Singer’s star rises in St. Louis through tributes to Black women icons

She strutted onto the stage wearing a blonde lioness wig and a short sequined silver skirt. Flanked by six gospel singers (3 in emerald and 3 in pink gowns), the exuberant, diminutive vocalist embodied the spirit of Tina Turner as she belted the lyrics of the Sumner alum’s 1973 hit, “Make Me Over.”

Laka (pronounced “Lay-ka”) also known as “LakaSoul,” was the lead singer of the Tina Turner tribute held at City Winery St. Louis late last year. She performed a “Motown Revue” on January 12^th at the Broadway Oyster Bar and has a tribute to the late, great Whitney Houston on January 25th at Blue Strawberry.

Laka (her real name) has made a name for herself since her “St. Louis Woman” performance in 2022. For that musical feat, she portrayed Josephine Baker, Willie Mae Ford Smith, Tina Turner, Katherine Dunham, Maya Angelou, Ann Peebles and other history-making women with St. Louis connections.

Produced by actor/director Joe Hanrahan and The Midnight Company, the one-woman show challenged Laka’s singing, poetry-reading, acting, storytelling and dancing abilities. It was a tall order for someone who-just five years earlier-eked her way into performing publicly by way of open mic gigs and social media promotions.

Laka has a lot of soul for someone who didn’t even discover the genre until her college years. She was born and raised in Cape Girardeau MO. The small town has a population of around 40,000 with roughly 5,000 black residents. “It wasn’t the most diverse,” Laka recalled, “But I feel like it was a good place to grow up. It was really comfortable…everybody knew everybody.”

She was raised Pentecostal and attended Liberty Pentecostal Community Church. It was strict and secular music, Laka said, was forbidden. She was a choir member and traveled to other small towns in Southeast Missouri performing as the “Liberty Trio,” the church’s gospel group. Although she wasn’t exposed to secular music, Laka said she experienced “soul music” through movies like “What’s Love Got to do with it,” the story of Tina Turner’s rise to stardom and The Temptations’ self-titled biopic.

After graduating from Cape Central High (the one public high school in town), she attended University of Missouri (MIZZOU)in Columbia. She studied nutrition and fitness and medical dietetics. Laka’s goal was to follow in her beloved godmother’s shoes and become a dietitian, which she did. She entered the field as a registered dietitian, specializing in food and nutrition. 

Laka is somewhat guarded about personal details of her personal life. She’s been stalked since gaining some popularity and is understandably cautious. Still, she divulged that she got married right after college and that that marriage (now defunct) was the reason she moved to St. Louis.

It was around that time that she discovered and immersed herself in soul music. She was inspired and influenced by the sounds of artists like Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, James Brown, Etta James, Otis Redding and Bill Withers. “You feel something when you hear their music,” Laka recalled. “It’s like you can feel the experience of what they’re singing about.” Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” fits in that category “100 percent,” she said. So does Franklin’s “Do Right Woman,” Etta James’ “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and Withers’ “Use Me.” “Soul music is the closest thing to gospel,” Laka said. “It just felt most at home to me. When I’m singing soul, I could just as well be singing gospel.”

Around 2016, Laka started attending open mic events, learning to sing with different artists and bands. After posting some of her performances online people started requesting more of her music. She got her first paying gig through LinkedIn. “There was this restaurant in Glen Carbon looking for a house singer,” Laka said. “So, yeah, I took it and started posting videos of myself performing.”

Five years later, in 2022, she headlined the one-woman tribute show. Her rendition of Tina Turner was an audience favorite. “When I came out in this tiny, red, sequin dress… it got the most rise out of the audience,” said Laka. “They went wild over that.”

She did her first solo Tina tribute later that year at the Blues Museum and subsequent shows sold out. During her monthly show at the Chase Park Plaza, Laka started sampling some of Whitney Houston’s songs like “I want to Dance with somebody.”  

“When I first sang, ‘I Will Always Love you,’ people cheered like I had just hit a home run,” Laka reminisced.  “Then they always requested it,” 

The audience’s reaction was so overwhelming that by 2023, Laka started hosting Whitney Houston tributes. Laka is also dedicated to writing her own music. She does about six shows a month. Although her singing career is on the rise, she still considers it a side thing.

“I don’t ever want to see myself depending on my art for my income,” she explained. “I feel like I might lose something with that. Right now, I can say ‘hey, this is what I want to do, and this is the type of show I want to perform…so, everything is pretty much my own creative expression.’

But what if her star continues to rise?

“Well, yeah, if it keeps rising-and I hope it will-we’ll see,” Laka said. “I’m willing to go wherever the music takes me but that’s not necessarily my goal. I always want to be where I want to be without compromising my creative expression just to make a living.”

For more information on Laka’s upcoming shows, visit www.lakasoul.com. 

Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.