REVIEW: Hair’s Breath: Music Inspired by Black Women and Their Hair, The BTMR project, EdFringe 2025 ★★★★★

You can’t tell me a god damn thing when my hair and nails are done.”

Hair’s Breath: Music Inspired by Black Women and Their Hair is a sensational live session that had me asking for the album at the end. I was quickly told that the songs were made bespoke for this performance. Featuring Adra Boo and Blake Madden, this evening of music explores the social, personal, and political significance of Black women’s hair.

Adra takes us on a beautiful journey of love and self-acceptance, of hair inspired, admired and taken care of by her family, the ancestral beauty of her hair and her grandma’s hair and her grandma before that and so on. It’s the discovery of the jewel that you are, told through powerhouse soulful vocals and a sultry, empowered performance.

The audience are encouraged to get up and dance, respond to how Adra hits sticks to create percussion, shakes cans to create rhythm and lures you in with fiery original rhythmic numbers weaved through the set looking at themes of lasting love, finding the strength to choose yourself and unapologetically taking up space. Growing up, I used to worry constantly about the size of my afro when going to see theatre shows and this live session validated that my afro belongs wherever I go. Oral history recordings and affirmations bounce around the speakers like whispers that guide you every day. The offering of Adra’s wise Grandma’s words was a gift of unconditional love and hair wisdom, showcasing her matriarchal stewardship for her village, anchoring the performance in legacy.

Adra Boo is a musical treat, dynamic, magnetic, and impossible to take your eyes off. The chemistry with Blake Madden (bassist) was electric. Madden delivered a captivating and impassioned bassline and an unexpected lip sync moment dissecting the Black femme body that is still lingering in my mind. 

Throughout the show, Adra sheds hair hats unfamiliar to her texture, revealing golden and black braids curling past her shoulders. The red thread running throughout the design, from lips, glasses, fans, nails, mic muffs, sneaker shoes, to guitar straps was a bold and unifying visual signature.

Hair’s Breath proudly recognises Black women’s hair and claims it as our inheritance. It’s part concert, part oral history, part self-love ritual. 

Radiant. Powerful. Celebratory.

You can catch Hair’s Breath: Music Inspired by Black Women and Their Hair from August 5th – 9th (not the 10th or 17th) at the Space @ Surgeon’s Hall from 11:40pm (45mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.

Next week catch Adra and the full Black cast of Black to My Roots: African American Tales From the Head and the Heart.