MALINDA: Look At You Now Tour
The light that MALINDA radiates is enough to lovingly hold the dedicated and draw the curious into her world, where “collective effervescence” is the goal of every show. This DC born and raised singer/songwriter comes to the table with a wide variety of influences that have shaped her as an artist , all of which have foundations in communal music making– from traditional Irish, to jazz, to Americana folk and musical theater.
MALINDA is a storyteller with a cohesive folk/pop/indie sound that’s uniquely hers. Her first EP, Love Letter (2018), sought footing in more modern pop, akin to the Sara Bareilleses of the world Her move to NYC in 2019 helped her find herself in community: joining circles such as the Gaia Music Collective, the local traditional Irish scene, diving headfirst into the jazz world, and creating opportunities for genre defying collaborations. Taking all that she had learned in that time, she put pen to paper to begin writing the initial stories that would ultimately lead to her debut album.
As the world shut down in 2020, MALINDA went back to her roots in social media, posting short covers banging on a desk and singing by candlelight, rediscovering her first love of folk music as #ShantyTok took over the trends. Upon discovering an audience in what were some of her closest held roots, she leaned in, and her take on Drunken Sailor catapulted her into the spotlight as a prominent face of the digital Sea Shanty and folk world. From there, an inspired genre shift resulted in two EP’s; The Folks I Love and Sea To Sky, which both spent time at #1 on the iTunes World Music charts. Each showcased her ethereal tone, and empowered belt. She would eventually take this music on a small Northeast tour in 2022.
MALINDA continued to write and experiment with this rediscovered sound, culminating in her debut full length album, It’s All True which was released in 2023 along with an accompanying visual album (which she produced, directed and starred in) that had a theatrical release in collaboration with Cinemark.. Touching on topics such as Queer love, mental health, healing, and finding her village, the album is a brutally honest autobiographical story of her falling apart and putting herself back together again, while the world around her did the same. In the fall of 2023, she embarked on her first tour of the same name, making nearly 30 stops around the country, with multiple sold out shows.
Currently, MALINDA is in the process of releasing an EP called “Look At You Now,” a genre defying exploration of what it means to put yourself back together after feeling like you’ve fallen and failed. What does it mean to have hope, to continuously take the leap when it seems like the netting may not always catch you? In this 5 song collection she is delving deeper into her Irish roots while adding hints of Rock, still maintaining the signature MALINDA lyricism and warmth.
What’s next for the songstress? “I’m on a mission to infiltrate every rock club in America with an Irish flute.” And she plans to do just that, creating spaces for audiences to sing in harmony together, weaving together the ancient and the brand new.
