The Artists on the Frequency — the station's own singers, bands and sound systems. One act at a time; pick a name to hear who they are.
Ranking Annette
Conscious roots from the North — the women carry the weight.
Ranking Annette — born Annette Beckford in Hackney, raised in Tottenham — is the answer to the idea that the women of the scene only ever sang about love. Hers is conscious roots in the militant register: a lower, gravelled, declarative voice in the tradition of Ranking Ann, Sister Audrey and Sister Carol, set against a steady North London one-drop. The Ranking is the sound-system honorific it sounds like. She earned it on the mic.
Her songs are about who holds a community together. Seven Sisters Road is the working mother on the late shift, the auntie at the window, three generations strong on the Tottenham side. Marsh Lane is the meditative flip — the same streets at rest. Where the lovers rock singers turn inward, Annette turns outward: to the road, the family, the elders talking history to the young. Soft on nobody. Strong like the iron, the song says, soft like the gold.
Key tracksSeven Sisters Road · Marsh Lane
- Roots
- Tottenham / Stoke Newington, North London
- In the lineage of
- Ranking Ann, Sister Audrey, Sister Carol