Voice notes: Victoria Oruwari on disability and opportunity in classical music

VO: 00:00

I feel safe on stage so I feel invincible. I feel like I am in control and I am the one delivering something to people as opposed to being the one receiving things from people.

TS: 00:18

This is Made for Us. I'm Tosin Sulaiman. We're continuing our series on classical music in collaboration with Classically Black, a festival that aims to redefine what classical music looks and sounds like today. My guest this week is London-based singer Victoria Oruwari, who will be speaking on one of the panels at Classically Black, exploring race, identity, and representation in classical music. The event takes place on the 10th of October at King's Place in London. And I've included links in the episode description if you'd like to learn more.

TS: 00:55

Victoria is a British Nigerian classical singer who's performed at venues such as the Royal Opera House, the Barbican, and Wigmore Hall. She's a member of the British Power Orchestra and the Inner Vision Orchestra. In this episode, Victoria tells me how she discovered singing shortly after losing her sight when she was seven. She shares the realities of navigating the music industry as a singer with a disability, from accessing music in Braille to landing auditions. And she describes the colourful sensations of living with synesthesia. Here's our conversation.

VO: 01:36

I'm Victoria Oruwari, I am a lyric soprano, a freelance opera singer and a psychotherapist in private practice.

TS: 01:47

Can you take us back to your earliest musical memory, the first one that stayed with you?

VO: 01:53

Well, my earliest musical memory was watching Disney's Sleeping Beauty when I was very little, about four years old or four and a half, and falling in love with the voice of the person who played Aurora and she sang once upon a dream. And I thought, wow, wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to sing like that?

TS: 02:14

When did you actually start singing? How did your singing career begin?

VO: 02:18

I started singing actually probably a year or so after I lost my sight and went to boarding school in Lagos, Nigeria. I went to a school called Pacelli School for the Blind and Partially Sighted. And they had a very strong musical ethos there. And I got there and I well, I mean I I always sang and but the thing is in Nigeria everybody sang, so it wasn't like a big deal that I could sing. And my mother wanted me to play the piano, so I had a toy piano that I was playing. You know, it had all these beats and things. It was a Casio.

VO: 02:55

And when I went to Pacelli, I noticed that we sang in assembly, we sang at Mass, we sang at Rosary. And sometimes people just walked around singing. It was like a culture, everyone sang. So one day I was sitting outside with my friends and singing some songs. And the music teacher came outside and said, Who's that singing? I said it's Victoria, because he was also blind, the music teacher. And then he asked if I would like to come in and sing so he can play the piano. So I got the first experience of singing to somebody who was playing the piano. I thought this sounds really nice. Like it was very, very comforting and very, very harmonic. It was a harmonic experience that I didn't quite understand what it was at the time.

VO: 03:38

So he said, Has anybody ever told you you have a beautiful voice? And I was like, No. He was like how do you feel about coming with us on Saturday to sing at, I don't know, there was some big event? And I was like, okay. And then I skipped out and I was like smiling to myself.

And that was then I was like eight years old. And then on Saturday I was in my, I was primed up in my pretty dress and taking out with the rest of the school choir and slash band. And I remembered the music teacher introducing me as a little bird. And I sang a song and everybody was very happy. And that's where my singing started. So I used to sing a lot up until I left primary school. And then when I started at Queen's College, where I went in Lagos, I did join the choir, but I didn't kind of focus too much on music because I was now having to deal with the added issue of being in a school that was predominantly for sighted people.

VO: 04:41

And I had to do more work to keep up because not all materials were in accessible format. And then I came to England when I was about 18, 17. I started a new school because I needed to do my A levels and it was New College Worcester. And that's when I actually had my first proper official singing lesson with a classical singer. And what I really loved about my teacher Amanda Ballard was that she sang opera.

So when I heard, because I've always heard opera, but I've heard it on radio and I've heard it on television. And maybe in church in Nigeria, you heard the odd Handel anthem done by the church choir and everybody knew I know that my redeemer liveth. That was like a big song at Christmas, you know? And Hallelujah. You the one everyone sings that as well. So I didn't really have too much contact with people who could sing like that.

So when I heard Amanda, I smiled to myself. I thought, that's the voice I want. I've always wanted that voice. And she reminded me of Jillie Andrews from Sound of Music, who I absolutely did adore. So I was like, can you help me sing like you? And she said, yes. And then we started having lessons.

