Music, passion, and powerful women: The launch of amplifyHER, the exciting new UN podcast

amplifyHER is a UN News production, powered by SoundCloud. The first episode was released on Wednesday, November 24, on all major podcast platforms. Subsequent episodes will be released on a weekly basis.

• Division 1: Milli (Thailand)

Young celebrity Milli became the first Thai artist to perform solo at the world famous Coachella Music Festival, winning over a new audience. He has been making waves in his country since his first release Phak Kon in 2020, thanks to countless songs in English, Thai, and many local languages.

• Group 2: MC Yallah (Uganda)

A successful artist from a very young age, MC Yallah had to fight his way back into the music industry, after taking time off to raise his family. There was a turning point when he signed up with Nyege Nyege, a record company that supports artistes in the outdoors. He took his music in a new, more experimental direction, and is now attracting huge crowds across Europe.

• Round 3: Carmen de Leon (Venezuela)

Carmen, a female singer from Venezuela, is exploding on the scene as an actress and singer. He sings in Spanish and English, and is very independent. Although he has lived in Mexico, the USA and Spain, he feels a strong attachment to his Venezuelan roots. Many of his videos have over a million views on YouTube.

• Group 4: Emel (Tunisia)

Emel Mathlouthi was named the ‘voice of the Tunisian revolution,’ after a video featuring the song ‘My word is free’, during a Tunisian street protest, went viral online during the Arab spring.

• Group 5: Faouzia (Morocco/Canada)

Faouzia, a young singer with a great voice, was born in Morocco and raised in Canada. He started making a name for himself when he was just 15 years old, uploading songs to YouTube and winning music awards and Canadian music awards. Soon after, when he was still in high school, influential EDM producer David Guetta invited him to feature on his song “War”.

• Episode 6: Sarah Crouch (Jamaica)

Sarah Crouch is part of DejaVilla, a duo she created with Brooklyn-based producer and singer David Marston, who provides dance music to her passionate songs. Although his parents were musicians, they urged him to study in the hospitality industry, knowing that making a living in the music industry, especially in Jamaica, could be difficult. Cooking is one of his passions.

• Division 7: Adomaa (Ghana)

Adomaa’s music career started when he started singing covers of songs he liked, and recording them on his phone. Today he is seen as a leading light of afro-jazz and alternative music in his country.

• Round 8: Alena Murang (Malaysia)

Alena Murang works to preserve her Dayak Kelabit indigenous roots, from the jungles and mountains of the island of Borneo. She was the first woman to practice and learn the Sape, a lute instrument of the island’s upper urban communities that was traditionally reserved for male custodians. He sings in the endangered Kelabit and Kenyan languages.

• Round 9: LIA LIA (Germany/China)

LIA LIA is the son of half-Chinese, half-German singer Lia Wang. His first releases attracted international attention, and led to a personal invitation from Doja Cat to support him on a string of German shows. He has over 245,000 subscribers on YouTube.

• Round 10: Lyn Lapid (USA/Philippines)

As a teenager, Lyn Lapid started posting cover videos on Youtube. At the end of 2019, he launched his Tik Tok page, quickly building an audience of five million followers, attracted by his voice. A snippet of his first original song, Producer Man, became the most unreleased video on Tik Tok in 2020.