'I was born political," said Shaz Oye, a singer/songwriter from Dublin's Docklands, as she spoke about her songs before her concert at the Sugar Club this week.
"I am giving my creativity life and getting it out into the world," she said. She was launching her debut EP, Child of Original Sin.
"As art reflects life, my work will reflect my life," she said, explaining that her songs are concerned with "my sexual identity, my race, my gender, my perception of myself and how the person that I am located in my society influences my work.
"Growing up as a black woman in a homogenous society - that has influenced my work." Her songs, she said, "deal with themes of exclusion, of belonging, of not belonging".
Outside, those coming to the show queued patiently and studied the large extallation by Gerard Mannix Flynn, which was erected on Leeson Street during the week. Its statement on the State's cruel treatment of children in various residential institutions echoes the themes of injustice and exclusion in Oye's songs.
"She has an amazing soulful voice, she's an Irish Billie Holiday," said Aisling McLaughlin, who was there with her sister, Deirdre McLaughlin. Others in the audience included art teacher Dee Mulrooney and her husband, film-maker Richard Heffernan; Shalini Sinka, a presenter on RTÉ programme Mono, and her husband Willie Sweeney and actor Frank Melia, who will be appearing in Fair City shortly as "a sleazy politician".
Others at the gig included actor John Lovett, who is starting in the Big Telly Theatre Company production of The Colleen Bawn by Dion Boucicault next month in Coleraine; actor and vice-president of the Irish Actors' Equity Pádraig Murray, and graphic designer Paul Hogan.