TS: 05:52

So what did music give you that you couldn't find anywhere else?

VO: 05:58

So I feel like music gave me colours because I really had a fascination with painting and drawing when I could see. I could once see things when I was little because I was partially sighted and then lost my sight for some other medical reasons when I was the age of seven. And I think what I found with music was the colours that I saw when I heard music.

And now I know it's synesthesia that I was experiencing. But then I just thought it was a fascinating private experience that I couldn't tell people about because obviously I was already abnormal enough being blind. I couldn't exactly say to people, well, I see colours when people sing or when I hear an instrument play. So I liked the fact that you were just bathed in colour when you heard when I heard music, I was bathed in colour. So I wanted to hear more of that because it was just very pleasant and it it soothed me and it made me I just felt elated when I heard good music, but most especially classical music.

TS: 06:59

Right. So are the colours different depending on the type of music you're listening to?

VO: 07:05

Yeah. If it's fluid and orchestral, it's just nice long drawn out paintings 'cause I think it's the phrases that give the so it's like as the sounds come out, my brain is projecting it onto a wall that I can see. So if the rhythm is very choppy, I'm just getting the zip zip zip zip. And it's not very nice to see. But when it is very fluid and straight and legato like classical music is, then the colours are a lot more easy on the eye.

TS: 07:35

So interesting.

VO: 07:38

Yeah, it's very hard to imagine it. But there was a lady who actually tried to imagine it. She did a the short film about me titled Something Colours of Sound. It's on my website. On the homepage of my website, I sing Vissi d’Arte. And if you were to watch that video, you would see that what she did was she tried to project the colours that she thought I saw when I sang behind me.

So as I soared and you heard the notes, you could see my voice soaring and she could she's projected the colours and it's very people said it was very beautiful to look at, but that's how I feel when I sing classically. I feel like I'm creating not just a sound, but some art that people can see because I can see it.

EXCERPT – Romance de Mignon by Henri Duparc

TS: 09:52

You mentioned that you lost your sight when you were quite younger a I think at the age of seven. Yes. How did you make sense of what was happening then?

VO: 10:01

So for me, I didn't think anything of it. I just felt like okay, it's a change. I don't see things anymore. But then as a child you imagine a lot of things. So I thought, well, good, I could just make up what the world is. And I think it was it was going in and out of hospital and not being able to see things and noticing that my mother was sad and I didn't really understand why she was sad. I didn't know that there was anything wrong.

I just thought, okay, I don't see very much now. The first instance it happened, I was terrified. I remembered screaming out loud and asking for the nurse to turn on the lights. And she said, Well, the lights are on. And from the moment she said that, the lights went on in my head. So I thought, okay, I'm not going to not see the light. I will see the light, even if I have to generate it from my memory. And I think I said to do that onwards till now. And my brain had not l has learned not to unsee things. So I would say that the way I made sense of it was the whole world and life became like a dream that I was awake in.

TS: 11:14

How did the adults around you explain what was going on?

VO: 11:18

It was actually the doctor that did because when they tested my eyes and asked if I could see things, I kept saying yes when the answer was actually supposed to be no. And the doctor said, Okay, I'm not gonna argue with you. If you think you can see things, then you can see things, but just remember that if you're going somewhere, remember to hold your mother's hand or ask someone to give you their hand. And I was like, Okay. And I skipped out of his room. But gradually, obviously my sister and my mom were really frustrated. They were my main primary carers at the time and they were like, Victoria, you can't keep running around and you can't keep running around and tumbling around. You will hurt yourself. And I used to wonder why. So if I was playing outside, I would run and if I bumped into the flower bed and I fell, I would blame the flower bed for getting in my way as opposed to me running into it. If that makes sense to you. So it was more like the world had changed and wasn't cooperating with me.

VO: 12:15

So eventually when I went to Pacelli, I then started to understand that the words blind was used. And people did say, Are you blind? I'll be No, I'm not blind. I've got detached retina. I'm gonna be better soon. That's what I used to say to people. But when I started to go to Pacelli school, that's when it became obvious that okay, this is this is your reality. You are blind and you will do things differently and you need to follow landmarks when you walk around, you don't kind of just walk around and hope that the floor the the parts will separate themselves for you. So because that's what I did in the past. And gradually I think it took I would say it pro it took probably two years to sort of properly intellectualize what had happened and understand that I had to do things differently.

