Seinabo Sey’s musical heritage is complex: Born in Sweden, she grew up partly in Gambia, where her father, Maudo Sey, was famous in afro-pop circles. While Ms. Sey, 25, is steeped in reggae and West African music, she is equally inspired by American pop and R&B divas like Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and Beyoncé. Now a successful recording artist herself — her genre-bending anthem “Younger” has been streamed 145 million times on Spotify — Ms. Sey continues to idolize these women with a kind of fan-girl zeal. “I haven’t met any of them and I’m not sure I want to,” she said. “I’d be too scared to say anything.” Self-effacing in interviews, Ms. Sey has become more assertive on stage. She just completed a multicity American tour (opening for the X Ambassadors). In February, she stunned the Swedish music community at the country’s Grammy Awards by staging a politically charged demonstration where she invited around 130 black and mixed-race women — apparently all friends and friends of friends — to stand, in silence, as she performed for the mostly white audience. The following is an edited interview with Ms. Sey.

Q. What was the idea behind your provocative performance at the Swedish Grammy’s?

A. It started out pretty simple: I flipped out. I looked at some magazine cover and started thinking about the whole situation in Sweden with black people not being represented in the media. I wanted to invite every single beautiful black woman that I had met — I know so many in Stockholm — and just put them on the stage. It’s national TV, and I told the producers, please cut the faces so they’re on the screen more than mine. I basically just wanted to show that we exist. I wanted people in that room to feel looked at and to understand, maybe for a second, how it feels to be a minority.

Were you worried about whether the performance would be interpreted as a hostile gesture?

For a while I was scared. I felt like I was detaching myself from the community in Sweden that had been so welcome to me. It kind of cemented that feeling that I think about a lot but don’t often talk about: I’m very different than Sweden, than Swedish music. I was proud, but very sad. There was something sad about it. I love a lot of them, it’s a super small community, and I just wanted people to take it the right way. The stare-down thing kind of left maybe a little sour taste in people’s mouths. It was hard for some people to take it. I could see it in their eyes. But I also saw a lot of people who stood up and applauded and were proud.

Critics have said your music has elements of everything from gospel to electro-pop. How do you describe it?