SKUNK RADIO LIVE AUDITIONS
11-12-2018 02:09 GMT
Belole Ray
Afrobeat Music Artist
Buea, Cameroon
Current Score: ★★☆☆☆ ☆☆
Biography:
Belole Ray (born Barbara Belole Achingale) is the fifth child in a family of six children. Born on 22 October 1990 in Buea, South West Region of Cameroon, to a humble, average-income family, she was brought up and educated in the Catholic tradition. After her high school education, she studied Theology at the John Paul II institute of Theology and Philosophy in Buea.
A song writer, singer, guitarist and recording artiste, Ray took after her father, Henry A. Achingale, a well-known song writer and chorister who has composed many thrilling songs for the Catholic and Baptist Churches in Cameroon as well as others with social and political themes sung by the famous Mamfe Youth Choir International, a group he founded in the early 1970s and led up till the mid-1980s.
Belole Ray was detected as a talented singer in her early childhood. However, she started performing at age 11 while she was a student of Our Lady of Mount Camel College, Muea - Buea. She was one of three girls who made up an acapella group of the college known as Star Sisters. That was when she started nursing hopes of taking up music as a career and of beating her father's impressive musical record.
In 2013 Ray founded Queen of Angels Choir, a 40-member group in the Immaculate Conception Parish, Great Soppo - Buea. The following year she founded another choir in the same parish known as Holy Infant Choir. As the name implies, the latter group is meant for little children. She is the music instructor of both choirs to this day. She has also been playing for a Buea-based charitable group called Society of St. Vincent de Paul, one of whose principal activities is to entertain inmates of the Buea Central Prison.
Away from choir groups and religious music, Belole Ray started working with Cameroonian artiste, Dr. Sley, as well as Valen, a friend to her brother and manager. Both men did a lot to shape her vision as far as the genre of music she plays today - world music - is concerned. Although inspired by singers like Alpha Blondy, Lucky Dube and Brenda Fassie, she has, over time, developed a style of her own which is a fusion of afro beats with soul and jazz. With her unique voice that leaves every listener spellbound, Ray flies in the same musical orbit as Nigerian singers, Asa and Nneka. On a general note she is being moved by songs about the many misfortunes which have befallen mankind, such as Apartheid in South Africa, the civil war in Nigeria and DRC, famine in Ethiopia, the Lake Nyos gas disaster in Cameroon, the earthquake in Haiti, etc. This, owing to her incredible love for children, the oppressed and the underprivileged.
Her maiden recorded song, ""Love This Place (Africa)"" was produced by Emil Ngombah of M1 Studio, Molyko-Buea. It features one of Cameroon's finest guitarists, Marcien Oyono, with a backup voice from Africa The Voice finalist, Merveille Onguenet. ""Love This Place (Africa)"" describes the African continent with its diverse and mellifluous music melodies as a place of peace, love, hope and happiness - the pride of the African! Belole Ray has recorded four other songs with M1, which will be released subsequently.
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