Around the World in 15 Female Singers Quiz

Answer: Ghana

Noella Wiyaala, aka Wiyaala, is a Ghanaian Afropop singer who sings in both English and the Ghanaian languages of Sissala and Waala. She has cited two of the other singers in this quiz, Angélique Kidjo and Miriam Makeba, as influences. She first started performing at the age of five and played football as a teenager, but ultimately opted to be a musician instead. In 2011, she auditioned for the Ghanaian talent show 'Stars of the Future' for the third time, and it proved to be third time lucky when she reached the finals. She released her self-titled debut album in 2014.

Outside music, Wiyaala is an actress - she starred in the film 'No Man's Land' in 2016 - and a fashion designer, having designed her stage outfits and jewellery. Like Grace Jones before her, she has an androgynous image. She has also campaigned against forced child marriage in Ghana.

Answer: France

Alizée Lyonnet, née Jacotey, has been dubbed the French Britney Spears, due to becoming famous while still in her teens and being the subject of some controversy. She was discovered by the French-Canadian singer Mylène Farmer while performing on 'Graines de Star', a talent show, at the age of 15. Farmer wrote the lyrics for her debut album, 'Gourmandises', which featured her 2000 breakthrough single, 'Moi...Lolita'. The song was criticised for being too similar to Farmer's own style, and the video, featuring the teenage singer cavorting in a club, raised a few eyebrows. The Britney comparisons continued when Alizée and will.i.am performed 'Scream & Shout' together at the NRJ Music Awards in 2013.

Outside music, Alizée is part of Les Enfoirés, a group of French celebrities who raise money for Restaurants du Coeur (a charity that donates food to people in need), and which also includes Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Monica Bellucci and Johnny Hallyday, the French answer to Cliff Richard. Several French footballers, including Amandine Henry, Zinedine Zidane, Karim Benzema and Eric Cantona, have also participated. (I can't translate the group's name into English, as it's a bit rude.)

Answer: Brazil

Astrud Gilberto, née Weinert, is one of Brazil's most famous bossa nova singers, whose songs include 'Agua de Beber', 'Dindi' and the award-winning 'The Girl from Ipanema' (often considered to be her signature song). She sings in both English and Brazilian Portuguese, and has recorded songs in other languages, such as German - she is of German descent - and Japanese. She married guitarist João Gilberto in 1959, and after divorcing him, married his musical collaborator, saxophonist Stan Getz. She moved to the USA in 1963.

In the '70s, Gilberto begun recording her own compositions. She duetted with George Michael on 'Desafinado' in 1996 on 'Red Hot + Rio', an AIDS benefit album. Gilberto's son João Marcelo, named for his father, plays with her touring band as bassist. (Bebel Gilberto, João Gilberto's daughter with the singer Miúcha, is also a bossa nova singer.)

Answer: Uzbekistan

Yulduz Usmonova is an Uzbek singer who fuses traditional Uzbek music with Western pop and electronica. As well as her native language, she also sings in Russian, Kazakh, Turkish (she's big in Turkey), Tajik and Tatar, amongst other languages. Her family worked in a silk factory; her hometown of Margilan is Uzbekistan's major silk-producing regions, and she studied music in Tashkent under the sponsorship of Gavhar Rahimova, another Uzbek singer. She released her debut album, 'Alma Alma', in 1993.

Usmonova's daughter Nilufar is also a musician, and the two have collaborated on a few songs. In 2020, parodist Rustamkhoja Usmonov dressed up as Usmonova at a performance in Tajikistan and the performance was presented as a concert by the real thing; Usmonova did not see the funny side of it and called Usmonov and his bandmate Bobur 'gays' (male homosexuality is illegal in Uzbekistan). They responded by suing her.

Answer: Guatemala

Gaby Moreno is one of the more obscure entries in this quiz, but I wanted to give her a mention after hearing her sing on Hugh Laurie's versions of 'Kiss of Fire' and 'The Weed Smoker's Dream' (as well as being a talented comic actor, he's also a decent pianist). A Guatemalan singer and guitarist whose styles range from alt-country to blues-rock, she has toured with the likes of Ani DiFranco and Tracy Chapman; she also toured with Hugh Laurie and the Copper Bottom Band in 2013. In 2020, she collaborated with Van Dyke Parks on the album 'Spangled!'

Moreno's soundtrack work includes 'Por Que Te Vas' for 'Puss in Boots: The Last Wish' and the theme from 'Elena of Avalor', a Disney fantasy cartoon series. She also scored the 2021 film 'Language Lessons'.

