SATE is the stage name of Saidah Baba Talibah, a Canadian rock singer from Toronto, Ontario.[1] Her 2021 album The Fool was named a Juno Award nominee for Alternative Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2022.[2]
The daughter of restaurateur Howard Matthews and influential Canadian blues and jazz singer Salome Bey,[3] she began her musical career as an occasional performer with her mother under the name Salome Bey and the Relatives.[4] She was a vocalist with the funk rock band Blaxäm in the 1990s, alongside her sister Tuku and Washington Savage of Infidels.[5] The band released the EP Kiss My Afro in 1998,[6] but broke up before releasing a full-length album.[7]
As Saidah Baba Talibah, she continued to perform as a solo artist,[8] and released her debut solo album (S)cream in 2011.[9] In this era, she described herself as having been inspired in part by Black Rock Coalition artists such as Living Colour.[10]
In 2014, she performed at Toronto's Luminato Festival with TV on the Radio.[11] In 2015, she received a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for Best Leading Actress, Musical Theatre for her stage performance in What Makes a Man.
She subsequently changed her stage name to SATE, on the grounds that performing under her given names was giving audiences a false impression that they would be seeing a world music artist, when in fact her music blends elements of soul and funk with blues rock and punk rock.[12] As SATE, she released the album RedBlack&Blue in 2016;[13] the album's track "Know My Name" has been used as backing music in promotional advertisements for Sportsnet.[14]
The Fool was released in 2021.[14] Her video for the song "Nobody" features The OBGMs appearing as her backing band;[14] the album track "Guardian Angel", a short interlude, is a recording of SATE as a child singing along with her mother, which Saidah found in her mother's possessions only after her death in 2020.[12]