Alisha Sufit

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Alisha Sufit

Background information
Associated acts	Magic Carpet
Website	http://www.alishasufit.com

Alisha Sufit (born 1946 in London, England) is best known as the singer-songwriter with the 1970s band Magic Carpet.

She attended Chelsea School of Art, London, and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, France, after which she began performing in clubs and colleges around the UK. Her repertoire consisted of her own compositions plus traditional folk songs, self-accompanied on acoustic guitar and Appalachian dulcimer. She is also a visual artist and poet.

In 1971 Alisha Sufit joined with ex Chelsea School of Art fellow student Jim Moyes plus two musical friends to form the psychedelic progressive folk-rock band Magic Carpet. The line-up consisted of Alisha (vocals, guitar), Clem Alford (sitar, esraj, tamboura), Jim Moyes (guitar) and Keshav Sathe (tabla, Indian percussion). The band made one eponymous album, Magic Carpet, described as "one of the finest Indian-influenced psychedelic folk albums of the 1970s".^{[citation needed]} After a launch at the 100 Club in London, a performance at Cleo Laine and Johnny Dankworth's Wavendon, radio airplay on Pete Drummond's Sounds of the Seventies on BBC Radio, plus several club and festival appearances, the group disbanded in 1972.

During the 1970s and 1980s Alisha Sufit played as supporting artiste alongside numerous musicians of the era including The Enid, Fairport Convention, Terry Reid, the guitarist Davey Graham (also known as Davy Graham), the Incredible String Band, amongst others. She was invited to appear at the Incredible String Band's I.S.B. Convention concert in Leeds in 1994.

By the 1980s Sufit was developing a repertoire of jazz standards and also writing her own jazz-oriented compositions. She made numerous performances accompanied by such musicians as Peter Ind (bass), Pete Sabberton (piano), Chucho Merchan (bass), Nick Weldon (piano), Dave McCrae (piano). The Magic Carpet album began to receive acclaim some 15 years after its release, the original LP now a sought-after collectible on the international vinyl market, currently re-released on CD by the Magic Carpet Records label. It was also reissued on EMI heavy-weight vinyl, a signed limited edition that quickly sold out.

Sufit continues to work and write, with a catalogue of more than 200 songs. In 1993 she released the album Alisha Through the Looking Glass, on both CD and heavy-weight EMI audiophile vinyl formats. The album consists of 12 songs with instrumental contributions by Ray Warleigh on saxophone, Bernard O’Neill on bass, Magic Carpet percussionist Keshav Sathe on tabla, Mamadi Kamara on congas and percussion, Chris Haigh on fiddle and Alan Dunn on accordion. In 1994 Alisha Sufit released the album Love And The Maiden, a signed limited edition CD collection of her early recordings with sleeve notes by UK guitarist Davy Graham.

In 1996, Magic Carpet sitarist Clem Alford and Alisha Sufit collaborated again to record the album Once Moor, subtitled Magic Carpet II, featured in Sound On Sound magazine. In 1999 she contributed two tracks to the compilation album Women Of Heart and Mind, a collaboration of women singer-songwriters, and in 2005 she was included in the compilation album Many Bright Things, contributing her own composition Silver Witch, accompanied on mandolin and bass by Frank Defina.

[edit] Discography

Magic Carpet
Love and the Maiden
Alisha Through the Looking Glass
Once Moor (Magic Carpet II)
Alisha's Cellar (forthcoming as at June 2007)

[edit] References

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