It’s a sunny Sunday lunchtime in south London as Cross the Tracks is warming up. The jazz, funk and soul festival is renowned for being an inviting space for emerging talent from across the globe. As such, it attracts attuned crowds eager to hear fresh voices, making it the perfect choice for Annahstasia to make her first ever festival performance. The singer, songwriter and multi-media artist makes a quietly confident entrance and begins to strum on her acoustic guitar. The tent soon fills up as her folk-infused music, at once doleful and joyful, both gentle and fierce, fills the air.

“This is mad early for rock star hours,” she half-jokes as her songs sail the crowd into a sea of pure emotion. Annahstasia’s richly evocative voice, sometimes deep and thick, other times diaphanous as silk, rides on delicate melodies as she tells heartfelt tales of human connection. There are moments of Janis Joplin, Tanita Tikaram and Tracy Chapman yet Annahstasia has a honeyed resonance of her very own. Notable by their absence are songs from her current EP, ‘Revival’. Instead, she tries out unreleased material such as ‘Stress Test’, its untamed chords a meditation on freedom. By the close of the set, I’m left feeling teary in a very good way. It’s as if everyone present has been healed just a little bit by her restorative sounds.

“I don’t do any warm ups and save everything for the stage, especially in festival scenarios where you have to give a lot. At the end of it, I felt a bit weak at the knees,” Annahstasia tells me an hour later as she recovers from the show which rounds up her solo European tour before hitting the US. “This was one of the first gigs I booked and then I planned a whole tour around it because this is a place where people want to come and discover.”

Born in LA to a Nigerian father and American mother who were both fashion designers and artists, she was given a creative upbringing. “I went on tour with my uncle when I was 14. My parents were like, ‘This is better than summer camp’. He’s a solo artist so it was cool to see that lifestyle. I liked moving from city to city every night, watching him vibe with the crowd,” she recalls. “Then he asked me what music I listened to. I told him Disney Channel, and he told me that wouldn’t do at all.” He gave Annahstasia an iPod fully loaded with over 24 hours-worth of greatness - Bill Withers, Nina Simone, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder – which served as the beginning of her music education. “That’s when I picked up a guitar, taught myself how to play it and started writing.”

Aged 17, she was discovered by a music producer whose kids went to her school. “It sounds dodgy and I guess it was. This old British guy was lurking around the school gates listening to me sing and then came up and asked, ‘Do you want to be a pop star? Do you dance? How’s your fashion?’ I was like, ‘No I don’t dance and my fashion is great, actually.’ He talked my parents into bringing me over to his house to track a record. I played the only song I’d written at that point and the label offered me a deal.”

Things went sour as the label tried to mould her into a mainstream direction, which tied Annahstasia up in seven years of industry red tape. She spent the time completing her studies in Political Science and Fine Arts and returned to music in 2019 with the debut EP ‘Sacred Bull’. “It was me charging ahead with this maximalist, no editing type of project. It was a meditation on will power, agency, love, loss and all the usual things.”

Two weeks later she got a call from family friend Lenny Kravitz offering her a support slot on his European stadium tour. “It was a wild situation. He asked, ‘Do you have a band? Are you ready to go?’ I totally lied and said, ‘Sure!’. I didn’t have a band, manager, backer or label. But I found a gospel band, we practiced for a week and worked up a rock version of ‘Sacred Bull’.” Did you ever confess the truth to Lenny? “No, never! But it all worked out. It was a beautiful tour and I learned a lot.”

After that, she felt burnt out and used the pandemic pause to re-centre and develop a more honed sound. “I wanted to be self-sufficient and play by myself. I can’t afford a band so I have to be very real and raw.” Last year saw her release the singles ‘Midas’ and ‘Power’, which she performed for a Colors Studio show, and both songs now feature on the ‘Revival’ EP, which has been hailed on Bandcamp and BBC Radio 1. And coming up by early next year will be the multi-tentacled album project, ‘Tether’ spanning music, ceramics, photography, paper making, textiles and public art.

“’Tether’ is about what grounds me in reality. I’m always drifting between wanting to give up and keep pushing forward. On the give up side it can get really dark. So, I have to practice staying in the present, in the here, in the corporeal. The songs are about friendship, yearning, honesty and kindness. These are mantras that I live by but not in a preachy or proselytising way. These are things I say to myself to remind myself that life is to be led with grace, with ease and with a sense of detachment that is optimistic and tasteful.”

Visually Annahstasia is shooting a portrait series of her loved ones, which will become something akin to a gigantic cyanotype quilt. “It’s all a process. I don’t know how it will all come together but I see myself building worlds with my art. My goal is to create spaces that feel safe but exhilarating. Somewhere you can cry, you can laugh, you can just be as human as you want to be, and it’s all held.”

Alongside all of that, Annahstasia is also a successful model (“It pays the bills – it’s fun, it’s fabulous, but it can drain my soul to be seen just as a body and face.”) and when she’s not working, she’s driving out of LA into nature to find some much-needed peace and solitude. Then it’s back to the grind, but it’s the little things that make it worth it. “I get a lot of heart-warming messages on social media from people telling me that my music has touched their lives,” she says. “And one of my favourite things about live shows is meeting people who have discovered me online. I’ve found London’s music community to be very generous.”

And with that, Annahstasia and her friends head off into the festival throng to do their own discovering at Cross The Tracks. The day is still young and as a true music fan, she’ll be showing love to other powerful women on the bill such as Liv.e and Kelis. It’s time to be free.