Tharpe in his Elvis biopic, Yolanda Quartey knew she had to step up. The country-soul singer, known as Yola, is British but is based in the heartland of US roots music. She’d grown up listening to Tharpe back in Bristol and strongly related to her story.
Until recently, Tharpe’s contribution to laying the foundations for rock’n’roll in the 1930s and 40s – with her gutsy gospel singing and claw-hammer-plucked electric guitar, a huge influence on the Memphis Flash himself – had gone largely unsung in popular culture. Quartey has experienced that erasure first hand, too. Back when the 38-year-old was trying to make it in the UK, she says: “I was told by a record company exec that nobody wanted to hear a Black woman sing rock’n’roll.” She says the film is “for all the kids that have been told, because they’re of colour, that they can’t touch a guitar”, another insult that’s been levelled personally at her.
