konknaijagirl | On 07, Mar 2014

Patti Boulaye, the singer who rose to fame As the highest scorer on classic talent show New Faces, was at London’s Westminster abbey alongside Prince Harry, former Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu, and Prime Minister David Cameron and nearly 2,000 people in a memorial service for the late South African President Nelson Mandela.

Boulaye founder of the Boulaye International Protocol and Decorum Academy (BIPADA) which delivers accredited courses and qualifications at Oxford University and still delivers live music accross the world.

She came along with others to pay respects and hear from Desmond Tutu who emphasised at the Westminster Abbey celebration that the anti-apartheid campaign in Britain helped keep the movement going, change moral climate and propel Mandela’s freedom.

Tutu thanked Britons who had picketed South African government buildings in London and led boycotts against the apartheid regime.

Mandela died in December. He had often cited the British judicial system as a model.

The centuries-old Abbey resounded with the sounds of South African singing and drumming during the service.

She went on to begin her week of cabaret after a long hiatus from performing at Crazy Coqs in the subterranean Café Zedel yesterday in London sorrounded by an audience that included TV presenter Anthea Turner and illusionist Uri Geller.
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Patti – at the Reaching Out for Africa Concert at Royal Albert Hall some years back.

Boulaye, who sang songs from across the decades, recalled her big break. “When I came to London I joined a queue for what I assumed was Madame Tussauds,” she said. “When I got to the front I asked how much it was to get in and they told me it was an audition for Hair and that I didn’t have to pay.

“That seemed cheap so I went in. I’d wondered why the queue was full of hippies.”

An accomplished musical theatre performer, she performed what was described by reviewers as an exquisite arrangement of The Sun Whose Rays from The Black Mikado. A delicate rendition of I’ll Be There is dedicated to the memory of Michael Jackson and bluesy At Last a beautiful Ballard with her sublime talent and ability to charm an audience granting the audience a beautiful night.

Patti at an event last February

With astounding success spanning decades in Nigeria and the UK, Patti is still going strong and can be spotted at many charity galas and gigs around town