Lamisi's “Come” is a clapping, communal call for women's worth

In a world where music often challenges systems of power through confrontation, “Come” offers something different. It is a gentle call to kindness, a reminder of the strength found in community and mutual support. The second single from Lamisi's Let Us Clap album, out February 20 via Real World, it follows the feminist rallying cry “No Orgasm in Heaven”.

The Ghanaian artist was raised in an environment where creative freedom was not easily afforded. Music became a way to prove independence as much as it was a way to express it. After finishing high school, the expectation was university, responsibility, and stability. Instead, Lamisi found herself carving out space in sound. “I felt like the best way was for me to do something really incredible,” she explains. “Something that would prove I could take care of myself.” Music, at the time, was not just art. It was evidence.

Her early years were spent learning quietly. As a background singer and later lead vocalist in Patchbay Band, she treated collaboration as education, using the band as a way to understand the industry from the inside. There was no rigid masterplan, only timing and instinct. “I didn’t really plan. Everything around me just showed that I was ready.”

“‘Come’” is like a song of benevolence,” Lamisi says. “It’s a song that encourages being kind to one another, helping one another, and just like the album Let Us Clap that we tried to empower these women, we cannot do that all by ourselves.” Rooted in a musical tradition performed by women from northern Ghana, the track is part of a larger effort to uplift voices that have long been marginalised. The Let Us Clap project revives a women-led style of music centred around hand claps, communal singing, and dance – an art form that has existed for generations but remained largely invisible to mainstream audiences.

This invisibility reflects the social realities the project seeks to address. In Lamisi's culture, women’s voices are marginalised, their contributions undervalued, and their choices restricted. “When a woman conceives and she gives birth to a baby girl, some people can pass comments like, ‘Oh, she hasn’t given birth yet,’ and when it’s a boy, they go like, ‘Oh, now she’s delivered a human being.’” In this context, “Come” emerges as a quiet but firm assertion of presence and worth.

Importantly, the song recognises that empowerment is not a fight against men but a collaborative effort. “We need even the men to help us to be empowered, because it goes hand in hand. So, it doesn’t mean that we are just doing away with men, it goes both ways.” The song’s message is a promise of care: “Come to me, I will give you food and shelter, I will help you, you will not owe me.” It reassures listeners that strength begins within communities, especially among women. “If we, as women, are not there for each other, we cannot expect other people to give us support or to help us.”

This message of solidarity was shaped in partnership with innovative producer and LGBTQ+ activist Wanlov the Kubolor. Their collaboration was a meeting of minds, combining activism and creativity. “It just happened that we were doing a lot of research on the direction of the project, and then we discovered this and then we felt like, yes, this is it,” Lamisi says. “This goes in line with what I stand for as an activist for girl, child and women empowerment. It also aligns with him as a social activist who stands for human rights. So, it was a two-way interest combined with creativity that gave birth to this project.”

Beyond the music, Lamisi sees the impact of her work in the stories of young women she meets. “Whenever I go to villages [at home] that have outreaches for the students, teenage girls, some of them just walk up to me and then they tell me ‘I want to be in the game’ because they feel like I am out there. I’m very opinionated. I’m able to express myself through my music without limiting.”

Her message to aspiring young women is clear: never give up. “You don't just get up one day and you are there. So when you fail, it's alright to fail, but it is not alright when you fail and you give up. I think it's my life, and my past, that has a lot of impact on young girls.”