TS: 13:07

And you mentioned that after leaving Pacelli you went to a different school where it was mostly cited students. Yes. What was the experience like in those two schools?

VO: 13:18

So Pacelli was a haven because everybody was blind or partially sighted and it wasn't odd to be me. But Queen's College was different in the sense that there was everybody and then I was the other. And that's when for the first time I was referred to as the blind girl. And it wasn't done in an offensive way. It's just that was just an identifying factor in the same way you would say the girl with the headscarf. The girl with the you know, it wasn't said with a derogatory mindset. It was just an identifying factor. you know, the blind girl in Yellow House. So I was like, okay, that's who I am, the blind girl. So I had lots of friends there, but again, it was a world where everything was designed to accommodate them, but then they had to make space to accommodate me. It wasn't like my needs were included in the norm of how the school worked.

VO: 14:15

So I would give a lot of credit to the teachers because they were very good at doing their best to explain things. But when it came to sciences, it was just difficult because they too did not have the training to to teach blind people sciences. And in in that sense, the only science I could do was biology, but even that was a little bit difficult. I think the part of school that I really enjoyed was English literature, especially when we did creative writing.

And I used to remember writing the best stories, and there was once one of my poems were put in the school magazine. And in that sort of environment, I soared because it wasn't about reading and memorizing and regurgitating information. It was about being creative. So that was the only aspect of school that I would say I really enjoyed. I just thought, okay, I just have to get through education because that's what I need to do to get a job.

VO: 15:07

So yeah, so Queen's College, it had its challenges, but it also got me to meet some really amazing people that I still, you know, I'm still in touch with right now. And to give my classmates their due, they actually did go out of their way to assist me a lot to make sure that I had information that I needed for my study. They would lend me their notes and they would lend me handouts and things like that or reads read to me sometimes. But it just created this sort of one-upmanship in the relationship because they were my friends. They weren't really supposed to be my helpers. And I think the first time I experienced having help that was not really connected to friendship was when I came to England. And I could see how it freed up relationships so that your friend is just your friend and not your helper. And I found that really useful and it just created room for better relationships, basically.

TS: 16:01

Yeah, so you said that you came to England when you were around seventeen or eighteen. and you then went to music school. So you trained at Trinity Laban and you earned a Bachelor of Music degree and a postgraduate diploma.

VO: 16:16

Yes. That was after I went to New College Worcester to do my A levels. That was another school for the blind I went to. And then from there I went to Trinity Laban. My experiences in Trinity Laban was wonderful. It was a very wholesome place where everybody was valid and everybody was valued. New College Worcester was also just like that, where I I felt like for the first time I was Victoria. I wasn't the blind girl. I wasn't the problem that needed to be solved. I was me. Then auditioning to come to Trinity College of Music. I auditioned and I started the Bachelor of Music degree. And I then encountered the new challenge of understanding how to sing and communicate my feelings when I'm on stage. And that was like a minefield because I communicate when I speak.

But when it comes to singing, it became a bit stilted because I then started to focus on technique as opposed to what I was trying to convey. And the challenge for my singing teachers was to try and explain things to me in such a way that I could understand the emotion that I needed to portray. Because I did think those emotions, but sometimes my face did not convey it. Because for your face to convey something that isn't real in a moment, you have to have seen somebody else do it.

VO: 17:49

So a lot of singers look at a mirror and they try and copy and mimic what they see in the mirror to kind of make it better. I couldn't do that. So what my teachers got to learn from working with me is that they had to work with my mind and not my face. So they were like, think this thought or think that thought. And they were just very creative in the way they approached teaching me. And it meant that my lessons were a lot more conversational, and because of those conversations, I got a deeper understanding of the repertoire that I performed, and that's how I got singing.

TS: 18:22

That's so interesting. So yeah, I guess your singing lessons would have looked completely different to almost any other students you were at school with. Yeah. And so as you were learning the music, were you able to get what you needed in Braille?

VO: 18:36

Yes, we had an amazing disability officer who not just he didn't just put things to brill, he taught the teachers how to use the brill transcriber. So they had no excuse for not to hand me things in Brill. So like I said, like if you were at Trinity you would think the whole world was a wonderful place because everything was just designed to make me comfortable. I didn't want to leave. Everything was designed to make me comfortable.

