Keyboardist, Sita Korley, has shared the story behind the formation of the all women band ‘Lipstick Queens Band’.
In 2009, these female instrumentalists by some divine design found themselves in the same space.
In an interview with Eunice Tornyi on e.tv Ghana’s ‘African Women’s Voices’ show, she said, “So it started with me and subsequently my other sisters joined. One of them suggested that we all come together and form a band since they could all play at least one of each instrument. So we decided to come together and also look for other female musicians”.
According to her, doing this was quite difficult at the time because most female musicians they found were in the church, and had a certain perception about musicians especially those who do circular music.
“So it was a tough one getting them to join us because we also had to play in clubs and other places they thought church people shouldn’t be at. So, it was quite a challenge,”.
She added that in order to get other women join the band, they had to call in male friends who were musicians and knew other female musicians who would be interested so they can all come together.
“And at the time, we were also under a management and we were called ‘le femme’. Subsequently, we drifted away from that management and decided that we were going to manage ourselves and rebrand the group so we called it the ‘Lipstick Band’” she added.
She emphasized that they came up with that name because after their first tour in France, the Europeans were wild and excited so they tagged them as queens and they adopted the name the ‘Lipstick Queens’.
By: Gyamfuah Owusu-Ackom
