Home | Entertainment | Shingai reveals she is taking a break from music to pursue an acting career

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14 February, 2010 02:16:00 By JOHN DINGWALL

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LOS ANGELES, US - Zimbabwean singer, Noisettes beauty Shingai Shoniwa is poised to strip off as she prepares to switch to theatre and big-screen roles.

The stunning 28-year-old is in talks with casting agents in Los Angeles and admits she has no qualms about revealing all if the role demands it.

Shingai, due in Scotland with her band this week, first honed her highlyenergetic stage act as a burlesque singer, performing in risque clubs up and down the country.

She hopes her early stage experiences will stand her in good stead when the Hollywood offers start flooding in.

She said: "Burlesque is an amazing club experience where people dress up and you can see a woman dancing in drag, who may get up later and do a song.

"Apart from Immodesty Blaise, nobody strips beyond nipple tassles.

"I haven't stripped down to nipple tassles yet. If it was just myself and I wasn't singing or performing, I don't think I would feel confident enough. But I would definitely strip down if it was for a theatrical role.

"If I was totally in character for the whole of the evening, I would do it."

I caught up with Shingai as she rehearsed with the Noisettes for their UK dates, which include Aberdeen Music Hall on Thursday and Edinburgh HMV Picture House the next night.

The dates are the band's first in Scotland since they performed alongside Madness at Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations.

Shingai said: "I can't wait to get back up to Scotland. We have had so much love from you guys from the beginning.

"The Hogmanay concert was in front of 80,000 people and it was minus 10. After we came offstage we had to wait for this little buggy that was taking us from the stage and we all thought we had frostbite from the cold.

"Fifteen of us went back to the hotel but they were cracking down on people having parties in their room even though it was New Year so we went downstairs and gatecrashed a wedding."

The trio - Shingai, guitarist Dan Smith and drummer Jamie Morrison - have enjoyed an incredible 2009, despite being dropped after the release of the 2007 album What's The Time Mr. Wolf.

The Noisettes dusted themselves off and released their successful follow-up Wild Young Hearts last year.

Single Don't Upset The Rhythm (Go Baby Go), which featured in aMazda 2 car advert and made it to No.2 in the charts, helped the album become a smash.

Shingai said: "In 2008, we got dropped.

It shows you mustn't give up. After a while you've got to forget all the bad stuff people are saying. I remember having the feeling when I used to go into the label's office that the people didn't even know who we were and realising that they didn't havefaith in us."

Commenting on her highly-physical stage performances, she added: "It's the way I was brought up. I come from a huge African family and everybody is expressive.

"I have four sisters, two brothers and a twin. When you grow up in a family like that you learn to listen to what everyone has to say and also learn to find your own space to talk. I felt like I was in a film. It was one drama after another. One minutethere would be a fall out, then people kissing and making up.

"I've always been encouraged to express myself. If I felt upset there was always someone to cheer me up.

"I had a happy childhood but I lost all my grandparents and my dad between the ages of 11 and 13 so that was really a sad time. My mum kept a positive mood all the time and aunts and uncles chipped in to help raise me. My mum is my absolute hero."

Shingai's parents fled Zimbabwe when it was still known as Rhodesia and under the white minority rule of prime minister Ian Smith.

Her father was a lawyer and politician who Shingai believes would have liked her to follow in his career footsteps.

She said: "I have always known I was going to be an entertainer. My Dad wanted me to be a lawyer because his side of the family are very academic. His idea would have been for me to do some kind of diplomacy or law. I think I ended up involving myself indiplomacy by bringing people together in rooms to listen to music. My parents were involved in the ANC and the movement against apartheid and the opposition to Ian Smith's government. Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa were all trying to get ridof apartheid at the same time and it was a very sad and bloody war.

"I don't know exactly how my dad got into it but he and my uncles were very involved with the movement.

"The war was still going on when they came here at the end of the 1970s. My father knew he could get a diplomacy role in the UK and my parents saw it as a great chance to get their children an education and a career over here."

She added: "The burlesque performances all happened by accident.

"I was flatmates with one of my best friends, Paloma Faith. We were living together and there was this fantastic renaissance for burlesque and we had always been into jazz and blues and 1920s and 1930s films.

"A lot of my favourite musicians such as Eartha Kitt used to perform in huge circus tents during the depression. Because people didn't have that much money, they had to have different types of entertainment to draw them in.

"There would be opening dancers, big bands and vaudeville during the intermission. The dancers would emulate what they were seeing on the big screen. But it wasn't til the 1950s that people started stripping onstage.

"But you can either do that or do s**** gigs at the Barfly. I loved the renaissance supper clubs in London where I could perform with a 12-piece orchestra, singing big band stuff with girls twirling around me onstage. Who would say no to that?"

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