VO: 19:05

I had I had braille music, you know, I had braille text when we had to go and do stage work, I had an assistant assigned to me so that my peers wouldn't feel the pressure of doing their work and then assisting me as well. So I was on an equal playing field with my classmates. We could just hang out for the sake of hanging out, not just because they were helping me do stuff. I had Feldenkreis, which was this amazing therapy that helps with posture and confidence and being able to carry myself in a way that a soprano should be presented on stage.

VO: 19:40

And I think it was my Feldenkreis teacher that actually came to the conclusion that I was terrified most of falling. And he taught me how to fall. So that falling didn't become something that I was afraid of. And I'll be forever grateful to him for that. And we had drama. For three hours every Friday we came out and then we cackled like hyenas and barked like dogs and ran around and played and we played blindfold so everybody could experience what it was like to be me, where you had to blindfold a fellow classmate and guide them. And we played we played lots of games. It was just a way of bonding the class so that we could work together uninhibited. And it was just a wonderful, wonderful experience.

TS: 20:23

So I know you said you didn't want to leave, but presumably you had, you know, specific dreams that you wanted t to pursue. So what was your dream job that you hoped to pursue after graduating?

VO: 20:34

I wanted to go straight to the Royal Opera House and play the role of Mimi in Laboem Michaela in Carmen. Those were my two major roles because I felt like those were roles that I could easily play. But you work very hard and I get I get to sing those songs in concert. And I have actually ended up playing an operatic role, but it was a beautiful role called Zavan, an opera called Serenoid, where I played an engineer who fell in love with an android, quite interesting that an android that I created and it was it was a very beautiful modern story so that was the big role I played and then I did end up doing something at the Royal Opera House but I played the role of a mother in The Lost Thing which was a musical opera production for Christmas by Candoco and the Royal Opera House collaborating together to get it done.

TS: 21:26

What do you like about performing? Like, what happens for you when you're on stage?

VO: 21:31

Gosh. One thing people talk about being on stage, they talk about being nervous, they talk about being self-conscious. But I actually feel safest when I'm on stage. I tell you why, because the rest of the world is unpredictable. But everything that happens on stage, you know it's gonna happen, except there's a big malfunction and something drops. So I feel safe on stage, so I feel invincible. I feel like I can be all the versions of me that I want to be, and I am uninhibited because I've practiced and everything that's happening there has been rehearsed. So it's a place of safety, it's a place that I love to be, and it's also a place where I feel like I am in control and I am the one delivering something to people as opposed to being the one receiving things from people. And yes, at the end, when people respond joyfully, I do receive the warmth and I embrace the warmth that I receive, but then I can see that I had worked towards it and it's a good thing.

TS: 22:36

And how would you describe your voice?

VO: 22:39

In what sense?

TS: 22:40

We were talking earlier about how when you hear music you see colours. And so I just if you apply that to your own voice, how would you describe your voice?

VO: 22:49

Gosh, okay, my voice, the colour of my voice. What's the colour of my voice? The colour of my voice. The colour of my voice is like a rich, rich red that is it's got flourishes because depending on what I'm singing and how I approach the note, the red has other flourishes that that blossom out of it and it spreads out like a big - I'm gonna have to draw it with my hand. So if my voice was that, there would be like other flourishes coming out like that. So I it's red, but imagine a red thing that's up there soaring with lots of flourishes coming out of it. Yeah.

EXCERPT - Song to the Seals by Granville Bantock

TS: 24:30

And I saw a documentary where your singing teacher said something to the effect of you've chosen a very tricky profession. You're absolutely capable, but you just need a bit of luck. Yes. And I think this was about ten years ago. D does that still ring true to you?

VO: 24:48

It does ring true. He was right. He said, I've chosen a very tricky career. I have ambition, I have talent, but what I need is a bit of luck. And that luck comes with being in the right place at the right time and talking to the right person that sees what I have to offer and sees the potential that I bring. And in many ways, people that have offered me work have been people who saw that and knew what they could do with my voice and what they could get me to do with my voice. So it's always been word of mouth and organizations that know me recommending me to other organizations and me just working and getting things done.

TS: 25:31

Would you say you've been lucky as you look back over your career?

VO: 25:34

Yes, I would say I've been very lucky. I've done some wonderful things and I hope to get more lucky because life still goes on.

TS: 25:42

Can you say more about what's been tricky about navigating this industry?

