Beldina Odenyo Onassis

Onassis was born Beldina Awino Nora Kungu in Kisumu, Kenya on 30 August 1990,^[2] before moving with her family to Lockerbie in Scotland when she was a child.^[3] She had thirteen siblings.^[3] Her obituary in the British newspaper The Times describes her as 'Kenyan-Scottish'.^[2]

She developed an early interest in music, and began performing at age eleven.^[3] She previously performed under the name Genesee, before adopting the stage name Beldina Odenyo Onassis (Odenyo was her mother's surname at birth, which Beldina later took as her own surname).^[3] She worked mostly in Glasgow and was named one of Scotland’s 30 most inspiring women under 30.^[4][5]

She worked with the National Theatre of Scotland^[6][7] on Lament for Sheku Bayoh^[8] and with the all-female songwriting collective Hen Hoose.^[9] She worked on several theatre projects and was developing a play shortly before she died, which she said was to be "about our relationship with the dead".^[3] Sarah Moorhouse, her biographer for the Dictionary of National Biography, said that "death was a source of sustained fascination" in her work.^[3]

A regular performer at Celtic Connections Festival, she won the Danny Kyle award.^[5] She performed a sold-out show at Glasgow's Tron Theatre in 2018.^[3]

Onassis died by suicide at her home in Paisley on 5 November 2021, at the age of 31.^[3][4][10]