Blues roots star Tash Sultana shares the medical hell that inspired new songs

This Aussie musician has opened up about her wife’s cancer diagnosis - and the horror surgery blunder that flipped their lives upside down.

When the universe started dealing out “heavy emotional trauma”, Australian singer songwriter Tash Sultana headed into the studio to process it all.

The gender-fluid global blues and roots star, who sells more than 500,000 tickets on their world tours, has had the roughest year of their life.

After suffering a series of inexplicable anaphylactic attacks, they were finally diagnosed with Mass Cell Activation Syndrome.

They grieved family and friends who lost their lives, and then their wife Jaimie was diagnosed with a rare cancerous tumour in her right knee.

The single Hold On became their anthem for resilience when Jaimie’s cancer treatment took a shocking, disastrous turn.

Tash Sultana and partner Jaimie have had a rough year. Picture: Instagram

“It’s a really, really rare type of cancer so it had been left undetected for like, years. We found out about all of that towards the end of last year,” Sultana said.

“And then everyone went on holiday and we were just left with that information. We didn’t know like what grade it was, how bad it was, if it had gotten into lymph nodes or blood.

“It’s been a f***ing absolute balls up with the surgery. They operated on the wrong thing, on the wrong side of the knee.

“A lot of people have told me it’s insane how common (medical malpractice) is. And a lot of other people have said that it’s a made-up story, that there’s no way that this could possibly be true and that surgeons and doctors wouldn’t do that. I wish that was the case.”

Sultana is an artist and entrepreneur with their own booking agency and studio. Picture: Supplied.

As Jaimie continues her recovery after the tumour was removed, Sultana has readied their new Return to the Roots EP, which is released on May 30.

The Australian big stage slayer will perform it for the first time on their upcoming American tour, where some shows sold out in mere minutes.

“It was just all pelting on at the one moment and I only really know to just go into the studio and kind of continue on as normal until told otherwise,” Sultana said.

You can hear the emotional outpouring in songs like Hold On and Hazard to Myself, the catch in their voice, a deep breath.

The artist who plays dozens of instruments wanted to finally make their voice is the star. And singing out their pain felt like exorcising it.

“I had to get it all out and I really, really sang on that record. It’s the sort of real performance you can’t do every day in the studio,” they said.

“I don’t know if it is a piece that I even want to actually perform. It was more of just like a statement that I wanted to write.”

Sultana has collaborated with Canadian artist Dallas Green on their new EP. Picture: Supplied.

It’s more likely they will add recent singles including Milk and Honey, and maybe Ain’t It Kinda Funny, featuring beloved Canadian singer songwriter City and Colour, a regular visitor to Australian shores.

Those songs are already adding to Sultana’s impressive presence on streaming platforms, where their music has had more than one billion plays on Spotify alone, a huge achievement for an Australian artist.

But like a handful of local artists whose careers are much bigger overseas than at home, and who command audiences in the tens of thousands for their headline concerts and festival performances, Sultana said they feel “really overlooked” in Australia.

Sultana is a truly independent artist who not only writes, plays and records everything on their songs but also an entrepreneur who is a founder of Lonely Lands Agency, Lonely Lands Studio and recently launched Lonely Lands Liquids and The I Am Me Foundation.

Sultana can play more than 20 instruments. Picture: Supplied.

“I feel really overlooked, little bit ignored here considering the scale of what I’ve been doing and the fact that no one else is actually doing anything like it,” Sultana said.

“I’ve also not really been available in this market for a very long time too. So, I haven’t been releasing albums, I haven’t being playing shows in Australia or doing a tour here. I just packed up and went overseas because the demand was there tenfold off the back of Covid when it was very shaky here.

“The economy is still f***ed here and that affects everything with festivals falling over, people losing their jobs, leaving the industry, people not coming back to see shows when they can’t afford to pay the f***ing rent or their mortgage repayments.

“The golden age for musicians is when you’re really, really young and your fan base is really, really young so you have to continually reinvent and recreate your profile. And I feel pretty good where I’m at right now after a few years of growing through my frustrations with my career.”

The Return to the Roots EP is released on May 30.

Originally published as Blues roots star Tash Sultana shares the medical hell that inspired new songs