VO: 25:48

So as a musician, I feel like most times I sing to people, I don't know what they have, the look they have on their faces, but I've always sensed that it was received with a smile, a broad smile that meant we like what we hear. But the challenge has been actually knowing where the auditions are, getting to the auditions, or even knowing where the work opportunities are to apply, because it's very unconventional. Sometimes somebody knows somebody who knows somebody tells you about something. But you have to be in an environment where you're able to network, and the networking has to be effective to help you meet the right people to get the message across that you are a singer who wants to do more things with them. I think the information is not as readily available to people as they are.

VO: 26:44

Because there's so many different websites that advertise work and it's just knowing which ones give you the information that is right for your career type. Again, access. The websites accessibility can be another challenging factor. But also we have the added obstacle called Access to Work. They are a funding body that help disabled people in work do their job effectively. So for instance, I'll give you a scenario. So you say you sent me an email going, okay, Victoria, I would like you to come and do this in Manchester next week. How do I get to Manchester?

VO: 27:12

I can, in effect, get on a train and get to Manchester, but then what do I do when I get there? I can't get to the venue on my own. Even if I did get to the venue on my own by taxi, how do I navigate the venue? How do I look after myself whilst I'm in Manchester, a city that I don't know? So, what Access to Work would do is to get me an assistant that would travel with me and take away the logistical burden so that I can focus on the work that I'm supposed to do. But they have a backlog of 10 months.

If you were to say to me, Victoria, come and do this next week, I could say to you, Well, I would like to, but I don't know how I'm going to. And in the past, I used to say to people, if they invited me to sing, you may need to provide me with someone to assist me for the day. But increasingly I find that as a singer, I I feel more comfortable with people I know around me because they know my routine, my dietary requirements, the sort of environment I need to be in.

VO: 28:11

And also they understand the I have to carry out to calm myself down before going on stage or to kind of get myself in a in a very zen state to give a great performance. Whereas if I'm getting an assistant every time I do a new job, I'm getting a new assistant. I spend a lot of time describing to that person what I need, which tires my voice out, which is something I really don't need. Because to give the best performance of my life, I need to be comfortable and I need to not get anxious about my access riders being met. So those are the challenges that could get in the way of going around and being a gigging musician if you if you get my drift.

TS: 28:52

Yeah. So in a sense it's the challenge of both finding the job and doing the job.

VO: 28:57

Doing the job. Yes. And I've been lucky that some organizations, you know, usually support with paying for the assistance to help. And that's why a lot of my work has been with organizations that work with professional disabled musicians and not necessarily always mainstream, because the mainstream organizations either don't have the budget or don't understand that this is what you need to do your best work.

TS: 29:26

One thing you said the first time we met was that disability, not race, is what you've had to shout the loudest about. Yes. Can you say more about that?

VO: 29:36

When so all the things I've described about finding work and doing the work is the marginalization I experience in music. But when it comes down to my race, I have not necessarily felt that I was disadvantaged from singing, not in the classical world anyway, because of my race. In fact, I find that I have been embraced because of my race. I think people were more hesitant.

Because they didn't understand my disability and they wanted to know how best they could work to get the best out of me. And if they felt they couldn't do they couldn't fulfill that, then they would say, I probably wouldn't get the job. But obviously nobody tells you why you don't get jobs. So you come to your own conclusion somehow. So it's very difficult to sort of say that. But in the wider world, I would say that the average person on the street does not treat me differently because I'm dark skinned, they treat me differently because I'm blind. So a lot of I think it was when I started my psychotherapy training that attention was drawn to my race because I noticed everybody talking about it. And I was thinking, why is everybody talking about my race when I'm blind?

VO: 30:50

And then they had to break it down to me saying, well, there are things you don't know because you can't see how people look at you and stuff. I said, well then if I can't see it, then it's not my experience, is it? It's not my lived experience. It's somebody else's lived experience of what's going on around. And I think it's understanding that everyone's lived experience is based on how they experience things and not how people around them tell them that they're experiencing things.

Yeah, I feel like if you were to ask me how do I identify, I will tell you that I identify as blind. I often do not use the words black and white to describe myself, although I know that categorically I am black, but I feel like the terms black and white were political terms made to distinguish a set of people from another set of people. But I'm still on my journey into understanding why that is still appropriate now, because I believe that it does not accurately describe the people in both categories. And because of that I identify as dark skinned. Because I feel that that's an accurate description of me.

