The Liberty Belle

I thought my decision to leave Monaco in the 1990s to go and work in Limerick – it’s a very long story – was a pretty far out one, but I’ve just been trumped by Amasis lead singer, actress and former Miss Africa Ireland Nofe Liberty.

“I’m from a part of Brooklyn which is the ‘hood, but my Mom wasn’t digging it so we moved to Drogheda where my Auntie lives,” Nofe (it’s pronounced no-fay) says in a don’t-mess-with-me Noo Yawk drawl. “Was it a culture shock? Hell, yeah! There weren’t many Africans living in Drogheda then, so we got a load of looks and comments – some of them not very nice. Most the people were cool though and the atmosphere – man, I loved all that peace and calm! When I came over for the first time in September 2004 it was for a holiday, but as soon as I got back to Brooklyn and the craziness started again I knew I wanted to live here all the time. So I am!”
Exactly how tough was her neighbourhood?
“Coming out of your door you were like, ‘What am I going to see today?’” she proffers. “My Mom made sure I kept out of trouble – I didn’t go to clubs or nothing growing up – but there was always a danger you’d be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get caught up in something. The main reason we came here was to leave that gang culture behind.”
Yes, as mean as the streets of Drogheda are, they don’t have the Bloods, Crips, 36th Mob, Cojones Squad, Deceptions, La Familia and Latin Kings fighting turf wars on them.
Scrape away the hard as nails accent, and Nofe is a super-friendly person whose first love is her family.
“They’re everything to me,” she smiles. “My Mom – who’s trying to get her Liberty label off the ground here – made the dress I wore at the Meteor Awards and my Dad, Felix Liberty, is a big pop star in Nigeria. I used to go over there with him all the time. One of my favourite childhood memories was when he played in the State House, and all these business guys who’d been standing there in their suits looking serious suddenly started dancing around. Watching him get reactions like that is what made me want to be a performer.”
If you’d like to check Nofe’s Da out, three of his biggest ‘80s hits – ‘Ifeoma’, ‘One Life To Live’ and ‘Ngozi’ – can be found on YouTube. Having moved to Drogheda permanently at the beginning of 2005, she enrolled in an Information Technology and Multimedia course in the local college.
“Somebody heard me singing in the corridor and asked me to perform in a show,” she resumes. “When that went really well, I thought, ‘Hey, maybe I should be looking for some kind of music course.’ That’s how I ended up at the Sound Training Centre in Temple Bar and met Les who was teaching there.”
Les being Les Stapleton, the fortysomething producer and songwriter who on hearing Nofe do her thing for the first time said, “Stick with me, kid, and I’ll make you a star!”
“That’s literally what happened,” he laughs. “I said to her, ‘If you come to this school I guarantee that within two years you’ll be famous.’ I’d been looking for a black American singer like her for literally 20 years, so I wasn’t going to let her get away.”
Citing the likes of Jazzy B and Nellee Hooper as his studio heroes, Les set about refining the Amasis sound, which most of us only got to hear for the first time at the Meteors when their insanely catchy debut single, ‘Never Yours’, won them the Most Promising New Artist 2010 Award.
“I didn’t want to go public with this until everything was perfect,” Les explains. “We spent days and days focusing on vocal techniques, performance techniques… the whole nine yards. And I have to say, based on the reaction we’ve had since the Meteors, it’s worked.”
Was Nofe surprised when Amasis’ name was called in the RDS?
“Jesus, yeah!” she grins. “Les had us convinced that someone else had won ‘cause we were miles from the stage. More than that, I didn’t think ours was the type of music that a lot of Irish people would be into. I guess I was wrong!”
The band – whose ranks also include Fergal Toohey, Russell Cooley and Nofe’s razor-sharp rapper brother Felix Jr. – certainly made a big impression on the red carpet, with the assembled paparazzi flashing away even though most of them didn’t have a clue who Amasis were.
“It was crazy how the word-of-mouth kicked in once we were nominated,” Les reflects. “A lot of people knew us from the Sound Training Centre, and there was a lot of goodwill from the African community delighted to see one of their own breaking through into the Irish mainstream. There are a lot of foreign people living here but in terms of music and other areas of the arts, they’re not very visible.”
Talking of other areas of the arts, Nofe has also trodden the boards at that bastion of serious acting, the Samuel Beckett Theatre.
“When I won the Miss Africa Ireland competition in 2006 – you got extra marks for singing and stuff – it got my name out to a lot of different people including a director guy who was doing Playboy Of The Western World. I didn’t realise at the time that this was a very Irish play, but I auditioned and got the part. I really love the acting but music will always come first!”