Answer: New Zealand

Bic Runga is of Chinese Malaysian and Māori (Ngāti Kahungunu) descent, and is best known for her 1997 single 'Sway', which appeared on the soundtrack to 'American Pie'. She has two sisters, Boh and Pearl, who are also musicians; Boh has previously supported Bic on tour, and the Runga sisters started recording songs when Bic was just four years old. At school, she performed in various bands.

Runga started recording her first EP, 'Drive', in 1994, with the help of an Arts Council grant, but decided to re-record it in 1995 as she was dissatisfied with how it sounded. Sony signed her the same year. Runga released her first single 'Bursting Through' in 1996. She has played the Lilith Fair and toured with fellow Kiwi Tim Finn, formerly of Split Enz and Crowded House. In 2006, she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to music.

Answer: South Africa

South Africa's Miriam Makeba, aka 'Mama Africa', is arguably one of the most famous African singers of the 20th century (and I can highly recommend 'Mbube', her version of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'). Growing up in apartheid South Africa, Makeba spent the first few days of her life in prison, as her mum had been arrested for selling umqumbothi, a type of homemade beer. As a teenager, she was in an abusive marriage and survived breast cancer. She first began performing with the Cuban Brothers, a group who sang American pop songs. Harry Belafonte became a mentor to her after meeting her in London, and following the Sharpeville massacre, she moved to the USA, although her marriage to Stokely Carmichael caused some controversy.

Makeba performed both solo and with various groups, such as the Skylarks and the Manhattan Brothers, and also collaborated with jazz musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Nina Simone. One of her most famous songs is 'Qongqothwane', aka 'The Click Song', which she performed in Xhosa, a language which has clicking sounds. Many of her songs were banned in South Africa, due to her opposition to the apartheid regime; after spending time in Guinea and Belgium, she returned to her homeland after Nelson Mandela had been freed from prison. She died of a heart attack in 2008 while performing in Italy.

Answer: Netherlands

Anouk Schemmekes, née Teeuwe, is one of the most notable Dutch pop singers of the latter 20th century, originally marketed as a Dutch Alanis Morissette, though she mellowed out later on. Although she mainly sings in English, she has recorded an album in Dutch in 2018, 'Wen d'r maar aan'. Her breakthrough hit was 1997's 'Nobody's Wife' (which won the Dutch TMF Award for Best New Single in 1998), and she released her debut album, 'Together Alone' that same year. She withdrew from the awards in 2006 as she felt people were bored with seeing the same faces.

In 2013, Anouk represented the Netherlands at the Eurovision Song Contest with 'Birds' and came ninth. She also co-wrote the 2015 Dutch entry, 'Walk Along', which was performed by Trijntje Oosterhuis. She was a coach on the Dutch version of 'The Voice', although she later quit the show in 2022 after crew members were accused of sexual misconduct.

Answer: Bulgaria

Mira Aroyo is one of the two female singers in the Liverpool electropop band Ladytron, the other being Helen Marnie. Though Marnie is Scottish, and bandmates Daniel Hunt and Reuben Wu are Scousers, Aroyo is Bulgarian, and sings in both English and Bulgarian; 'Fighting in Built Up Areas' and 'CSKA Sofia' are among the Ladytron songs with Bulgarian lyrics. All four band members play synthesisers; their Korg MS-2000B synths all have names (Aroyo's is called Babylon). Ladytron's debut album '604' was released in 2001.

Aroyo is Jewish and spent time in Israel as a child. She met Hunt and Wu through a mutual friend in Liverpool in 1999. Outside Ladytron, she has a postgraduate degree in Molecular Genetics from the University of Oxford; in 2000, she did a presentation at a D.Phil symposium entitled 'The Role of the C-terminus of FtsK in Xer Recombination'. However, she ultimately opted for music over genetics as it was more fun than lab work.

Answer: Australia

Tones and I is the stage name of Toni Watson, an Australian singer notable for her squeaky voice. She started out busking in Melbourne, and posted a cappella cover versions on Youtube under her real name in 2009. Originally performing as a duo with a guitarist, she branched out on her own after buying an RC300 Loop Station and teaching herself how to use it.

Tones and I shot to fame in 2019 with 'Dance Monkey', which stayed at Number One on the ARIA Chart for a whopping 24 weeks, beating the previous record held by Bing Crosby and 'White Christmas'. It also went to Number One in Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the Baltic states, among others. She released her debut album 'Welcome to the Madhouse' in 2021. In 2022, she appeared in a musical tribute to fellow Aussie Olivia Newton-John, who had died that year, at the ARIA Music Awards ceremony.

