Helen Parker-Jayne Isibor

Helen Epega (née Isibor), also The Venus Bushfires (born 1981), is a Nigerian/British opera singer, songwriter, composer, visual and performance artist, who has written and composed the world’s first opera in Pidgin English. Inspired after seeing Wagner’s Parsifal, her Song Queen: A Pidgin Opera was presented in London in July 2015. Biography Born in Ibadan in southwestern Nigeria into a family with five children, Epega is the daughter of a medical consultant and a storybook writer, both of whom were interested in music. She lived in Benin City until moving to London in the 1980s at the age of seven. After attending an all-girls convent school, she graduated in Communications and Media at Brunel University London. She began her career as a rapper then found her voice after becoming interested in politically aware singers such as Fela Kuti and Miriam Makeba. When she was in Ibiza in 2007, she discovered the hang drum, which has since become her favourite instrument. Epega is known as The Venus Bushfires, “a creative collective of one and many”, and has explained the name by saying: “When I was in Benin City in 2008 visiting my grandmother, they’d burned the land. And I asked my moth