Grit to Glitz

Emily ‘Mickey’ Hahn was just 19 when she drove across America 1924 – dressed as a man to avoid any trouble. The remainder of her life was no less exciting, living in Africa, Asia, Europe, and America through tumultuous times of world history, writing articles, prolifically publishing books, and taking lovers where she went.

Chanteuse Sunitra Martinelli recounts Hahn’s stories from that first road trip to her death more than seventy years later, through prose, poetry and song, and supported by amazing jazz stylings from the musical talents of Alex Wignall on piano, Josh Baldwin on drums and Declan Horan on bass.

Martinelli tells us that Hahn earned a degree in mining engineering because someone told her she couldn’t, and was an early feminist: ‘I’d have a higher reputation if I was a man’ she sings. Martinelli’s songs are packed full of narrative, because Hahn lived a full life. Indeed, Martinelli crushes so many words in her lyrics to leave her breathless. In her next song with a Latino-rhythm, we learn that when setting up a Red Cross camp in the Belgian Congo, Hahn wrote and published her first book, a beginner’s guide to the art of seduction (‘five sisters, their boyfriends…’).

Musical styles change as often as Martinelli’s costumes – a different one each song, representing the time and place of each stage on her journey. The songs ‘Café’ from Shanghai, and ‘If I Was Your Concubine’ from Hong Kong show off Martinelli’s immense talents – singing in (at least) English, French and Mandarin across the short set, and she engages with the audience, even encouraging the bar’s patrons to sing along.

When Hahn’s life turns serious – once Japan occupied the Asian city in 1941 – she found solace in the arms of the head of British Intelligence, and for a while, relative calm as a mother of two in Dorset, England. Martinelli sings wistfully of that time when ‘Stiff upper lips, sensible shoes, the poison of monotony that gives me the blues’. The remainder of Hahn’s life is covered quickly – snippets of the books she wrote after this were rushed, as if to wrap up the show on time. However, there’s plenty of story in the preceding forty-five minutes to consider once the lights come up.

It’s a fascinating musical journey though Hahn’s life that is both educational and entertaining, and leaves the packed bar wanting more of both.

Mark Wickett