Answer: Benin

Angélique Kidjo is a Beninese singer who is influenced by a wide variety of styles, from jazz to Afropop and Jimi Hendrix. She sings in five languages - English, French, Gen, Yoruba and Fon - as well as her own made-up language. Originally from a family of performers, she started singing at a young age. She moved to Paris, where she studied music, due to conflicts in Benin, and was signed by Island's Chris Blackwell after he noticed her there.

Kidjo has performed with Philip Glass and the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, and re-recorded Talking Heads 'Remain in Light'. Outside music, she is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and supports education for girls in Benin; her song 'Batonga', a word she invented in response to people saying girls did not belong in a classroom, also inspired the name of a non-profit organisation she founded, the Batonga Foundation.

Answer: Iceland

Elíza Geirsdóttir is a classically trained singer and violinist; she was also the lead singer of the Icelandic indie band Bellatrix, who were regularly featured in 'Melody Maker' in the late '90s. In typical Icelandic tradition, Bellatrix were on the quirky side; originally known as Kolrassa Krókríðandi, they started out singing in Icelandic, with their debut EP 'Drápa' being released in 1992. Drápa is a type of Icelandic poetry known as 'skaldic poetry' (a skald being a Norse poet), which tended to be alliterative and dialogue-heavy.

Bellatrix translated some of their Icelandic songs into English for their 1995 album 'Stranger Tales'. They toured with Coldplay on a double-header tour in 1999, and released their breakthrough album 'It's All True' in 2000, with one of its most notable singles being 'Jediwannabe', which poked fun at 'Star Wars' fans. After the band split up, Geirsdóttir remained in London, where she studied music. She has recorded solo albums under the name Elíza Newman; her debut solo album 'Empire Fall' came out in 2007.

Answer: USA

Poppy - or Moriah Rose Pereira, to give her her real name - is both a musician and a YouTube sensation, once known as That Poppy. Collaborating with Titanic Sinclair, she made several videos under the character of Poppy, where she would do all kinds of weird things, such as petting a talking Sphynx cat called The Man, or standing in a glass box and being observed by children. Although she started out making art pop, from 2018's 'Am I a Girl?' onwards, her music became a mixture of J-pop, the Beach Boys and metal ('X' is a typical example).

In 2019, Poppy stopped working with Sinclair, stating that he had been emotionally abusive towards her (some of her songs, such as 'FYB' and 'Her', allude to the break-up). After going it alone, Poppy continued in the metal direction, but uses her normal speaking voice more often. She has covered Jack Off Jill's 'Fear of Dying' and TaTu's 'All the Things She Said'.

Answer: Israel

Ofra Haza was dubbed the 'Israeli Madonna', as one of Israel's most successful pop artists. Players of a gothic persuasion may recognise her as the woman who provides the wailing vocals on the Sisters of Mercy's 'Temple of Love'. Haza was from a Mizrahi Jewish background, of Yemeni descent, and was spotted by her manager Bezalel Aloni while performing with a theatre troupe. In 1983, she represented Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest with 'Hi' and came second. She performed both traditional Jewish songs, including songs from her childhood, and pop songs.

As well as the Sisters of Mercy, she also collaborated with Paula Abdul on 'My Love is for Real', the Black Dog on their EP 'Babylon', and Iggy Pop on her album 'Kirya', among others. She provided the singing voice of Moses' mother Yocheved in 'The Prince of Egypt', singing 'Deliver Us' in nineteen different languages. Haza died of AIDS in 2000; the Israeli newspaper 'Haaretz' caused controversy by reporting the cause of her death, as the public did not know she was HIV positive.

Answer: Thailand

Thailand's Yinglee Srijumpol is responsible for the insanely catchy 'Your Heart for My Number' (or 'Khoe Jai Thuea Leak Ber Tho' in the original Thai), heard in many a Thai resort in the New Tens. She performs in two genres: look thoong, a type of Thai country music that uses both Western and Thai instruments and became popular after the Second World War, and mor lam, a folk style originally from Laos, though the modern equivalent is much poppier. 'Your Heart for My Number' went to Number One on the Thai singles chart in 2013, and subsequently went viral on Youtube.

Yinglee grew up on a rice farm. Her debut album 'Bor Yan Bab' ('Shameless') was banned for 'immorality' by the Thai Ministry of Culture; according to Yinglee, the lyrics were thought to be against Thailand's traditions. She also had a difficult period after investing in a beauty salon, only to go bankrupt, but the turnaround came when she was signed by Grammy Gold in 2012. Her debut album on that label, 'Kha Khao Sao Lam Sing', was released that year.