TS: 32:01

And so I'm curious why you think disability perhaps gets less attention and why it's something you feel you have to shout about. And have you noticed, particularly in the music industry, have you noticed things changing in the time that you've been working as a musician?

VO: 32:19

Yes and no. I mean there is a huge movement in the Arts Council encouraging organizations to give people with marginalized backgrounds more work and that has benefited disabled people and I'd like to think people of different races as well. But I feel like sometimes it may seem easier to pay attention to people's racial difference because it doesn't cost money to do so. Whereas for somebody who is blind or in a wheelchair or has a different need. In order to fulfill that person's access requirements, you have to put your hands in your pocket and bring out money to create the infrastructure or provide the assistance that the person needs. So, because of that, there's this sort of like it's not kind of said out loud that we can't employ this person, but it's often the reason that disabled people s may still struggle in the music industry to get equal opportunities as non disabled people.

TS: 33:25

And when you think about what you'd like to see change, can you give any sort of concrete recommendations? What is it that you would like to see change?

VO: 33:36

The change I would like to see in the music industry is for access requirements to be seen more like something the music industry embraces as a culture as opposed to an appendage to the person. So, like if you were to employ someone from a different country who wore different clothes and had different hair, you'd provide the right hairdresser to do their hair. You'd provide the sort of clothing that fits their body.

Well, if the person has a different access need, then you would see the access need as part of the person as opposed to, God, I'm going to employ you and then I'm going to do that. As opposed to doing that. It's better to kind of see every individual as a whole and ensure that their access requirements are part of the package when you offer them a job. Another thing that I would like to see change is the way information is disseminated so that websites that have opportunities are clearly labeled and clearly explicitly available for people to see, not just pictures on billboards or pictures on Instagram that don't get described. So you're thinking, okay, this opera has put on this new show, but you don't know what it's about because it's all in the picture and you can't read it.

VO: 34:56

Another change would be networking events and how they could be made more accessible so that when people are invited to attend. If you have a disability, there should be a host that kind of helps you around to make sure you meet the sort of people that you would like to meet. So that the networking event is not another sea of confusion where you end up spending a whole evening talking to a lot of people that may not be relevant to your career in many ways. I think those are the things I can think of off the top of my head.

But the biggest prayer would be that access to work starts becoming an access to work and that they can actually reduce the wait time to ensure that people who are disabled can do the jobs that they're employed to do. But also they need to kind of rearrange their infrastructure to not assess disabled people based on how many hours of work that they're doing every year because that's a current thing that happens now that if you don't do certain number of hours and you're not earning a certain amount of money, then their assistance is not available to you.

TS: 36:05

Right. What's next for you in your musical career? Any projects you've got in the pipeline?

VO: 36:11

I'm currently rehearsing with ParaOrchestra to sing the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. I think there are some dates next year. Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs is a very beautiful evocative piece that I'm working on. And the dates will be out there very soon. And I'm also I have a a recital at a church in St. James's Sussex Gardens, a beautiful church. And that's sometime in January. In the meantime, I'm just working a lot with my accompanist and kind of brewing new repertoire. So yeah, I'm looking forward to doing more things.

TS: 36:48

And how can people follow you and learn more about your work?

VO: 36:52

So to learn more about my work, please visit www.victoriaoruwari.com or follow me on Instagram at VictoriaOruwariSoprano. And I'm also on Facebook as Victoria Oruwari.

TS: 37:11

Well, thank you so much, Victoria, for being on the show and I've really enjoyed speaking with you.

VO: 37:15

Thank you so much, Tosin. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

EXCERPT - Now sleeps the crimson petal Roger Quilter

TS: 37:54

Thank you to Victoria Oruwari. The songs you heard in this episode were Romance de Mignon by Henri Duparc, Song to the Seals by Granville Bantock, and Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal by Roger Quilter. All performed by Victoria Oruwari, accompanied by Rianka Bouwmeester. I've included links in the show notes if you'd like to learn more about Victoria or get a ticket to hear her and other artists speak at Classically Black in October.

Thanks for joining me on Made for Us. If you know someone who'd enjoyed this episode, why not text it to them? And if you'd like to support the show, please take a moment to leave a rating or review wherever you're listening. I'm Tosin Sulaiman. See you next time.