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Henrietta Smith-Rolla (born 1980/81), is a British born Ghanaian-Russian-German composer, producer and DJ based in Manchester, performing under the alias Afrodeutsche. Alongside her prolific DJ career, she has produced music for her own studio album, as well as music for television and film, including composing the score for BAFTA nominated short film Kamali. Her polyrhythmic compositions integrate a wide array of musical genres, including Afrofuturistic electro and techno, classical solo piano and Detroit legacy house.

History
Growing up in the south west of England, Smith-Rolla’s initial musical interest manifested at an early age. As a seven-year-old, she would dance along to Soul II Soul’s Back to Life on Top of the Pops and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s famed Flight of the Bumblebee. At nine, she was introduced to the West Country free party scene through an older friend who would bring back cassettes for her to listen to on her Walkman. Her passion was formalized with violin lessons, but she gave up by the time she was 12, instead opting to spend many hours playing the pianos of the houses her mother was cleaning.

Smith-Rolla briefly lived in London before moving to Manchester at age 24. Feeling a strong connection with the city, she describes it as “nurturing without question”, and gave her “complete freedom to make stuff”.

Without knowing how to read music or even play keys, she was asked to join Graham Massey’s vintage organ group Sisters of Transistors in 2006, playing a combination of original music and covers of compositions by the likes of Rachmaninoff. The music was geared towards a Baroque style with an electronic twist. Smith-Rolla has since been involved in several other musical collaborations with Graham Massey, including the Toolshed collective and The Part Time Heliocentric Cosmo Drama After School Club, originally formed as a tribute to the late Sun Ra, as well as synth pop group Silverclub.

In 2007 she started to make electronic music, two years after new friends introduced her to Underground Resistance’s Afrogermanic, a moment so influential it is part of the inspiration for her later moniker. In 2009, Smith-Rolla started club night Clap Trap with friend Jackie Thompson and that same year she began composing for other people, mostly writing film and theatre scores, taking inspiration from Bernard Hermann’s work for Alfred Hitchcock.

The Afrodeutsche project was started in 2016, growing from a search for Smith-Rolla’s biological father, in which she discovered her Ghanaian roots also included German and Russian heritage. The name, translating as African-German, was an epiphany that linked to the already eclectic music she was creating. Of the name, she has said “I just had this huge connection to it straight away. I never expected to realise myself artistically in this world.”

In 2018, Smith-Rolla’s debut album, Break Before Make, was released on Skam, a mainstay of Manchester’s electronic scene since 1990. A mixture of electro-futurism and Detroit legacy house, it has been described by Juno Records as “undeniably impressive” and a “killer debut” by Bleep.

This was soon followed in 2019 with the release of an EP, RR001, marking the first release on new record label River Rapid, founded by Scottish DJ Eclair Fifi. Its zappy synths and snake-charming basslines prompted Resident Advisor to recognise Afrodeutsche as "a promising newcomer".

Smith-Rolla was invited to attend a five day residency at Brighter Sound with Beth Orton in March 2019, sharing her creative processes with seven local female artists.

In April 2019, a selection of Smith-Rolla's compositions were performed in Four Women: The Untold Orchestra, a unique cultural showcase exploring the experiences of black women within the creative industries and society at large, based on the narrative of Nina Simone's Four Women. The event also featured music written by composers Errollyn Wallen, Jessie Montgomery and Daniel Bernard Roumain.

Later in 2019, Smith-Rolla composed the score for Kamali, Sasha Rainbow's short film about a young skateboarder in India, receiving a BAFTA nomination for Best Short Film and qualifying for the 2020 Oscars shortlist. For the soundtrack, Smith-Rolla focused on the piano to create its six minimalist tracks, praised for their poignancy and sensitivity. It was later released on SA Recordings in 2020, complemented by her own sample library on Spitfire Audio called Spectrum based on the soundtrack. On composing for film, Smith-Rolla has said “I’ve always had a real love for film and scoring – making sense of visual images with sound.”

Smith-Rolla’s sound is most heavily influenced by Drexciya, Dopplereffekt, Underground Resistance and Aux 88, as well as a variety of film composers.

In addition to musical composition, Smith-Rolla is a prolific DJ, having toured throughout Europe and performed at Dekmantel, Sónar Barcelona, Dimensions, and Berghain alongside artists such as Aphex Twin and Dopplereffekt. She also hosts a quarterly radio show on NTS called Black Forest, broadcasting an eclectic selection of electro and techno music.

Discography

 * Break Before Make (2018, Skam)
 * Advent 18 (2018, compilation album released by LuckyMe)
 * RR001 (2019, River Rapid)
 * Kamali (2020, SA Recordings)