oompa indeed!

“All fizz and finger-poppin’ talent. Such fun!”
- Diane DiMassa, creator of Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist

“ ‘Oompa!’ will give you eargasms!”
-Annie Sprinkle, Artist/sexecologist


What would you do after editing a Lambda nominated anthology with bell hooks, Nan Goldin and Kate Bornstein? Well, if you’re Sabrina Chapadjiev, editor of “Live Through This- On Creativity and Self-Destruction”, you shorten your name to Sabrina Chap and hit the road with your hot brand of vaudevillian and ragtime stomp.

After ditching her role as ‘feminist editor,’ Sabrina Chap turned back to her first love- songwriting and performing, and it’s a good thing too! She’s got the ballad lyrics of Tom Waits, the onstage antics of Phyllis Diller and the voice of a whiskey angel. After performing what has been called ‘The Dirtiest Song Ever’ in a performance the New Yorker called, “Rousing!”, she’s proved that she’s also got moxie.
[NB. I've just searched high and low for videos of the performance, and the New Yorker review to link to, and it appears it was all so dirty that it's all been taken down from the web!! -Melanie]

Released for the first time in her debut studio album, ‘Oompa!’, her songs are a ragtime stompin' good time, full of laughs, heartbreaks, and just plain good songwriting.

A classical pianist from the age of 5, Sabrina has performed in nine Ladyfests throughout the US and Europe, anchored two European tours and hit every small bar and club in New York and Chicago.

The album title, ‘Oompa!’ stems from the typical left-hand stride that is found in ragtime, where the left hand is incessantly playing, “oompa, oom-pa”. A majority of the songs on the album originally contained this rhythm, and soon the album became an exploration on how to riff off of this basic musical theme. In one track, a Dixieland band is added, in another a trio of strings. Fellow feminist editor,
Melody Berger (the F-Word zine, “We Don’t Need another Wave”) brings her bluegrass fiddle to the track, ‘Carolina’.
All in all, ‘Oompa!’ is a musical feast of Americana’s favorite styles that’ll keep your toes a tappin and your finger’s snappin’.

A dynamic performer, Sabrina has found that it is the burlesque scene where she is finding her strongest supporters. In February she brought her bawdy vaudeville numbers and razor-sharp wit to the burlesque joints and sideshows of East Coast. Currently, she is playing solo shows in the New York area, while planning a travelling circus sideshow tour this summer, The show will feature a fire-eater,
burlesque performer, magician and herself as a one woman band performing the songs from ‘Oompa’. Hilarious and fearless, Sabrina is gearing up to become one of the hottest voicest in ragtime revivalor as an interview in the Queerist recently put it, “Wildly articulate, witty and passionate, Sabrina Chap is an artist to look out for.”

Head over to Sabrina's Myspace to hear songs from the album (my fave, for the record, is Boat Song)