This is turning into the year of Elusive Female Artists Making Overdue Comebacks. First came Neneh Cherry and her first solo album in 16 years. Then US folk singer Linda Perhacs released a follow-up to her 1970 debut, Parallelograms. And last week, Kate Bush announced a series of shows, some 35 years after she last toured.
Lesser known but equally as deserving of your attention are the Lijadu Sisters: Nigerian twins, Yoruba priestesses and former Afrobeat stars. Now 65, they are also making their return. Two of the few female faces of 1970s Nigeria's male-dominated music scene, they played with juju linchpin King Sunny Adé, hung out with James Brown and toured with Cream drummer Ginger Baker. Rare videos on YouTube show the twins jamming, babies in arms, and giving orders in the studio.
"I would go to a drummer, 'Give me this rhythm'," says Kehinde Lijadu over Skype from the Harlem flat she shares with sister Taiwo. "If he couldn't do it, I tell him: 'If your sweetheart wanted something sweet from you, is this how you're going to sound? Because she'd give you nothing.' Then he would give me what I want."
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Their music was similarly progressive. The twins sung in Yoruba and English, blending Afrobeat with disco, psychedelia, funk and rocksteady. Like their second cousin Fela Kuti, they also took aim at their country's ruling elite. "We sang those songs because they were not listening," says Taiwo. "We needed schools, we needed roads, we needed clean water."
In the 80s they toured America with Adé but as they were about to crack the west, Kehinde injured her spine in a fall and the sisters quit music and retreated into religious practice for the next 20 years. Rumour has it that they sometimes look to a "spiritual goat" for guidance, which might also explain why it's taken them so long to regroup.
Their health improved, however, Taiwo and Kehinde are finally ready to return. They're planning a new album for September on their own Lijadu Sisters label. And this week they'll sing in London and Bristol alongside Damon Albarn, Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor and Kele Okereke from Bloc Party at a one-off concert to celebrate the songs of mysterious African synth-pop pioneer William Onyeabor. The Lijadus don't recall meeting Onyeabor but they liked his music, adding: "He reminds us of ourselves because he talks about public concerns."
For the sisters, those concerns are as potent as ever. "We'll be telling the world to turn things around for the rest of our lives," says Kehinde. "We can't just try and make money through music. We need to correct our own society."
Lijadu Sisters perform at Atomic Bomb: Who Is William Onyeabor?, Barbican Hall, EC1, 1 Apr; Colston Hall, Bristol, 2 Apr
